What is the ultimate goal in life?

Great Debates
61

The misapprehension in these posts is common: that, because there are aspects of the universe which can be agreed “objectively”, then everything must/should have some “objective” aspect to it. This is actually a logical fallacy.

The thing about these biological computers in our skulls is that they can attain pretty much any ‘configuration’, output almost any ‘decision’ including logically absurd ones, and achieve myriad emotional ‘states’. There is “logic” in outputting a decision or attaining an emotional state only insofar as there is “logic” in the way an electronic computer works, in terms of a vast array of logic gates (eg. AND, NOR and the like, although our biological computers are effectively “analogue” in character rather than “binary” as such). The decision or state itself might very well violate “logical” principles in the manner of a computer programme calculating the wrong answer.

When considering emotional states attainable by a biological computer (but not an electronic one, yet) such as happiness, wonder, awe, incredibility and the “decision to go on”, the relevant epistemology is not logic, mathematics or science, but aesthetics. There is no “objective reason” to employ reason: one can only say that it is “useful” in addressing certain problems. Applying reason to these emotional states is like applying mathematics to a painting: reason and math are simply not relevant epistemologies here.

Now, one can provide a description or explanation of aesthetics in terms of science and reason. Your depression might be correlated with neurotransmitter depletion or some other “objectively verifiable” measurement. One might find an elevated level of serotonin in my brain when I stand atop a mountain with a particular piece of music in my ears. (And note that I say that we can “explain” such a complex system, but not “predict” it, in the same way that we can explain but not necessarily predict the weather.)

However, the question “what is the logical reason for the pursuit of happiness and the decision to go on?” attempts to mix epistemologies like oil and water. “Wanting happiness” or “desiring an end to depression” are tautologies: the very definitions make “desire for unhappiness” a contradiction.

The universe is so. It is how it is, not some other way. You are part of that universe: your senses are how you “encode” it into arrangements of neural connections called “memories”. Logic and reason are how we arrange and cross-file those memories such that they encode the universe the way it is rather than the way it isn’t: we call this “truth”.

“Beauty”, on the other hand, is to do with the emotional state those sensory inputs and memories bring about. Truth and beauty are two different things. There is beauty in us if you look for it, too, Muad’Dib: We, your fellow biological computers, all hope that yours attains a state you can call “happy” soon. Perhaps seeing these very words appear on your monitor might bring about a small change in this respect: the wish of another organism at the end of a network cable that you be well can fulfill itself just by speaking it, if only temporarily.

62

Huh?

Like you say below, the world is the way it is, and not some other way. That’s the objectivity. Not the agreement part. That doesn’t make it objective. See Qualia Inversion.

Back to square one. You would have to know the complete set of possible configurations in order to assert that the human gray tissue can output all of them. That’s a meaningless question since you are locked into your brain and can’t contemplate what the gratest possible range might be. Making your assertion a vacuous one as well.

The computer calculates the “wrong” answer only when we believe that the answer should be different. So, why do we choose either one as more valid? After all, the world is the way it is, not some other way. That includes the functioning of the computer, as well as your source apparatus.

Nothing is objective until it is objectified, via trial & error, which is driven by luck and logic. Naturally, people don’t wish to objectify aesthetics. Having held that beauty and happiness are desirable, there is no impetus to remove their exalted status, for fear of nihilism and helplessness, which ironically are products of the current state.

Now, is that because logic does not apply or rather because they are just lot more complex and tedious to map, hence just a matter of time, technology and ingenuity?

Bad metaphor. Oil and water can both be described in terms of physical attributes. They are simply different configurations derived from the same essence. Logic is not akin to water here, but to the essence. Water here is equivalent to the current products of logic. We haven’t yet described oil in terms of logic, that doesn’t make it fundamentally different and impervious to logic. Logic is simply the embodiment of the natural order in the universe. We most likely don’t perceive it perfectly and I doubt if we can, but the world is ordered. I doubt most people are actively looking for happiness. They’re just going on with their busy routines, driven by need for survival. I doubt they regularly assess their emotional state to determine whether they are genuinely happy. Those questions come up only when there is a disconnect (like loss of a dear one) or some idle time.

There is beauty in every goddamned thing, if you look for it. After all, all existing phenomena are simply manifestations of the fundamental order. The question is What and Why?

63

The way I see it these thoughts and emotions are due to tangible neurons interacting. You are only concerned about this because you are depressed and your neural workings are advanced enough (being human) to care about this issue. But those neurons are just tangible things, they can be affected by blunt trauma, genetics or drugs. They can also be changed with thought and philosophy. Take alot of heroin and you won’t give a damn about lifes purpose. Get a lobotomy and the same thing will happen.

As for what lifes purpose is, I have no idea. Probably just the hedonistic treadmill. I personally think most of our higher striving for purpose is just a side effect of the fact that evolution has built being intelligent and being cooperative with each other (as we need these things to survive) as most searching for purpose involves joining a larger organization like a religion, making a contribution to humanity or helping others.

64

Don’t forget that for the most part we are viewing this subject with a western frame of reference. This would be associated with meaning and purpose can be found with power and wealth. Power being in a variety of forms. Some eastern cultures, on the other hand, believe that the purpose of life is to, for instance, become one with yourself so that you may never have desire. Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita and all of that. With this you can find the meaning of life to be removal of complexities associated with the mind and thinking and to focus all energy on the self. Become one with the Brahman, eat a hot dog. I personally don’t find this to be the case for myself but I do find it fun to have no desires. Being desire-less is not my goal in life, though, just something fun to do.

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If we’re going to get Eastern, I prefer to look to the Chinese Wu Fu, a symbol consisting of a circle of five bats. The bats represent-good health, long life, a natural death, love of virtue, and wealth.

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Muad"Dib

Let me chime in here and say Loopydude has given you some excellent advice. I suffer from severe chronic depression and can verify that it is hard to make sense of things while in its grip. It takes a while for the drugs to kick in and they by no means make everything alright but they do lift the clouds and let you think more clearly. He is also spot on when he says that the Big Questions are better considered in the abstract.

Try to make yours a life well-lived. Happiness could very well be a by-product of such a life.

Read Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

Good luck.

TRT

67

Gyan

We agree that aesthetics are not objective, then?

Qualia inversion is IMO a sham, a con-job, mere philosophical legerdemain. (Your proposal of an interpretation step for qualia would surely have people eg. pointing at different parts of the colur space map?)

Anticipating this, I used terms like “pretty much” and “almost”. We can at least agree that the number of propositions or emotional states is very large.

Agreed. I suggest that the “wrong” answer simply has less utility.

I don’t understand this. What if one biological computer still stubbornly disagrees that something is objective, if necessary retreating to solipsism? What do we do, have a vote or something? That would surely just represent a majority of subjective responses?

Predicting the weather more than, say, a few weeks in advance is not a matter of technology or ingenuity but of fundamental uncertainty. I don’t understand the first half of your dichotomy: does logic apply to weather prediction, or not?

Err, is this physical oil we are talking about or metaphorical oil “essence” (contrasting water “logic”)? Talk about mixed metaphors!

I’d suggest it was anything but simple, but are you proposing some kind of dualism here? That there are physical things and logical things and never the twain shall meet?

Perception and perfection are mere brain-constructs, like man-horse centaurs. None of them necessarily exist as anything but brain-constructs.

The world is so. You say it’s ordered, I might say it’s chaotic, Ken Dodd might say it’s tattifilarious. Logic might be a useful epistemology, but it is not necessarily a universal one.

Amen.

68

I didn’t see this post earlier. Yeah, this is the most important post in this whole thread. It reminds me of something I wrote a few months ago when I was depressed.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=265296&highlight=meaning

Right now that i’m not depressed I am not bothered or affected by these questions. And therapy/drugs do alot more for me than trying to figure the ‘answer’ out anyway.

69

Why? The eye/brain certainly interpret stimuli, not just convey it. This also assumes that qualia can’t be epiphenomenal.

Isn’t that the case today as well? Although, science is “objective”, how does any explanation get accepted into the mainstream, if not by a “consensus” of a majority of practitioners? Should you retort that they need to have experimental verification, each individual scientist (who concurs) needs to affirm that the experiments indeed support the theory. Ultimately, it comes down to mass agreement, with the veneer of scientific sophistication and objectivity.

It’s a computational problem due to scale, not the inapplicability of classical deterministic physics at the constituent level.

Metaphorical “oil”.

I didn’t intend to bring up that aspect. I’m simply saying that logic is discovered, not invented.

This is backwards. The concept of ‘brain’, ‘perception’ and everything else are experience-objects. The brain only exists as a part of your experiences. Without qualia, you wouldn’t even be aware that you exist (if you did). It’s pointless to assign some kind of “external” existence to any entity, or to assign a higher ‘reality’ to something within your experience.

It’s certainly ordered at our scale of experience, where determinism reigns. Maybe, I’m confused here, but IIRC, chaotic systems are deterministic. They just display an acute sensitivity to initial conditions, so that they are non-linear in response. Chaos itself is ordered, it’s just computationally too complex.

About “fundamental” uncertainty, this comes up a lot in physics discussions and it’s bandied about as if the world itself is probabilistic at some level. The simple answer is We don’t know. The formalism of QM does not rule out determinism (Bohm’s interpretation & 't Hooft’s beables-changeables). We can’t predict anything about individual events beyond a certain scale, but it would be arrogant to assert that it’s because the world itself is probabilistic rather than there’s a limit to our knowability.

70

Hey Muad’Dib how about checking in with us. We haven’t heard anything from you in a few days.

71

Because if there was leeway in the interpretation of eg. the wavelength of the incident radiation, that leeway would manifest itself in different responses.

I did say it was IMO: your brain is perfectly welcome to take on a configuration called “belief in epiphenomenalism” just as it may “believe in centaurs”. I’ll forego such dualistic nonsense if that’s OK.

So we agree that nothing is really “objective”, not even our existence outside of a jar in Descartes Devil’s laboratory?

That is what I am saying. I am having some trouble distinguishing where we agree and disagree: you appear to be firing questions off at me somewhat randomly with no discernible consistent philosophy behind them. The universe is so, but our biological computers may encode it the way it isn’t. Agreed?

I happen to disagree here (not that it is particularly on-topic). The behaviour of water molecules is to some extent determined by the quantum properties of its electrons: the motion of a water molecule can be fairly accurately modelled classically, but if quantum effects introduce a difference even at the twentieth decimal place, then that difference renders the model inaccurate after a given period. The fact is that we can’t tell which tiny differences are classical and which are quantum-mechanical. I’d suggest that the same is true of the functioning of our biological computers.

So “essence” cannot yet described in the syntax of logic? How about: Oil has essence. Castrol GTX is oil. Therefore Castrol GTX has essence.?

It still seems like you think that logic does not supervene on the physical. Are you?

I contend that my brain can very well exist without my experiences, as a piece of offal sitting there on the surgeon’s table.

Of course. This whole thread (which is becoming a little untangled I fear) concerns whether qualia are something of an illusion, having a physical explanation.

Pointless? Hardly. Of course all that I can “know” is what my offal receives via sensory apparatus, but to believe that there are not other biological computers who will continue to function after mine permanently ceases to function? That is called solipsism, you understand.

Yes yes, my point was that you appear to be making grand commands about the nature of the universe and yet you seem to simultaneously deny that we can do so objectively.

Quite so, but the point is that it appears that it is, and always will be, probabilistic to us since we may never “see” what makes eg. a wavefunction appear to collapse in a certain way at a certain time.

In any case, whether a complex system is classical or quantum is not really the discussion we are having here. In an attempt to provide some uplifting succour to Muad’Dib and others, I described his situation and called it “wondrous”. You piped up that “wonder” is not objective. I agreed, saying that logic is not epistemologically relevant to emotional states (or, say, a painting). You then picked at every part of my post (without any overall point that I could identify), with me thereafter responding as clearly and helpfully as I could, only to receive another long and rather obscure critique. In the interests of clarity, just where do you consider that we disagree, exactly? If you merely wished to express “I disagree with what you originally said to Muad’Dib” I’ll happily say “OK” and leave you the last word.

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We wouldn’t know, would we? If there’s leeway, we don’t infact see different responses. We need an independent measure. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be one, like in the case of solipsism.

That’s not what I said. I said that your basis for wonder wasn’t objectively arrived at. The reason that logic isn’t applied to the basis of emotions is, ironically, because those emotions themselves repel at having logic dissect them. And not because logic doesn’t fundamentally apply.

If my questions appear random, I can only surmise it is because you haven’t understood my philosophy.

73

The statement bolded above is perfectly true, all we know about the universe is qualia. We each might be in the Matrix, or a Brain in a Jar, or a sleeping dog dreaming that it’s a human. The “real” universe is unknowable - all we have is our constructs.

However, in MY universe, some qualia are “positive” and some are “negative” - strawberry ice cream is good and striking my thumb with a hammer is bad, regardless of their lack of provable objective reality. So I have criteria for value judgements.

Also in my universe, there has up to now been a useful level of predictability - I can generally tell when I’m at risk of striking my thumb with a hammer, and avoid it. Or choose to risk it if I judge the positive effects of smacking something with a hammer to be worth it. Part of this predictability involves a whole world of assumptions that amount to acting as if there is an objective, consistent, predicable reality even if it can’t be proven. It’s simply a utiltarian assumption.

The first two of your statements quoted above seem to imply the same utilitarian assumption - you refer to the eye-brain as if they were real and had predictable properties, and you refer to the computability of a prediction problem. However, the bolded statement seems to reject the utilitarian assumption. Which is fair enough, but not entirely consistent.

In my universe, I have dreams. However, my “dream universe” does not have a useful level of predictability compared to my waking universe. This makes it far more difficult to achieve anything in the dream universe - negative and positive experiences are random. For this reason, I judge my “waking world” to have a “higher” reality than my sleeping world, purely within my own experience.

74

Gyan

My point is that we see the same wavelength response on the colour space. How is this possible if the same incident wavelength can become a different interpreted wavelength? Why does everybody say that 575 nm is yellow?

For the fourth time I ask: do we agree that nothing is truly “objectively arrived at” when we really get down to it? For the second time I ask: where do you consider that we disagree, exactly?

You think that logic fundamentally applies to emotions? Does, say, algebra? Is it predicate, modal or higher order logic? If I can convince you that my emotions (picayune buggers that they are) do not “repel” at having logic dissect them, could you give me an example of such a dissection?

I have not understood your philosophy. I would be grateful if you would start by telling me what it is.

75

How does it become a different interpreted wavelength? Who says that the qualia displacement is limited to a single and fixed color palette? Everybody says 575 nm is yellow because that’s they have been taught to label their perception of that wavelength.

Everything is ultimately objective means we inhabit the same universe with the same consistent ordered laws, as far as we can tell. At least my world is patterned and ordered and I assume you inhabit the same. But we all start with different “initial conditions” (genetics, environment), so we differ in our assessments although they’re objectively made with regards to our premises. But since we inhabit the same universe, the objectivity can be shared by comparing the premises. You made statements to the effect that we are the most incredible things in the universe. On what basis?

Algebra is a product of logic. The formal logic we are aware of need not be the complete and true form of logic, whatever that is.

Given that you are inevitably going to die and based on your atheist beliefs, you won’t have an afterlife, what’s the point of continuing? IOW, what’s your ultimate goal and why?

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Gyan, I think I’ll politely decline another revolution on this carousel, thanks all the same. The basis of my statement that we are incredible things in an incredible universe was simply a sequence of words to make someone happy. I am happy existing as I do, and since permanent non-existence is my eventual fate anyway the more relevant question would appear to be “why stop?”. I have no idea what your “complete and true form of logic” is, indeed the very concept appears to be inconsistent.

As ever, I leave you the last word.

77

Well, the OP stated that he wanted an objective reason.

I’ll have to take the last word since you again misinterpreted my statement. The “complete and true form of logic” refers to the innate rules of the universe, whatever they are, and not to the subset of those, which we discover and symbolize.