I just want to jump in to Aelita Daystar’s defence. Probably a little late.
I think AD made a good point, one I was going to make myself.
You often get people matter-of-factly state that the purpose of existence is to reproduce. But I think these people are confused about what “purpose” means.
It doesn’t follow from the fact that there’s a process that brought us into being, and has set our initial psychology and physiology, that we “owe” it something.
You might just as well say the meaning of life is to synthesize proteins. Or the purpose of aerobic organisms is to respire.
Regarding the biological aspect, you’re giving the genes too much credit if you say that our purpose in life is to make more little people. The genetic imperative to make more little people is built into our biology but it’s clearly not the overriding purpose for our current existence. Or to put it another way, our genes will not judge us for failing to pass them on. They’re just gears, part of the machine.
As best I can tell, from observations of humans, the one driving imperative that all humans have and obey is “seek happiness, avoid misery”. This would be related to but not identical to “seek pleasure, avoid pain”, because the terms there (“pleasure”? “pain”?) seem to focus more on short term hedonistic pleasure and simple physical pain, where in reality people are all doing their darndest to obey their internal imperatives to be happy, whatever other stupid hoops that may make them jump through.
Some people have trained themselves to be happy when they help others - those people seek their own happiness by trying to help others. Some people derive happiness from chocolate - they seek chocolate. Some find happiness (or at least less misery) in drinking water - they drink water. Some are trained that eating chocolate, or pork, would make them feel guilty or ill or otherwise unhappy, and thus avoid it. This is the basis for all human bahavior - obedience to the personal imperatives of seeking happiness and avoiding misery.
I never understood this question. Why does life have to have a purpose in the first place? For something to have a purpose, often it has to be previously thought out by someone. But since there’s no god and life exists on this planet due to a fun set of chance and circumstances, the “purpose” of life is to enjoy your short time on the planet and I’d like to think to make some positive net contribution to society while you’re at it.
We are alive to be blessed by God and to Love Him and be Loved by Him and to praise Him. Things went a bit askew, but not beyond God’s salvation, but we have went our own way, loving self and our own ways and forsaking God, and reaping the suffering we have cause by our not wanting God in our lives. Outside God everything is worthless and useless, thank you Jesus you made a way back.
Actually, kb is a bit wrong - that’s what our purpose in the afterlife will be. When we die we get handed harps and are pressganged into the heavenly choir - not until then, though, as is made plainly clear by the fact that there have been no heavenly efforts to clarify a goal of worshipping God to earth’s people in general, as evidenced by the fact various religions that don’t even worship the same diety have been allowed to form.
So, as noted, our purpose in the afterlive is to kiss God’s narcissistic and insecure ass; our purpose in life is to kill flies.
If we weren’t alive, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, would we?
Why does a star exist? Or the earth? Or a nebula? Or some dark matter? We are alive for the same reason.
The pleasure principle, already mentioned. If I hadn’t been alive, I wouldn’t have experienced some nice sunsets and rainbows. I would have seen the birth of my daughters, and the marriage of one. I wouldn’t have heard an audience laugh at my jokes. I wouldn’t have met my wife, and gotten married, and been happy for 31 years and counting. And so on. And if I stop living now I’d miss the opportunity to experience other great things a coming.
So don’t worry about the destination, or the purpose of the trip, relax and enjoy the scenery. You only get to see it once.
We are alive “Be”-“cause” we are. It goes back to the first time life appeared, from then on it was passed on. You are alive because your parents had sex on a certain time, and a sperm hit an egg,you are the result. Life is it’s own purpose. It is because it exists. You start out as a winner!
Well, it’s a good thing we are alive and can have this discussion then.
I don’t know. I know some of the processes by which these phenomena form (actually, not dark matter). But why they exist, why it’s all the way it is…I don’t know.
It’s possible to directly stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. This results in far greater pleasure than any indirect source. Should we just spend our time activating those pleasure centres? Why not?
Wait, you’re asking for the why of details of why existence is the way it is? Why are my eyes brown? Why is my hair brown? Why am I male?
The answer is - the same deep and significant reason the die I just rolled came up 2. Ponder this deeply, to find the deep inner meaning.
I’d be willing to entertain arguments why not. Currently my reasons are 1) I don’t have the equipment to do this in my possession, 2) it sounds scary, invasive, and dangerous, and 3) I have to eat sometime or I’ll have pleasure for less time. What are your reasons?
(Presumably you have some, or you wouldn’t be wasting time posting on this message board.)
My friend’s father used to say “Why is a crooked letter.” My point is, perhaps there is no why. There just is. We are just as natural a result of the Big Bang as a star or a planet. The only difference is we post on message boards about it.
For me, I prefer a diversity of pleasure and surprise. A lot of this comes from other people. The pleasure I get is intellectual as well as emotional, and just stimulating a pleasure center doesn’t give me that. Though, if I were 100 and unable to do anything useful, it might sound pretty good.
Thank you for my new catch-phrase. Sorry, I do not intend to give credit unless caught. Now to figure out how to work it into casual conversation.
To answer the OP - We are alive because all of our ancestors managed, against the odds, to survive long enough to reproduce. It was a close run for the shiftless line back in 23,756 BC but my kin managed to hide under a rock. Whew! The actual purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to keep me amused.
Absolutely that’s what I’m saying. Why anything? Why everything?
We know much of the mechanics of our universe, but why does it have its properties and how does it exist at all? Those are the ultimate questions.
The reason that I responded to Voyager’s post because it contained several very popular philosophical beliefs.
I have no problem with such beliefs, but they’re often delivered (and I’m not accusing Voyager of this) as though they are facts and not philosophical theories at all.
I like to remind people that they aren’t facts.
It’s true, if I could purchase machinary to directly stimulate my pleasure centres, I absolutely would. I’d be mad not to.
My point was, philosophies like “The meaning of life is to experience pleasure” don’t stand up when taken to their logical conclusion. Every pleasure that you can experience (and yes I’m including “higher” pleasures, like satisfaction from a job well done) could theoretically be stimulated directly. So the ultimate win would be jacking into a machine that stimulates those regions, maybe periodically switching off to farm and eat and therefore prolong the experience. Wouldn’t it?
Frankly, no. The meaning of life is not solely to experience pleasure. IMO.
And I answered them - it’s the result of a series of deterministic and possibly some non-deterministic physical events that occurred in sequence, building one on top of the other, until the current state was reached. Like how a dice bounces as its rolled until it stops on a side.
If you’re looking for deep significance in which side came up, then you will be disappointed. There isn’t one.
This is a fact - provable based on the fact that not everything can be significant (because doing so just resets the bar for insignificance to that level), and everything follows the same type of cause-effect event-serieses to reach their conclusions, as a bouncing die does when it is rolled.
“Franky, no”? What kind of a counterargument is that?
As I noted earlier, I don’t think it’s about “pleasure”, but about “happiness”, or something like. People seek the good feelings and avoid the bad feelings, inevitably - if you see something that doesn’t look like that, you’re overlooking some other motivation or (masochistic?) desire they have.
Seriously. If there existed a way for everybody to get a permanent buzz without consequences, then everyone would do it, except those who thought up consequences. Some would feel guilty about doing it. Some would miss family. Some would have religious objections. Some would worry about unknown side effects. And some people would make these determinations without even trying it, allowing them to make an uninformed decision as people are wont to do.
But in all serousness, yes, everybody would pursue the course of action that they believed would be best. And if they thought that meant plugging in, then they would plug in. Do you seriously contest this?
You’re missing the point. I’ve never said anything about the significance of everyday events.
I’m talking about the ultimate questions: how is it possible for anything to exist, and why this universe?
Pointing out the chain of cause and effect doesn’t answer these questions.
Note that I’m an atheist, this is not an attempt at a proof of god, I’m simply trying to point out something which I thought is pretty uncontroversial.
The Ultimate Questions aren’t answered, so to say there’s no purpose to it all, is not actually a fact. What is a fact is that we have no evidence of, or reason to think there is, a purpose at this time.
Erm, the argument preceded my summary of “frankly, no”.
The point being, that people who are happy to say that the meaning of life is to be happy, would not actually follow that through to saying the ideal state would be us all jacked into machines that stimulate our pleasure centres for all time.
Well, I was hoping we could avoid going into the full “people only do things to make them happy” meme, because that’s another pet peeve of mine, and it will kick me off on an off-topic rant, so I’ll hold back for now.
In any case, I don’t think you’ve really made a coherent point here.
You said “…unless you’re overlooking some other motivation”. So basically, people seek “good feelings”, except when they have any other motivation, in which case they seek something else.
Hard to disagree with that, since it’s the same as saying that people seek whatever they seek, for whatever motivation they have.
You’re phrasing this like I’ve said the opposite.
In my preceding post, I mentioned that I would use such a machine. I even said I’d be mad not to.
What my point actually was, was that pleasure is not the only motivation for human beings, contrary to common belief.
Would the discovery that through some property of strings the universe had to be this way help in your why question? Would the discovery that there are many universes, and we just randomly wound up in this one?
My points were not intended as either facts of theories. The first was a simple observation. The second was more a kind of feeble koan - why a rock? The point was there needs be no more why for our life than why for non-life. The third was more advice, not an argument for why. There is no why, which doesn’t bother me, since there is plenty of pleasure in just living.
It’s true, if I could purchase machinary to directly stimulate my pleasure centres, I absolutely would. I’d be mad not to.
My point was, philosophies like “The meaning of life is to experience pleasure” don’t stand up when taken to their logical conclusion. Every pleasure that you can experience (and yes I’m including “higher” pleasures, like satisfaction from a job well done) could theoretically be stimulated directly. So the ultimate win would be jacking into a machine that stimulates those regions, maybe periodically switching off to farm and eat and therefore prolong the experience. Wouldn’t it?
Frankly, no. The meaning of life is not solely to experience pleasure. IMO.
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I agree. But what does the meaning of life have to do with why we are alive? We are alive long before we worry about the meaning, after all, and the pleasures we experience right after birth are pretty basic.
I’ve tried avoid using how for why - understanding how we are alive, and how we evolved, doesn’t say a lot about why. Passing on our genes or making a unique contribution to the world may be more defensible than pure pleasure, but why should our descendants or those we help have any more why than we do? If life is pointless for us, why shouldn’t it be just as pointless for our children?
My comment was less on why live and more on how to make living worthwhile since we’re here anyhow. Say you get sent to a random city for work, to be in a pointless meeting or help with a worthless project. Is it better to sit around worrying about why you are there, or to get out and enjoy the city the best you can?
Actually pointing out the chain of cause and effect does answer “why this universe”. Because what is that question other than the question, “why are things not a bit different than they are?”, and the answer is, “because that’s not how the dice came out”.
As to “how is it possible for anything to exist”, well, that is a different question - and different from the one you asked a moment ago. Before, you asked “WHY everything” - and that one is indeed difficult to answer, because causes “prior” to the universe start are out of view, so to speak. (At least, so far as I know.)
But this new question, “HOW everything” - what are you expecting to hear? An instruction manual for creating your own universe? Isn’t that a bit much to ask for? Not to say it’s necessarily impossible to answer - maybe someday we’ll figure out how to make a second universe. (Or maybe we already have - thousands in every library.) But regardless, that’s a different question from “why”.
That was no argument - it was a proof by contradiction that didn’t include a contradiction. You presented a hypothetical scenario where people would all plug into this machine, and then failed to say why they wouldn’t.
Now, here you assert that they wouldn’t “would not actually follow that through to saying the ideal state would be us all jacked into machines that stimulate our pleasure centres for all time”. You do realize that this argument is just you speculating on what people would say, right?
Regardless, I already provided you an explanation why in such a scenario, people would likely not all plug in. It’s because people all make their own assessments as to what the best course of action is, and some would think that plugging in would be a bad idea, for whatever reason (possibly including mistaken assumptions). Which argues somewhat against the idea that sheer mindless pleasure is the ultimate goal, but is no argument at all against the notion that seeking happiness is.
I’m not saying that everyone is a selfish bastard, if that’s what you’re worried about. (And I think we had a recent thread about this that can be read for further details about the distinction there.)
…And all these motivations also serve the goal of seeking happiness. The point was that sometimes people suffer in the present to improve their future, like going to work in the hopes of being able to afford things like food and shelter and video games.
Though it should be noted that people only go to work if at the present they would feel worse about blowing it off than they would about just going in. So yeah. It really is all about doing what seems like a good idea at the time.
And my point is that happiness is the driving motivation for human beings. But it’s not all about pleasure. It’s about security, safety, self-image, peace, hunger, love, pride, thrills - it’s about everything that people like, as opposed to everything they don’t like. Toss in a sprinkling of ignorance, a healthy dose of bad judgement and a salting of blatant stupidity, and there you have the reason everybody does everything they do.
