Why are we alive?

Great Debates
121

I like to play with this stuff too, but it is difficult to take a hard-line stance on the particulars. If there is an Absolute, why all the concentration on Existence and Consciousness and so on- after a while they seem like the kinds of things Occam’s Razor was intended to excise.

OTOH, if you want to take a look at Existence, for example. In our real world (if I may be so bold for the sake of argument), a thing either does or does not exist.

Hang on a sec- there’s 3 dimensions, but I just found evidence for the fourth! :smiley: It isn’t the 4th at all, it is the 0th. The basic binary proposition of the universe.

As for creators, well we can consider evidence on this question. The universe seems to exist. The Big Bang seems to have happened. If the Big Bang had a ‘before’ in which there was nothing, and then suddenly there was everything, we do get into that conservation of energy problem. 0 -> infinity, on the same universe. More fundamentally than physics, it violates the Reflexive axiom of mathematics, which states simply that A = A. If we take this version of events as the case, the reflexive axiom has, in fact, in reality, been invalid. Your mathematical system collapses to simply A, which you could frame as an absolute state of 0th dimension.

Or there was no time ‘before’ the big bang, and the singularity just existed, timeless. So let me get this straight. The entire universe existed in a mathematical point of no dimensions whatsoever (the 0th dimension! Where’s my Nobel Prize!?) for what we have to take as an infinite amount of time. Erm… a real example of the entire universe existing without change, time, or dimension.

So take yer pick. The reflexive axiom was invalid, or the 0th dimension is some kind of ultimate reality, or at least some kind of reality regardless of how you’d rather slice it.

And from there life arose. Not sure why. That question is literally a toughie.

122

The idea that there’s an as yet unknown purpose for us to fulfill sounds like the illogical Christian premise that you can’t get to heaven without accepting God. It condemns everyone who lived before Christianity to eternal hell through no fault of their own, and removes any choice from everyone born afterwards.

If there is an inherent purpose for our lives, I would expect it to be inherently obvious like breathing, as you say (or as instinctive as survival and sex;)), so that our existence doesn’t suffer pointlessly in ignorance. After all, what’s a purpose for if you can’t even recognize it, let alone strive to fulfill it? There shouldn’t be any need to evaluate it, nor any point in resisting it. Like it or not, it would be imposed on us; we’d have no choice but to accept it.

123

so we can learn lessons. what made us gave us a chance to start from scratch and see what we can make of it. this place is made for conscienceness.

124

I’m not following how you jump from “there’s a fundamental underlying purpose or goal to life” to “condemns everyone who lived before to eternal hell and removes choice from everyone born afterwards”. What I mean by this purpose is just an awareness of something that we didn’t realize before and an opportunity to adjust how we live to be more in synch. Not any repurcussions for an afterlife. Though I suppose the purpose could be something like to earn the proper afterlife, I guess.

Yes, this underlying purpose is so inherent it is something we do anyway. Like “fulfilling the universe’s need for chaos” or something. Our mere existence is fulfilling the purpose, our awareness of the purpose just placates us on some emotional and psychological level.

But I agree, what’s a purpose for if you can’t even recognize it?

125

The only purpose of any life is to reproduce. To ensure it’s continued existence.

Beyond that we do not have a purpose.

Now before you get all empty and depressed at your lack of purpose…

This is a good thing. Because it means that we have the opportunity to dream, idealize and create our own purpose in life. And to change that purpose whenever it suits us.

126

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn’t trying to conflate the two. The point I was making is that if there’s a purpose for our lives, there must be a payoff of some kind for fulfilling it. If that purpose isn’t known yet, those of us who lived before it was known are pointlessly missing out on the payoff, the way people born before Christianity were denied the chance to get to heaven (from the Christian POV) just because heaven wasn’t known to them.

And that’s why I say there’s no purpose to our lives beyond the biological imperatives we’re born with.

That’s how I see it, though a couple of others here would dispute your use of the word “purpose”. If you start reading at post #52, you’ll see.

127

Your questions are answered here.

128

  1. The fact that I won’t exist in 90 years doesn’t change the fact I’m interested in what happens tomorrow. The fact my life has a limit doesn’t detract from its value it increases it.If we lived forever what would be the point when there are no consequences, eventually everything could be worked out. With limited time, all I can do is live the best life I can according to my principles.

  2. This is unknowable. I’d bet against an intelligent force though. I just don’t see it. Ultimately I don’t think it’s too important because I don’t expect my belief to ever be verified. I’ll die just as ignorant but not any worse off.

  3. Because chemicals that reproduce themselves tend to reproduce themselves.

129

Ok, let’s use another analogy with slightly different terms. The big bang marked the beginning of time and the universe, which are all essentially energy created, for argument sake, at the dawn of the universe. Time, in its measurable and kinetic form, is thus but kinetic time energy created at the onset of the universe. What was ‘before’ kinetic time energy is potential time energy; the potential that a construct called time could actually occur and operate, as it currently does now. But even before there was a potential for time, the Idea of a concept called time, with its inherent nature and dynamics, had to be conceived. This would have taken the form of an ideal time energy. So too, with the ‘big bang’; they first had to be the potential for a big bang to occur, with the pursuant formation of the universe and time, before it actually happened. The idea, of how it would specifically occur and the components therein that would set off the conception of the universe, existed before there could be a potential for it. The potential time and universe energy, in their potential form, are elusive to the devices and means used by scientists to measure matter, and thus were, scientifically speaking, non-existent. However, the shortcomings of science do not determine whether anything actually exists or not. Only when this potential time and universe energy change into kinetic time and universe energy did science perceive and measure them, and notwithstanding its inadequacies, it has finally concluded that only after the ‘big bang’ was this energy created!

What I meant, by as natural as breathing, was that it would be easy and doable by all, but not involuntarily. Not too heavy for the weak, nor too complex for the simple-minded.

Existence and consciousness are terms that most people can easily identify and relate to, and that’s why they’re used to describe the Absolute.

130

You’re pleading for an altruistic universal purpose for life, which ignores the evidence. The principle of survival of the fittest and the randomness of the universe, where helpless infants and decrepit seniors can suffer horribly and pointlessly, are undeniable facts. That’s not to say there’s no such thing as altruism in the universe, but what there is originates entirely in us animals. Dedicating your life to helping others can be a purpose for your life, but it’s you who determines that, not the universe.

131

There’s a term for what you’re doing, but I can’t remember it. Not personification. Not anthropomorphic projection. But those somewhat convey the idea. What is your basis for assuming that an idea must occur before an event can occur? That there must be a plan for how the universe would unfold before the universe could unfold? Sure, that is true when it comes to actions by people, but does not apply to natural phenomena. This is a metaphysical position you are advocating to use as justification for your metaphysical belief.

132

Allow me to be just a tad sophomoric here… Maybe there is another step beyond ours into a “higher consciousness.” Insects operate solely on hard-coded programmatic behaviors. Other mammals have emotions. Humans and some mammals (and some birds, apparently) are able to use “abstract thought” to imagine solutions to problems and to realize them. Humans have taken “awareness of our own awareness” to the zenith, but there is no guarantee that this is as far as the process goes. There may be some “hyper-aware” aliens out there, feeling sorry for humans because we can only experience time in a linear fashion, or because we aren’t aware of the sense of XYZ that is so fundamental to their experience.

Maybe just a kind of “idealism,” the idea that “ideas are real?” (Or is that “realism?” I always get the two confused. One says, “An idea is just an idea,” but the other says, “An idea has a reality of its own.” Alexei Panshin said that if you call someone a gigger or a fell-picker, and he knows it isn’t true, then whether or not he gets mad, or doesn’t, depends on whether he’s an idealist or a realist.)

This comes up sometimes in threads about how the Aztecs “couldn’t see” Columbus’ ships, because they had no “idea” to use to conceptualize large European-style sailing ships. Most of us think that idea is silly.

But… Couldn’t one say, reasonably, that the universe had to have “room for the possibility” of how the universe would unfold, in advance of the actual event?

For instance: your billiards table has the x-y/time coordinates for every possible game of billiards. It’s all, right there, on the table, in a vast potential multi-dimensional space-time. In the same way, an ordinary deck of cards has every possible game of Bridge “inherent” in it. And Poker. And even other games not yet invented.

As we understand it, the ordinary forces of physics – weak nuclear, strong nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational – “crystallized” out of the immense energy densities of the earliest epoch, just nanoseconds (or less) after the Big Bang. Other values of those forces might have come about. Every “possibility” of all arrangements of those forces may have been “inherent” in the unified force of the earliest instant. But some combinations might have been “forbidden.”

For example, some cosmologists have played around with the idea that our universe might have “crystallized” with only two physical dimensions – like a billiard table – or four or more. But these tend to lead to complications that involve no possibility of physics and chemistry, and may lead to contradictions that prevent such a universe from being stable at all.

I don’t object to an “envelope” of possibilities; could this be what was intended by a “plan?”

133

This is not what I meant. I’m talking about the projection of intention onto things. A cheesy example might be “the clouds were sad, so they cried, and thus it rained”.

Logical impossibilities wouldn’t occur. Self contradictions prevent themselves. Sure, the only things that could have occurred are the things that could have occurred, so what did occur is one of the things that could have occurred, and not one of the things that couldn’t have occurred. This seems like mere tautology to me.

You would have to ask thepillar, but his choice of terminology suggests to me something more … definitive is intended.

134

This is why I like the Weak Anthropic Principle, but not any of the stronger varieties. We can deduce a little about the cosmos from the fact that we exist within it. It isn’t quite hopelessly tautological. But if one leans on it too much, it quickly collapses into tautology, and ceases to be of value.

135

No, that’s not what I’m implying. The purpose would be primarily personal; nothing altruistic for that matter. Altruism and what not would be just one of the outcomes of its fulfillment.

Erm………….reality?

I’ve noted 3 things from this response; please feel free to correct me where I’m off course.

(1) There’s a certain degree of acceptance for a universal law that applies both on a macrocosmic and a microscopic scale; with infinitude grades of scale between the two extremes. (from your admission that the law of ideas also applies to people)

(2) Natural phenomena are external, separated and closed to this system of the law of ideas that applies to people.

(3) Nonetheless, there’s a natural law that applies to everything in the universe.

The term for what you’re doing here is cognitive dissonance. People and their actions are a result of what you call “natural phenomena”, so essentially, they actually are natural phenomena. One of the laws operating in the universe is the law of ideas, be it in people or on a lower scale, in mammals. The necessary framework and quintessence that is required for an idea to be processed, and the resulting degree of intelligence, is provided by the universe. Degree of intelligence and its limitations is supplied and dictated by the universe; and yet you deny the universe that very principle and nature of which it is the source!

+1

136

Har, har.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the law of ideas”. Humans are congnitive beings. We think. Humans take actions based upon their surroundings and what they wish to accomplish. In other words, humans have intent, and those intentions shape what they do.

To a lesser extent, animals are also aware and are therefore beings of intent. Obviously a housefly’s cognition is much less than a person’s, so their level of intent is at a much lower level.

There does not appear to be any indications that the universe itself has cognition, and therefore is a being of intent. Show me where the universe changes in response to stimuli, makes a deliberate choice rather than rolls along a prescribed path.

See above. Show me evidence of this consciousness of the universe.

137

We’re alive by virtue of either grace, cruelty, or random chance.

I suppose the only meaning we can give life is to recognize the power these three forces have over us all. To honor the bad with the good with the indeterminate.

138

What exactly is the “law of ideas?” I’ve never heard of it…

This sounds a little more like information theory. Is that what you meant by a law of ideas? It is a fascinating subset of both mathematics and physics. It has led to some startling conclusions.

(Just as one counter-intuitive result, it requires energy to erase information, but not necessarily to write it. Science News.)

So, yes, definitely: just as a book can’t exist without a system of coding information to text, so a mind can’t exist without both memory and some kind of processing. The universe does provide sufficient physical support for such things, and yet also has limitations which prevent us from other kinds of feats.

139

Oh there’s a NEED for a point. I think it would be hard to argue there is no NEED for a point of life. I think you might have meant requirement. For there is no requirement for a point of life; humans just want one.

140

I’m not sure what you mean by “personal”. I assume that if a purpose for life exists, it would apply to everyone. Can you give an example of what you have in mind?

That’s how things are right now. For a social species like ours to survive, it helps to have some altruism.