First, Soron, I'm not sure "metaphysical" means what you think it means. What we are doing here in this thread is inherently metaphysical.
Second, it's essential that we clear up what we mean by "point", "reason", or "meaning". It sounds like we could be talking about the fourth Aristotelian "cause", the telos or final cause. But if we are, O nihilists, then we can't just assume that the absence of conscious intent behind life implies that life has no purpose, for Aristotle quite firmly held that this conditional does not hold. A telos can be imparted upon a thing by a designer, but that is only because the designer is also imparting the form of the thing on it; really, a telos springs from a form, whether the form is designed or not.
Consider the classic thought experiment of the pocketwatch found on the beach. In the original story, a philosopher picks up the watch, examines it, and concludes that it must have had a designer. Let's ignore the whole story, which doesn't quite work anyway, and just focus on the part where he concludes that it is a watch, id est, that it has a function. How does he do this? He looks at the thing's form and ascertains that it has a notable capacity for telling time - which is to say, it would work much better as a timepiece than a toaster oven, and, if it might make a decent paperweight, paperweights don't need all the complex machinery that it possesses. Now, this observation holds whether the watch was designed by a watchmaker or assembled by outlandish chance when a tornado hit a junkyard (which is why the philosopher can't actually know it has a designer), because it is derived solely from the current form of the watch, not its history, or its future for that matter.
The same problem confronts us when we look at life. The natural functions of organs like hearts and eyes are easy enough to ascertain (though nature does keep surprising us with less obvious secondary uses for things). But whole organisms do present us with more of a challenge.
...And I'm late for class, so I'll just throw out that Aristotle thought that the function of all life was to live, this being the purpose of the "nutritive soul"; the purpose of all animal life was to sense, this being the purpose of the "sensory soul"; and the purpose of human life was to reason, this being the purpose of the "rational soul". There are, of course, challenges to his dividing things up this way, but I hope you can see that there is some appeal based on these things' forms (which is what he means by "souls").
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
So, you too feel it comes down to the individual? Not the whole?
Not exactly. Anyone can have a goal for their own life. But one can even have a goal for someone else's life. Or one could even have a goal for EVERYONE else's lives, or even EVERYONE's lives. But that goal is not inherent to life in general -- like all imputations of value, it has to come from an evaluator.
Well... there is no more point to life than there is a point to a rock.
And actually, the rock will be there longer than you do.
But actually, one or the other could be missing, it wouldn't change much in the Universe or even in our Solar System.
So far, each living thing defined its own place in the Universe.
From the plant evolving to have spikes so it'll live longer to the human trying to colonize the stars... that's why you can't ask what is the point to life... because each living organism have a different purpose. Overall, it's surviving - living as long as possible - being there as long as possible.
In an attempt to be as non-metaphysical as possible:
The "point" of anything is simply what it happens, naturally, to do. Living things live; and built into their DNA is an imperative that prescribes a certain life span, at the end of which they must die. So the point of life is both to live and to die.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
I am sorry. In my mind "metaphysical" means "not physical."(yes, I know it literally means 'after physical') Basically, I meant without the soul. The soul being the 'basic' metaphysical object, in my mind.
I meant "based only on observable phenomenon." (I often get the response that the point of life is to make more life, as in reproduce. In my more whimsical moments I like to think that the point of life it to evolve.)
I'd like to point out that recently scientists have begun to acknowledge the requisite metaphysical part of this argument, though I can't remember exactly where I saw the story. Pondering the question "What is the reason for life?" without the metaphysical element is like trying to solve a calculus problem without considering all of the variables... It's nearly impossible, and usually has you going around in circles.
I would also construe that reality depends on the individual's perspective and perception; and life, being part of that reality, has a similarly independant meaning (or reason) for each individual.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I am sorry. In my mind "metaphysical" means "not physical."(yes, I know it literally means 'after physical') Basically, I meant without the soul. The soul being the 'basic' metaphysical object, in my mind.
I meant "based only on observable phenomenon."
Actually, we're not sure why metaphysics is called that, but this is beside the point. As a "purpose" is a non-physical entity, I'm not sure how far you can get with this limitation.
(I often get the response that the point of life is to make more life, as in reproduce. In my more whimsical moments I like to think that the point of life it to evolve.)
Actually, I've argued this before. If we accept that features of organisms have purposes, some features seem to have to purpose of facilitating evolution. Sex being the prime example.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Actually, I've argued this before. If we accept that features of organisms have purposes, some features seem to have to purpose of facilitating evolution. Sex being the prime example.
None of this is actually a purpose, though. It's simply what life does. That's not the same thing as a purpose.
What do I think the reason/meaning/purpose of life is?
To enjoy it.
Really nothing else makes that much sense as pretty much every other answer degrades you to just another human and not an individual, which would completely negate any reason for you being you.
As for you live or die people, while it is the most basic, it isn't really a purpose as so far as it is a state. It is like saying that the purpose of life is to exist, which doesn't make much sense at all, as then the purpose of everything would be to exist, if existance was the ultimate purpose of life. But that's just me and it probably won't make much sense to anybody else.
The same problem confronts us when we look at life. The natural functions of organs like hearts and eyes are easy enough to ascertain (though nature does keep surprising us with less obvious secondary uses for things). But whole organisms do present us with more of a challenge.
I don't see how we can jump from "I find this object useful for a given task" to "the purpose of this object is to perform a given task." I'd even question using that for parts of a system. If I find that watch, I might say that its tourbillon is quite useful for maintaining accurate time over a period, but I couldn't ever deduct that such is its purpose - even if it is. That sort of information requires the designer's point of view.
A better example to illustrate my point is an object whose nature is a little more ambiguous. If I stumbled across an unlabeled and empty writing desk, I might assume that it's the perfect furniture for my valet to serve my food on, everything being so convenient, when such is not its actual purpose.
Or I could assume that the purpose of the appendix is to become inflamed and kill off portions of the population to keep overpopulation in check.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
The "point" to a thing, or the "reason" for a thing, implies a final cause - it implies an intention, a rational agent with a certain will, who caused something to be the way that it is for a purpose, specifically for *its* purpose.
So if we're putting aside the existence of a deity, there is no point to "the world" or to "life". Life happens.
You need to change the question. Scientifically (and vastly meta&anthropo -morphically) speaking, life is just better than nonlife when you're some logically possible phenomenon, on the market for strategies for existence. The prevalence of the "life phenomenon" is just what you get from the way the universe self-organizes under evolution.
You insist you want this to be a question about all life, not just Human life. Well, there's not a lot that's special about life, beyond the above. We don't even know if our definition for life is a good natural kind - if you think about it, it's just an ad hoc list of eight properties that together cut out 'animate', 'nonartifact' things on Earth that need to replenish their "battery-life" to maintain their functional organization for the animateness property.
Also, from the philosophy veterans.. what's that thought experiment, with the Chinese teacup? In space? I think it's Putnam's?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Epic banner by Erasmus of æтђєг.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
If form follows function,
Then the function of life is to live(which means to grow, and in some cause have sex, and maybe evolve) and then to die.
I do understand now that "point" or "reason" means you more or less have to have a hand to guide it, which was something I eliminated in the OP for this thread.
Also, when I was young (and on Ritilen) I thought humans were a cancer on Earth too, but now I know we are the only living thing capable of getting life off this rock before the sun turns into a red giant and kills us all.(sure we still have 7.5 billion years, but its a hard job. It might take us that long to figure out how to get out of this solar system. Its not easy.)
Expect that aging is written into (all?/most?) thing's DNA. We grow old and die because our genetic code tells us to.
So I do not think its JUST to persist. (or just to live)
Expect that aging is written into (all?/most?) thing's DNA. We grow old and die because our genetic code tells us to.
So I do not think its JUST to persist. (or just to live)
Aging is not written into our DNA. There are like a dozen theories about decay-aging, but unanimity in that there's no sign that our body explicitly tries to kill itself over time.
Also, don't equivocate persistence and living. Living things are special in that they are/use complex molecular machines to persist their physical patterns.
It's also useful to recognize that there a ton of layers of abstraction to look at here. A human, for instance, could be considered a well-ordered colony of specially-assigned living things that we happen not to recognize as such with our arbitrary nomenclature.
http://www.senescence.info/causes.html
I am pretty sure its different things that are present in our DNA that causes aging. Whether they are "errors" or part of an useful evolutionary trait, is still up for debate. (If life did not age, it would evolve much slower. The shorter an organisms life span, the faster in evolves.)
It's also useful to recognize that there a ton of layers of abstraction to look at here. A human, for instance, could be considered a well-ordered colony of specially-assigned living things that we happen not to recognize as such with our arbitrary nomenclature.
I sometimes like to think as all of humanity as a single organism. Just like I am made up of many cells that perform specialized tasks, so is humanity made up of individuals all performing specialized tasks to help the whole. (and both can have some 'cancer cells')
I don't see how we can jump from "I find this object useful for a given task" to "the purpose of this object is to perform a given task." I'd even question using that for parts of a system. If I find that watch, I might say that its tourbillon is quite useful for maintaining accurate time over a period, but I couldn't ever deduct that such is its purpose - even if it is. That sort of information requires the designer's point of view.
Me: There is no gap between form and function. You: Yes, there is.
You're sort of begging the question here, don't you think?
A better example to illustrate my point is an object whose nature is a little more ambiguous. If I stumbled across an unlabeled and empty writing desk, I might assume that it's the perfect furniture for my valet to serve my food on, everything being so convenient, when such is not its actual purpose.
This is slightly different than saying, "We grow old and die because our genetic code tells us to." These genetic damage theories are more like, "We grow old and die because our programming produces errors; errors can be beneficial to the 'macro-macro-organism' of a special pattern, and yet those errors degrade the function of the 'macro-organism' (a person) over time."
http://www.senescence.info/causes.html
I am pretty sure its different things that are present in our DNA that cause aging. Were they are "errors" or part of a useful evolutionary trait, is still up for debate. (If life did not age, it would evolve much slower. The shorter an organisms life span, the faster in evolves.)
An even easier explanation is that a well-balanced error-making program would also facilitate mutation, which is essential to special pattern persistence under changing selective environments.
I sometimes like to think as all of humanity as a single organism. Just like I am made up of many cells that perform specialized tasks, so is humanity made up of individuals all performing specialized tasks to help the whole. (and both can have some 'cancer cells')
With that under consideration, I think you'll now agree that my claim of life's function being "persistence" can be valid even if our bodies on this layer of abstraction were programmed to die on their 40th birthdays.
With that under consideration, I think you'll now agree that my claim of life's function being "persistence" can be valid even if our bodies on this layer of abstraction were programmed to die on their 40th birthdays.
I think I do. I will have to agree that the point of life, as a whole, is to persist. Or as I voted: To live (Which in my mind is the same. A living thing 'persists' by living)
Me: There is no gap between form and function. You: Yes, there is.
You're sort of begging the question here, don't you think?
I'd say the issue semantic, as it looks to me that we're just operating under different definitions of the word "purpose." To me, purpose, in this sense, is distinct from form and function in that purpose is an absolute characteristic.
This would mean that a good appendix is one that kills its owner, when we generally believe precisely the opposite to be true.
It seems to me that the only reason to have done so, until recently, is based on an assumption that no body part would ever have such a function. Would a person be unreasonable to think that such is its function?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[The Crafters] | [Johnnies United]
My anecdotal evidence disagrees with yours! EXPLAIN THAT!
I think I do. I will have to agree that the point of life, as a whole, is to persist. Or as I voted: To live (Which in my mind is the same. A living thing 'persists' by living)
Yeah, but "live" and "living" can have many different overtones and contexts. Like, I agree with you, I just think "persist" is a more succinct way of putting it.
I'd say the issue semantic, as it looks to me that we're just operating under different definitions of the word "purpose." To me, purpose, in this sense, is distinct from form and function in that purpose is an absolute characteristic.
If function/purpose/whatever-this-thread-is-about is connected to form, wouldn't it be more absolute than otherwise?
It seems to me that the only reason to have done so, until recently, is based on an assumption that no body part would ever have such a function. Would a person be unreasonable to think that such is its function?
Given the debate going on about group selection in evolutionary biology, I couldn't say. But the general line since at least Aristotle has been that the purpose of the parts is the good of the whole, a line which Darwin is usually seen to have heavily reinforced. And I do remember reading that the appendix actually has some minor role to play in the digestion of various weird things we don't eat much anymore.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Second, it's essential that we clear up what we mean by "point", "reason", or "meaning". It sounds like we could be talking about the fourth Aristotelian "cause", the telos or final cause. But if we are, O nihilists, then we can't just assume that the absence of conscious intent behind life implies that life has no purpose, for Aristotle quite firmly held that this conditional does not hold. A telos can be imparted upon a thing by a designer, but that is only because the designer is also imparting the form of the thing on it; really, a telos springs from a form, whether the form is designed or not.
Consider the classic thought experiment of the pocketwatch found on the beach. In the original story, a philosopher picks up the watch, examines it, and concludes that it must have had a designer. Let's ignore the whole story, which doesn't quite work anyway, and just focus on the part where he concludes that it is a watch, id est, that it has a function. How does he do this? He looks at the thing's form and ascertains that it has a notable capacity for telling time - which is to say, it would work much better as a timepiece than a toaster oven, and, if it might make a decent paperweight, paperweights don't need all the complex machinery that it possesses. Now, this observation holds whether the watch was designed by a watchmaker or assembled by outlandish chance when a tornado hit a junkyard (which is why the philosopher can't actually know it has a designer), because it is derived solely from the current form of the watch, not its history, or its future for that matter.
The same problem confronts us when we look at life. The natural functions of organs like hearts and eyes are easy enough to ascertain (though nature does keep surprising us with less obvious secondary uses for things). But whole organisms do present us with more of a challenge.
...And I'm late for class, so I'll just throw out that Aristotle thought that the function of all life was to live, this being the purpose of the "nutritive soul"; the purpose of all animal life was to sense, this being the purpose of the "sensory soul"; and the purpose of human life was to reason, this being the purpose of the "rational soul". There are, of course, challenges to his dividing things up this way, but I hope you can see that there is some appeal based on these things' forms (which is what he means by "souls").
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Not exactly. Anyone can have a goal for their own life. But one can even have a goal for someone else's life. Or one could even have a goal for EVERYONE else's lives, or even EVERYONE's lives. But that goal is not inherent to life in general -- like all imputations of value, it has to come from an evaluator.
And actually, the rock will be there longer than you do.
But actually, one or the other could be missing, it wouldn't change much in the Universe or even in our Solar System.
So far, each living thing defined its own place in the Universe.
From the plant evolving to have spikes so it'll live longer to the human trying to colonize the stars... that's why you can't ask what is the point to life... because each living organism have a different purpose. Overall, it's surviving - living as long as possible - being there as long as possible.
Curiously, the rock still wins this contest.
The "point" of anything is simply what it happens, naturally, to do. Living things live; and built into their DNA is an imperative that prescribes a certain life span, at the end of which they must die. So the point of life is both to live and to die.
I meant "based only on observable phenomenon."
(I often get the response that the point of life is to make more life, as in reproduce. In my more whimsical moments I like to think that the point of life it to evolve.)
I would also construe that reality depends on the individual's perspective and perception; and life, being part of that reality, has a similarly independant meaning (or reason) for each individual.
I am John Galt.
Actually, we're not sure why metaphysics is called that, but this is beside the point. As a "purpose" is a non-physical entity, I'm not sure how far you can get with this limitation.
Actually, I've argued this before. If we accept that features of organisms have purposes, some features seem to have to purpose of facilitating evolution. Sex being the prime example.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
None of this is actually a purpose, though. It's simply what life does. That's not the same thing as a purpose.
You say this as though it were obvious.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
To enjoy it.
Really nothing else makes that much sense as pretty much every other answer degrades you to just another human and not an individual, which would completely negate any reason for you being you.
As for you live or die people, while it is the most basic, it isn't really a purpose as so far as it is a state. It is like saying that the purpose of life is to exist, which doesn't make much sense at all, as then the purpose of everything would be to exist, if existance was the ultimate purpose of life. But that's just me and it probably won't make much sense to anybody else.
A better example to illustrate my point is an object whose nature is a little more ambiguous. If I stumbled across an unlabeled and empty writing desk, I might assume that it's the perfect furniture for my valet to serve my food on, everything being so convenient, when such is not its actual purpose.
Or I could assume that the purpose of the appendix is to become inflamed and kill off portions of the population to keep overpopulation in check.
The "point" to a thing, or the "reason" for a thing, implies a final cause - it implies an intention, a rational agent with a certain will, who caused something to be the way that it is for a purpose, specifically for *its* purpose.
So if we're putting aside the existence of a deity, there is no point to "the world" or to "life". Life happens.
You need to change the question. Scientifically (and vastly meta&anthropo -morphically) speaking, life is just better than nonlife when you're some logically possible phenomenon, on the market for strategies for existence. The prevalence of the "life phenomenon" is just what you get from the way the universe self-organizes under evolution.
You insist you want this to be a question about all life, not just Human life. Well, there's not a lot that's special about life, beyond the above. We don't even know if our definition for life is a good natural kind - if you think about it, it's just an ad hoc list of eight properties that together cut out 'animate', 'nonartifact' things on Earth that need to replenish their "battery-life" to maintain their functional organization for the animateness property.
Also, from the philosophy veterans.. what's that thought experiment, with the Chinese teacup? In space? I think it's Putnam's?
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
Then the function of life is to live(which means to grow, and in some cause have sex, and maybe evolve) and then to die.
I do understand now that "point" or "reason" means you more or less have to have a hand to guide it, which was something I eliminated in the OP for this thread.
Also, when I was young (and on Ritilen) I thought humans were a cancer on Earth too, but now I know we are the only living thing capable of getting life off this rock before the sun turns into a red giant and kills us all.(sure we still have 7.5 billion years, but its a hard job. It might take us that long to figure out how to get out of this solar system. Its not easy.)
I am no philosophy veteran, but its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot and I do not think it applies here.
So I do not think its JUST to persist. (or just to live)
Aging is not written into our DNA. There are like a dozen theories about decay-aging, but unanimity in that there's no sign that our body explicitly tries to kill itself over time.
Also, don't equivocate persistence and living. Living things are special in that they are/use complex molecular machines to persist their physical patterns.
It's also useful to recognize that there a ton of layers of abstraction to look at here. A human, for instance, could be considered a well-ordered colony of specially-assigned living things that we happen not to recognize as such with our arbitrary nomenclature.
I am pretty sure its different things that are present in our DNA that causes aging. Whether they are "errors" or part of an useful evolutionary trait, is still up for debate. (If life did not age, it would evolve much slower. The shorter an organisms life span, the faster in evolves.)
I sometimes like to think as all of humanity as a single organism. Just like I am made up of many cells that perform specialized tasks, so is humanity made up of individuals all performing specialized tasks to help the whole. (and both can have some 'cancer cells')
Me: There is no gap between form and function.
You: Yes, there is.
You're sort of begging the question here, don't you think?
Are you sure?
This would mean that a good appendix is one that kills its owner, when we generally believe precisely the opposite to be true.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
An even easier explanation is that a well-balanced error-making program would also facilitate mutation, which is essential to special pattern persistence under changing selective environments.
With that under consideration, I think you'll now agree that my claim of life's function being "persistence" can be valid even if our bodies on this layer of abstraction were programmed to die on their 40th birthdays.
It seems to me that the only reason to have done so, until recently, is based on an assumption that no body part would ever have such a function. Would a person be unreasonable to think that such is its function?
Yeah, but "live" and "living" can have many different overtones and contexts. Like, I agree with you, I just think "persist" is a more succinct way of putting it.
If function/purpose/whatever-this-thread-is-about is connected to form, wouldn't it be more absolute than otherwise?
Given the debate going on about group selection in evolutionary biology, I couldn't say. But the general line since at least Aristotle has been that the purpose of the parts is the good of the whole, a line which Darwin is usually seen to have heavily reinforced. And I do remember reading that the appendix actually has some minor role to play in the digestion of various weird things we don't eat much anymore.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.