Meaning of Life Debate Guide
From PhiloWiki
"What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.
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Meaning of Life from Wikipedia |
Contents |
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Round One: Academic
- How we answer the question "What is the meaning of life?" thus in large part depends on how we answer the question, "What is the meaning of meaning?"
- There are multiple interpretations. Evaluate the scientific views of these five interpretations.
- "What is the origin of life?"
- "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?"
- "What is the significance of life?"
- "What is valuable in life?"
- "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?"
- Compare and contrast the multiple philosophical views toward the meaning of life.
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Scientific views
- There are, however, strictly speaking, no scientific views on the meaning of biological life other than its observable biological function: to continue and to reproduce itself. In this regard, science simply addresses quantitative questions such as: "What does it do?", "By what means?", and "To what extent?", rather than the "For what purpose?".
- But, like philosophy, science tackles each of the five interpretations of the meaning of life question head-on, offering empirical answers from relevant scientific fields.
- Thus, the question "What is the origin of life?" is answered in the sciences in the areas of abiogenesis (for the origins of biological life) and cosmogeny (for the origins of the universe). Both these areas are quite hypothetical, cosmogeny because no existing physical model can accurately describe the very early universe, and abiogeneis because the environment of the young earth is not known, and chemical processes that may have taken billions of years cannot be repeated in the laboratory.
- However, general consensus is that an early protein replicator was formed by the gradual build up of amino acids in the oceans, and then proceeded to dominate the primeval soup, occasionally mutating into a more (or less) successful form. Eventually a primitive cell was formed, and life continued to evolve by the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection. Based on these or similar theories, some philosophers say that because life was entirely coincidental, one cannot expect life to have any meaning at all, other than its own self-perpetuation — reproduction.
- Toward answering "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", scientists have proposed various theories or worldviews over the centuries, including the heliocentric view by Copernicus and Galileo, through the mechanistic clockwork universe of Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton, to Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, to the Quantum Mechanics of Heisenberg and Schrödinger in an effort to understand the universe in which we live. Meanwhile countless scientists in the biological and medical fields have dissected the human body to its very smallest components to acquire an understanding of the nature of biological life, to determine what makes us tick.
- The question "What is the significance of life?" has turned philosophers toward the study of significance itself and how it is derived and presented (see semiotics). The question has also been extensively explored by those who attempt to explain the relationship of life to its environment (the universe), and vice versa. Thus, from a scientific point of view, the significance of life is what it is, what it does, and what mechanisms are behind it. In psychology and biology, it is evident significance only exists within human and animal minds; significance is subjective and is an emotional function of brains, making it impossible to exist outside of people's thoughts and feelings.
- The questions "What is valuable in life?" and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?" are staples of the social sciences. These questions are explored by scientists every day, from the perspective of the life forms being studied, in an effort to explain the behaviors and interactions of human beings (and every other type of animal as well). The study of value has resulted in the fields of Economics and Sociology. The study of motives (which reflect what is valuable to a person) and the perception of value are subjects of the field of Psychology.
- Near the end of the 20th century, biologists started to take on the task of answering the question, "what is the purpose of life?" Equipped with insights from advances in gene-centered view of evolution, biologists can now confidently claim that in so far as there is any purpose to life, it is to perpetuate immortal genes. In the book River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins devoted one chapter to explain the meaning of life in Darwinian context. He named the chapter God's utility function, meaning "that which is maximized by nature", or simply, "the meaning of life".
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Philosophical views
- The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer offered a bleak answer by determining one's life as a reflection of one's will and the will (and thus life) as being an aimless, irrational, and painful drive. However, he saw salvation, deliverance, or escape from suffering in aesthetic contemplation, sympathy for others, and asceticism. Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher of the 19th century, argued that life is full of absurdity and the individual must make his or her own values in an indifferent world. For Kierkegaard, an individual can have a meaningful life (at least one free of despair) if the individual relates the self in an unconditional commitment to something finite, and devotes his or her life to the commitment despite the inherent vulnerability of doing so. This is a similar notion to the Buddhist quest for Nirvana or enlightenment by the betterment of oneself through the aid of others.
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Existentialism from Wikipedia |
- To the humanist, (biological) life's purpose is built-in: it is to reproduce. That is how the human race came to be: creatures reproducing in a progression of unguided evolution as an integral part of nature, which is self-existing. But life's purpose isn't the same thing as human purpose, though it is a factor thereof. Human purpose is determined by humans, completely without supernatural influence. Nor does knowledge come from supernatural sources, it flows from human observation, experimentation, and rational analysis preferably utilizing the scientific method: the nature of the universe is what we discern it to be. As are ethical values, which are derived from human needs and interests as tested by experience.
- Enlightened self-interest is at the core of humanism. The most significant thing in life is the human being, and by extension, the human race and the environment in which we live. The happiness of the individual is inextricably linked to the well-being of humanity as a whole, in part because we are social animals which find meaning in relationships, and because cultural progress benefits everybody who lives in that culture.
- Friedrich Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. The term nihilism itself comes from the Latin nihil, which means "nothing". Nietzsche described Christianity as a nihilistic religion, because it removes meaning from this earthly life, to instead focus on a supposed afterlife. He also saw nihilism as a natural result of the idea that God is dead, and insisted that it was something to be overcome, by returning meaning to the Earth.
- Martin Heidegger described nihilism as the state in which "there is nothing of Being as such", and argued that nihilism rested on the reduction of being to mere value.
- Nihilism rejects claims to knowledge and truth, and explores the meaning of an existence without knowable truth. Though nihilism tends toward defeatism, one can find strength and reason for celebration in the varied and unique human relationships it explores. From a nihilist point of view, the ultimate source of moral values is the individual rather than culture or another rational (or objective) foundation.
- Of the meaning of life, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logical positivists, said: expressed in language, the question is meaningless. This is because "meaning of x" is a term in life usually conveying something regarding the consequences of x, or the significance of x, or that which should be noted regarding x, etc. So when "life" is used as "x" in the term "meaning of x", the statement becomes recursive and therefore nonsensical.
- In other words, things in a person's life can have meaning (importance), but life itself has no meaning apart from those things. In this context, a person's life is said to have meaning (significance to himself and others) in the form of the events throughout his life and the results of his life in terms of achievements, a legacy, family, etc. But to say that life itself has meaning is a misuse of language, since any note of significance or consequence is relevant only in life (to those living it), rendering the statement erroneous. Language can provide a meaningful answer only when it refers to a realm within the realm of life. But this is not possible when the question reaches beyond the realm in which language exists, violating the contextual limitations of language. Such a question is broken. And the answer to a broken question is an erroneous or irrelevant answer.
- Pragmatic philosophers suggest that rather than a truth about life, we should seek a useful understanding of life. William James argued that truth could be made but not sought. Thus, the meaning of life is a belief about the purpose of life that does not contradict one's experience of a purposeful life. Roughly, this could be applied as: "The meaning of life is those purposes which cause you to value it." To a pragmatist, the meaning of life, your life, can be discovered only through experience.
- Pragmatism is a school of philosophy which originated in the United States in the late 1800s. Pragmatism is characterized by the insistence on consequences, utility and practicality as vital components of truth. Pragmatism objects to the view that human concepts and intellect represent reality, and therefore stands in opposition to both formalist and rationalist schools of philosophy. Rather, pragmatism holds that it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories and data acquire significance. Pragmatism does not hold, however, that just anything that is useful or practical should be regarded as true, or anything that helps us to survive merely in the short-term; pragmatists argue that what should be taken as true is that which most contributes to the most human good over the longest course. In practice, this means that for pragmatists, theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices--i.e., that one should be able to make predictions and test them--and that ultimately the needs of humankind should guide the path of human inquiry.
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Pragmatism from Wikipedia |
- Transhumanism is an extension of humanism. Like humanism, it propounds that we should seek the improvement of the human species as a whole. But it goes on to emphasize that we should also actively improve the human body with technology, to overcome all biological limitations such as mortality, physical weakness, limited memory capacity, etc. Initially this meant we should all become cyborgs, but with the advent of bioengineering, other options are opening up. Thus the main goal of transhumanism is the development of man into the posthuman, the successor to Homo sapiens: Homo excelsior. The ideal achievement of this goal would of course be applied to the current population before they suffer the consequences of aging and death.
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Transhumanism from Wikipedia |
- Most people who believe in a personal God would agree that it is God "in whom we live and move and have our being". The notion here is that we respond to a higher authority who will give our lives meaning and provide purpose through a relationship with the divine. Although belief is also based on knowing God "through the things he has made," the decision to believe in such an authority is called the "leap of faith", and to a very large degree this faith defines the faithful's meaning of life...
- An example of how religion creates purpose can be found in the biblical story of creation in the Old Testament of the Bible: the purpose for man comes from his relationship to God and in this relationship he is told to "Be fruitful, and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it" Genesis 1:28. This indicates that subsequent to the goal of being in personal relationship with God, the propagation of the human race, the care and population of the earth, and the control of the earth (but as man sinned, he lost the full ability to do so, characterized by the fact that animals are not under full control) are the first three commandments God has set for man. However, instructions given by God and the meaning of life (or the purpose of one's existence), are not necessarily the same thing.
- The view of mysticism varies widely according to how each speaker describes it. In general the view is broadly that life is a happening, an unfolding. There is no duality, it is a nondual worldview, in which subject and object are the same, the sense of doer-ship is illusionary. This view is central to Buddhism, and is also found in certain non-dual sects of Hinduism. Atheists such as Susan Blackmore and Sam Harris have recently advocated mysticism through rigorous meditation as the only reliable way of attaining sure knowledge of our subjective experience.
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Round Two: Applied
- What is the significance of life?
- What is valuable in life?
- What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?
- Could the meaning of life be grounded in helping the poor? hedonism? self - actualizing your own powers? relationships? religion? patriotism?
- What would it mean if there were no meaning of life?
- How is a life enhanced / harmed by following Socrates dictum to examine your life?
- Are some meanings of life more valuable / better than others? Are some lives less meaningful than others?
- Is the search for the meaning of life born of a fear of death? Is there more to it?
