Philosophical Speculations

Isn't meaning a nested infinite regress? As in, "what's the meaning of that meaning?" And so on.

Then there isn't an absolute meaning, so to speak, but a web of inter-meanings depending on where we begin (e.g. context). Meaning also has a predicate or object it seems: "What's the meaning to you, to God, to Self, to your loved ones, to nature, etc."

There is also a shifting terrain of meaning-in-the-moment of our conscious everyday awareness: "I am drinking milk because I am thirsty, because of my dietary demands, because of the taste, because of stress, etc." In each occasion, there is a different intention or meaning for the experience; sometimes milk drinking is a pleasure, sometimes a habit; we can imagine many examples.

It seems spirituality or depth psychology might imply a hierarchy of meanings measured by approximation to the concept (whether experience-based or not) of Self (i.e. "what you really are", "in your heart of hearts", etc.). So habitual, everyday thinking of meanings is less meaningful than an ascended one which has attempted to measure with the Self and then returned to everydayness again (e.g. in a Zen sort of way of chopping wood and carrying water). Also, less meaningful than the esoteric mystic perspective which abides in view of the ascended symbolic meanings.

Robert,

Thanks. My anticipation and your subsequent defensiveness have saved some time. I suppose then, as you fall back predictably on that koan, the next question could be framed as : Can one be human and not worship God?

I won't be checking back here for at least 12 hours. If you don't want to play, just tell me and we can leave it at that.

What is the meaning of instrumenting, having means?
What is the meaning of marking?
What is the meaning of aiming?

Where is the point? Everywhere, or just at the end of a line?

With the means of this bow, the arrow it shoots does not hit everywhere. When the arrow flies, the shaft carries the the point of the arrow. The markings of these alphabets end their sentence with point.

ParadoxZone wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:28 am Ashvin,

You'll find it starting at about 20 mins and it's very brief.

Ah ok thanks, I have a much better sense now, and we agree on the most fundamental point - meaning is real and the "will-to-meaning" of Frankl is real. Under idealism, I would say only meaning is real, but we should also work to discover how exactly that fundamental meaning arrives to us. We must reflect on the meaning of Meaning, i.e. think about our Thinking. I take that to be BK's essential criticism in that clip - a psychologist who simply tells someone to go out and "find their own meaning" is not stimulating them to dig deeper into the depths of their soul (psyche) and contemplate how they actually discover that meaning from within their experience. It is only that hard work which allows us to truly take hold of shared meaning and make it our own, so that it motivates us to live our lives according to its noble and virtuous implications.

ParadoxZone
to
Robert,

Thanks. My anticipation and your subsequent defensiveness have saved some time. I suppose then, as you fall back predictably on that koan, the next question could be framed as : Can one be human and not worship God?

I won't be checking back here for at least 12 hours. If you don't want to play, just tell me and we can leave it at that.

Let's play

One can be a bird and yet not fly.
And there are fish that walk on land.

The Koan,
Birds fly, fish swim, humans worship God,

is about the fulfillment of our natures, not the required condition for them.
Can one be human without being fulfilled as a human?

I suspect that our meaning in life is as fundamental as consciousness,
something of which we might be aware, but cannot define.

Perhaps to have no meaning is to have no consciousness, or no life.
I flail.
-
-

My take on this is that if there was no point to existence, MAL would just remain in an inert state. Sure, it my not have been an act of "volition" for it to become the universe instead of remaining pure awareness, but it's probably a law of nature that it did. Now, if there is a law of nature for consciousness, and this law points towards us having this experience that is life, then the meaning of life is to enact these laws.

If meaning of something is translated as "Why does this 'something' even exist?" - I would postulate that this question can not be answered if the answerer is part of that 'something'. The answerer does not have enough context to know. This is different from conclusively saying this 'something' has no meaning.

I can see why such an answer does not satisfy some curious people. They want to 'win' - to solve the 'puzzle'. One day I hope to find a more rigorous defence of the position laid out above. The intuition behind this is - these questions are fundamentally similar

- What is the meaning of life?
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- What happened before the big bang?
- How did I come to be from a sperm and an egg?

These questions are trying to ask about what happened outside a system while observing from inside the same system. These questions can not be answered while you are in the system. You do not have enough context to really know.