Seeing the truth is not conductive to survival

[DandelionSoul]

Grasping is what hands do from the purpose of taking something for a want. Hands can also give: a caress, a blessing, a sharing of a touch.

You are very correct! But I think grasping can also be far less one-sided than that. If I grasp my lover's hand and he grasps mine, then who's doing the taking?

[SanteriSatama]

Grasping is what hands do from the purpose of taking something for a want. Hands can also give: a caress, a blessing, a sharing of a touch.

You are very correct! But I think grasping can also be far less one-sided than that. If I grasp my lover's hand and he grasps mine, then who's doing the taking?

Hand extending
to grab the hand
of a drowning man - my want!
Hand extending
to grab you before you fall
reaching in before I fall - my want!

With you, the world is more full.

In the dream I
reached out my hand
towards you - my love!
And in the want
I failed you
who flew from this life.

In the form of a cloud I saw you,
sharing your joy with me.

With you, the world is more full.

[AshvinP]

Yes but you seem to be underplaying the role of reflecting on your desire to write the post before writing it.

This seems to be the heart of the disagreement -- my sense is that reflection need not precede purposeful action. Rather, by the time we reflect on the actions we've taken, we find that we have already been acting with purpose. I want to be clear here, though, and say that I'm not suggesting that reflection can never come first, only that it doesn't have to. There are certainly cases where reflection does, as a matter of fact, arise first, and an action is chosen after reflecting upon it.

I prefer to keep it in the sphere of human activity, because we cannot speak from experience if we are presuming the cognition of a bird or another non-human being.

We can do that, but the difficulty is that this seems to be just the locus of our disagreement: whether purpose presupposes a human being and the distinctly (albeit perhaps not uniquely) human capacity for self-reflection.

So let's shift to an example of someone sleep walking - can we say this person was purposefully making an omelet if he gets up and starts doing it in his sleep? I find that hard to reconcile with a reasonable meaning of "purpose".

I'll bite that bullet -- to me it seems obvious that if someone cooks an omelet, they've done it on purpose. In fact, based on what you've said so far about purpose, that it comes from reversing cause and effect by envisioning the effect and then bringing it about, it seems that an action like making an omelet -- something that requires that sort of prior planning -- fits even by your definition. But I would propose that the person who fell asleep and the person who made the omelet are likely to be, in some relevant sense, different people.

Thank you for the well-structured response! I think we have come across some significant philosophical differences here.

I get what you are saying about presupposing human cognitive capacities, since I am arguing purpose only arises in humans, but still I say it is more useful because we just have zero immediate experience of non-human mental capacity and, as is often the case with pets, people tend to project their own mental processes onto them. Also, I do believe there have existed humans without self-reflective capacity, and I think you agree, so we can focus on the difference between those humans and self-reflective humans re: "purpose".

I don't agree re: sleep walking omelet situation. Even though I just said we should stick with humans, I am going to switch to a robot - I think it illustrates the difference between complex instinctive actions vs. equally complex purposeful intentional actions. The robot, theoretically, can be programmed to make an omelet (not specifically an omelet, but engage in the sort of motor actions which would allow it to cook up some food), but we do not then say it is acting with its own "purpose" or "intention". At best we could say it's designer was acting with that purpose, but even that's a stretch.

I'm also curious, why do you say the person who fell asleep and made the omelet are "different people"?

That is also recognized in our legal systems - hence mens rea or intentionality is required to convict of most crimes, and intoxication, insanity, involuntary movement, etc. can be affirmative defenses to otherwise criminal behavior.

Now we're getting somewhere. I'm no legal expert, but I'll assume that you know what you're talking about here and that the law does work as you say, and I'll go a step further and say that ethics also works like this, that without the capacity for self-reflection, it's a category error to impute ethical meaning to particular actions. And here, I suspect, we may be back on common ground, and from here it may be easier to see the fundamental tension between our positions, which to me seems just to be the question of whether all meaning is necessarily ethical meaning.

(We could also use "moral" if you prefer; while there might be contexts where it's useful to differentiate the two, I don't think this is one of those contexts.)

I completely agree that purpose is not always at odds with instinct, and in fact I think one of the most fundamental human purposes is to bring into alignment their will, desire, feeling, and thoughts via Self-knowledge in its highest sense. For the person acting out of pure instinct, these things are just naturally in alignment due to lack of higher order Thinking. If we associate "purpose" with any such action, then there is no reason to even use the word "purpose" rather than "instinct" or "natural action" or something similar. But maybe I am missing something - do you think it is useful for the word "purpose" to be used in distinction to "instinct" and, if so, why?

Oh, sure. Instincts are just what we don't need to be taught or to learn on our own. I may need to learn what I can and can't eat, and refine my talent for eating without making a mess or risking choking, but that the feeling of hunger is a desire to eat is something I knew long before I knew any of those words. When I set about seeking food, I am acting on instinct, but I am also acting with a purpose: to sate my hunger. Meaning is most basically a connection between a stimulus and a purpose. When I act on my food-seeking instinct for my hunger-sating purpose, the category of food itself becomes meaningful, and things around me become meaningful as "food" or "not-food." This whole process -- desire-lack to purpose to meaning -- can happen whether or not I'm aware of myself as an experiencing "I," which is to say, without self-reflection, and it can happen by instinct or by learning or by a combination of the two.

You'll get no argument from me against the idea that the complex of desires, purposes, and meanings becomes more sophisticated and less connected to the immediate needs of the body the more sophisticated our whole cognitive apparatus becomes. New categories of desire-purpose-meaning (like ethics, as I mentioned) are generated through the course of a greater grip on symbolic thought. We become able to divide the unified world in ever more creative ways. Nevertheless, it seems to me as though that fundamental cluster of experiences is part and parcel with all life, that to be alive is just to experience desire-purpose-meaning, and so I would reiterate to what I said earlier: that in my view, no human was ever born into a world not already shot through with purpose and meaning.

Yes I agree with that. But I say the tool of cause-and-effect relation and "purposeful" action arose at the same time via reflective Thinking which then allows for Memory. They naturally go hand in hand.

Again, I'd put it the other way 'round: memory is necessary for self-reflection to emerge.

Right, so I do think all meaning is "ethical" meaning, since it all has concrete implications for how we should approach the world. And I think that relates to a fundamental tension between us - I am treating "meaning" as universally shared while you seem to be suggesting it is contingent on any given individual's connection between a stimulus and action. So maybe the meaning of making an omelet is fundamentally different for you than it is for me, based on what instincts are motivating each of us. Does that represent your position accurately? I would see the meaning of the activity is fundamentally shared but how we respond after reflecting on it is what differentiates our individual purposes in doing the activity.

In that sense I am also distinguishing meaning from purpose - the former is shot through all experience as you say, but the latter came about only in the self-reflective human for me. If we imagine all experiences existing in a "superposition" in eternal space, then I would say self-reflection is what allows them to be collapsed and ordered in a temporal manner, thereby creating the capacity for recalling "past" experiencing in memory. Memory is fundamentally a tool for reintegration with the Whole of experience. There was a past when this tool did not exist, because actually the Whole was being differentiated into the variety of forms we see today. That is the involution vs. evolution arcs of collective experience. .

[DandelionSoul]

Thank you for the well-structured response! I think we have come across some significant philosophical differences here.

I get what you are saying about presupposing human cognitive capacities, since I am arguing purpose only arises in humans, but still I say it is more useful because we just have zero immediate experience of non-human mental capacity and, as is often the case with pets, people tend to project their own mental processes onto them. Also, I do believe there have existed humans without self-reflective capacity, and I think you agree, so we can focus on the difference between those humans and self-reflective humans re: "purpose".

In fact, I'd say that all humans have existed without self-reflective capacity at one time or another -- that's a capacity that emerges through the course of childhood development. None of us started out thinking about metaphysics. As for animals, I'd say that although we cannot directly experience what it's like to be a bat (with a nod to Nagel), we can approach animal cognition in a careful and systematic way that allows us to explore parallels in brain function and concrete capacities for behavior that can lend a lot of insight to what's going on inside an animal's head, inasmuch as a human's behavior would (hopefully) lend some insight as to what's going on inside their head. To that end, I can cite studies about animal cognition (and even plant cognition) if you'd like. At the very least, it's fascinating reading.

I don't agree re: sleep walking omelet situation. Even though I just said we should stick with humans, I am going to switch to a robot - I think it illustrates the difference between complex instinctive actions vs. equally complex purposeful intentional actions. The robot, theoretically, can be programmed to make an omelet (not specifically an omelet, but engage in the sort of motor actions which would allow it to cook up some food), but we do not then say it is acting with its own "purpose" or "intention". At best we could say it's designer was acting with that purpose, but even that's a stretch.

I think there's a huge difference between a living thing that does something spontaneously out of some desire to do that thing and a robot that's been programmed, and I think someone who is dreaming of wanting an omelet is the first and not the second. A machine has no desires at all, so far as we know, so the whole complex of desire-meaning-purpose would obtain at the level of the designer or user of the machine, not the machine itself. I don't cease to be a living thing when I'm dreaming.

I'm also curious, why do you say the person who fell asleep and made the omelet are "different people"?

Because a sleepwalker is dreaming, and I find that when I am dreaming, the person I'm dreaming of being is, to some degree, not the person I am when I'm awake. We have different memories, different impulses, different fears, different likes and dislikes. If I were sleepwalking while dreaming of being one of my dreamed egos, the person driving the body would not be the same person who drives the body when I'm awake. It's a little like switching between alters in a case of DID.

(I'm using language that suggests a mind-body dualism. That's a matter of convenience trusting that you'll know what I mean, but I know neither of us believes in Cartesian dualism in any literal sense.)

Right, so I do think all meaning is "ethical" meaning, since it all has concrete implications for how we should approach the world. And I think that relates to a fundamental tension between us - I am treating "meaning" as universally shared while you seem to be suggesting it is contingent on any given individual's connection between a stimulus and action. So maybe the meaning of making an omelet is fundamentally different for you than it is for me, based on what instincts are motivating each of us. Does that represent your position accurately? I would see the meaning of the activity is fundamentally shared but how we respond after reflecting on it is what differentiates our individual purposes in doing the activity.

I'm not following here. Can you elaborate on what you mean (heh) by positing meaning as "universally shared"? It seems obvious to me that a common event can mean something very different to two localized perspectives.

In that sense I am also distinguishing meaning from purpose - the former is shot through all experience as you say, but the latter came about only in the self-reflective human for me. If we imagine all experiences existing in a "superposition" in eternal space, then I would say self-reflection is what allows them to be collapsed and ordered in a temporal manner, thereby creating the capacity for recalling "past" experiencing in memory. Memory is fundamentally a tool for reintegration with the Whole of experience. There was a past when this tool did not exist, because actually the Whole was being differentiated into the variety of forms we see today. That is the involution vs. evolution arcs of collective experience. .

And here I'd reverse the order, but unfortunately I have to get to work so I don't have time to elaborate upon that right now.

Thank you for this conversation! I'm really enjoying it. ^_^

[AshvinP]

Thank you for the well-structured response! I think we have come across some significant philosophical differences here.

I get what you are saying about presupposing human cognitive capacities, since I am arguing purpose only arises in humans, but still I say it is more useful because we just have zero immediate experience of non-human mental capacity and, as is often the case with pets, people tend to project their own mental processes onto them. Also, I do believe there have existed humans without self-reflective capacity, and I think you agree, so we can focus on the difference between those humans and self-reflective humans re: "purpose".

In fact, I'd say that all humans have existed without self-reflective capacity at one time or another -- that's a capacity that emerges through the course of childhood development. None of us started out thinking about metaphysics. As for animals, I'd say that although we cannot directly experience what it's like to be a bat (with a nod to Nagel), we can approach animal cognition in a careful and systematic way that allows us to explore parallels in brain function and concrete capacities for behavior that can lend a lot of insight to what's going on inside an animal's head, inasmuch as a human's behavior would (hopefully) lend some insight as to what's going on inside their head. To that end, I can cite studies about animal cognition (and even plant cognition) if you'd like. At the very least, it's fascinating reading.

Yes definitely! We are non-reflective in our early infancy and our thinking metamorphoses to self-reflective later (perhaps after "object permanence" develops - which is also when faculty of memory develops). So, does the early infant act with purpose or intention? I don't think so, and another one of those affirmative defenses to otherwise criminal behavior is "infancy", although many jurisdictions in U.S. actually extend that up to about 7 years of age, which is obviously past the point of basic self-reflective thinking.

re: non-human animals - I agree that many of them have advanced cognition, but I am just saying it's easier to stay within the perspective we have immediate experience of. And now we can compare infants to adults in addition to archaic man and modern man!

I don't agree re: sleep walking omelet situation. Even though I just said we should stick with humans, I am going to switch to a robot - I think it illustrates the difference between complex instinctive actions vs. equally complex purposeful intentional actions. The robot, theoretically, can be programmed to make an omelet (not specifically an omelet, but engage in the sort of motor actions which would allow it to cook up some food), but we do not then say it is acting with its own "purpose" or "intention". At best we could say it's designer was acting with that purpose, but even that's a stretch.

I think there's a huge difference between a living thing that does something spontaneously out of some desire to do that thing and a robot that's been programmed, and I think someone who is dreaming of wanting an omelet is the first and not the second. A machine has no desires at all, so far as we know, so the whole complex of desire-meaning-purpose would obtain at the level of the designer or user of the machine, not the machine itself. I don't cease to be a living thing when I'm dreaming.

There are many metaphysical issues tangled up in this point, but I would offer first that I do not hold anything in Reality to be "non-living". That conclusion can be rooted in empirical observation, but also I think setting up dualism of "living" vs. "non-living" is very problematic philosophically. Of course, that does not mean everything we see with physical boundaries and which appears as an "object" to our senses is alive, it just means the living beings responsible for those appearances are non-physical and go well beyond what most people can observe now.

The other issue is this nexus between inner desire and instinct. I agree machines do not have any inner desire or living instinct, but it seems to me your view would leave that as a likely possibility, since you infer inner desire and "purpose" of animals from their instinctual behavior. So I think the assertion that machines "has no desires at all", even as far as we know, is problematic under your view. How can we say the programmed machine has no purpose-intention and the crocodile does, when both behave very predictably and out of "instinct" (programmed by another person or by Nature-God)?

I'm also curious, why do you say the person who fell asleep and made the omelet are "different people"?

Because a sleepwalker is dreaming, and I find that when I am dreaming, the person I'm dreaming of being is, to some degree, not the person I am when I'm awake. We have different memories, different impulses, different fears, different likes and dislikes. If I were sleepwalking while dreaming of being one of my dreamed egos, the person driving the body would not be the same person who drives the body when I'm awake. It's a little like switching between alters in a case of DID.

(I'm using language that suggests a mind-body dualism. That's a matter of convenience trusting that you'll know what I mean, but I know neither of us believes in Cartesian dualism in any literal sense.)

I see what you are saying. I don't know if this distinction is relevant at all, but I would just say we remain the same person in essence when dreaming and our mode of consciousness and our perspective changes, giving us access to experience we do not have access to during waking consciousness. There is definitely a sense in which our "I" has been dislodged from the person who is dreaming, though.

Right, so I do think all meaning is "ethical" meaning, since it all has concrete implications for how we should approach the world. And I think that relates to a fundamental tension between us - I am treating "meaning" as universally shared while you seem to be suggesting it is contingent on any given individual's connection between a stimulus and action. So maybe the meaning of making an omelet is fundamentally different for you than it is for me, based on what instincts are motivating each of us. Does that represent your position accurately? I would see the meaning of the activity is fundamentally shared but how we respond after reflecting on it is what differentiates our individual purposes in doing the activity.

I'm not following here. Can you elaborate on what you mean (heh) by positing meaning as "universally shared"? It seems obvious to me that a common event can mean something very different to two localized perspectives.

In that sense I am also distinguishing meaning from purpose - the former is shot through all experience as you say, but the latter came about only in the self-reflective human for me. If we imagine all experiences existing in a "superposition" in eternal space, then I would say self-reflection is what allows them to be collapsed and ordered in a temporal manner, thereby creating the capacity for recalling "past" experiencing in memory. Memory is fundamentally a tool for reintegration with the Whole of experience. There was a past when this tool did not exist, because actually the Whole was being differentiated into the variety of forms we see today. That is the involution vs. evolution arcs of collective experience. .

And here I'd reverse the order, but unfortunately I have to get to work so I don't have time to elaborate upon that right now.

Thank you for this conversation! I'm really enjoying it. ^_^

Under idealism, especially of the Western variety, ideational activity and meaning are fundamental. The very essence of the Cosmos is meaning. Our perspective on that meaning is certainly different and becomes even more different when abstract intellect is involved without any higher cognition, but that is our shortcoming and not that of the Cosmos. There is no such thing as my meaning of any given phenomenon and your meaning of that same phenomenon in essence. If we consider how it is possible for us to communicate so well and empathize with what others may be experiencing, and we acknowledge it is truly possible, then I think we are pretty much forced to this conclusion of "shared meaning". It is also roots our ability to truly integrate our conscious perspectives with others in the spiritual evolutionary process.

By "reverse the order", I assume you mean that purpose comes before meaning. I think maybe I am starting to see where we are truly diverging here. It seems like you are holding to an "instinctive MAL" view (similar to BK) where humans are merely advanced instinctual animals and our self-reflective capacity does not raise us qualitatively beyond the level of animal. It does not add any meaning or purpose which was not already there in Nature before it became self-reflective through us (or other animals before us). If that is accurate summary of your position, then we have a pretty significant disagreement. Not only do I hold that "purpose" only becomes meaningful concept once there is self-reflective thinking, but also that such thinking adds an even deeper 'dimension' to meaning, which, for lack of time and better words, I will for now call, "the meaning of knowing meaning" (also referred to as "awakening" of the Divine in spiritual traditions).

[DandelionSoul]

Yes definitely! We are non-reflective in our early infancy and our thinking metamorphoses to self-reflective later (perhaps after "object permanence" develops - which is also when faculty of memory develops).

I would suggest that memory emerges before object permanence and grounds object permanence. It's like this: a baby acts as though an object that's no longer directly in view no longer exists, so the object is impermanent. But the interesting thing is, it's also not forgotten. In fact, the disappearance of the object can be extremely distressing to the infant precisely because the infant knows what they've lost. It's only by remembering the pattern of things disappearing and then returning that the infant begins to understand that things don't stop existing when they disappear from sight.

So, does the early infant act with purpose or intention? I don't think so, and another one of those affirmative defenses to otherwise criminal behavior is "infancy", although many jurisdictions in U.S. actually extend that up to about 7 years of age, which is obviously past the point of basic self-reflective thinking.

An infant absolutely does act with intention and purpose, just not with comprehension. Infants are curious little things, and given the opportunity, they will act to satisfy their own curiosity -- how does this taste or how does that feel? Experimenting with their environment is a behavior we even see in utero. They scream or cry when they need to be fed or changed, and they can even be taught sign language to express clearly what they need from much earlier on than they can express it verbally. Very young children are constantly testing out the limitations of their bodies -- an infant will start crawling quite on their own as soon as they can coordinate their limbs well enough to do so. But it's that lack of comprehension, I think, that makes it useful to differentiate meaning and purpose broadly from specifically ethical (or legal) meaning.

re: non-human animals - I agree that many of them have advanced cognition, but I am just saying it's easier to stay within the perspective we have immediate experience of. And now we can compare infants to adults in addition to archaic man and modern man!

Unfortunately, I have no memory of being an infant, and I'll never been an archaic human, so other than the fact that both of those creatures share a similar body composition, I seem rather stuck in the same place that I am with animals: I have to look at their behaviors and see what I can glean from them.

There are many metaphysical issues tangled up in this point, but I would offer first that I do not hold anything in Reality to be "non-living". That conclusion can be rooted in empirical observation, but also I think setting up dualism of "living" vs. "non-living" is very problematic philosophically. Of course, that does not mean everything we see with physical boundaries and which appears as an "object" to our senses is alive, it just means the living beings responsible for those appearances are non-physical and go well beyond what most people can observe now.

I don't think we disagree here. We can regard the fundamental reality as alive without regarding everything we see as having its own subjective center. I think we agree (based on the next snippet) that robots don't have their own subjective center in the same way that a human or even a cat does. Whether a robot with that internal sense of selfhood is even, in principle, possible is a conversation for another night, but I feel safe in saying that a robot programmed to make omelets can easily be conceptualized as not having anything of the sort. To draw on Sartre's language, the robot is "in itself," not "for itself." When I distinguish between the living and the nonliving, that "in itself/for itself" dichotomy is what I'm driving at, and that language might work better.

The other issue is this nexus between inner desire and instinct. I agree machines do not have any inner desire or living instinct, but it seems to me your view would leave that as a likely possibility, since you infer inner desire and "purpose" of animals from their instinctual behavior. So I think the assertion that machines "has no desires at all", even as far as we know, is problematic under your view. How can we say the programmed machine has no purpose-intention and the crocodile does, when both behave very predictably and out of "instinct" (programmed by another person or by Nature-God)?

I will answer that, but before I do, I'd like to turn the difficulty around: do you believe that animals feel anything at all, that they feel hunger or thirst or fear? It seems if you agree that machines have no inner desire, and if you believe that instincts are indistinguishable from a machine's programming, then you'd have to say "no" to that question. If you're inclined to say that yes, they do, then... why? Where do you ground the distinction between an animal and a machine? You have not committed to holding that any nonhuman animal can feel anything, at least that I recall, so simply saying "No, no animal feels anything" is a bullet your view seems to allow you to bite, but if you don't, then you yourself must make that distinction in some way or another.

Now for my answer. Fundamentally, it comes back to "in itself" versus "for itself." Something built with a preconception of what it's to be and what it's to do, something whose essence precedes its existence, is "in itself." Something that emerges spontaneously, a self-organized locus of conatus, is "for itself." The latter will necessarily exist, from its own perspective, as where the world appears, and the world will be made of relevance to its own self-motivated conative purposes. That self-organized, self-motivated conatus is the essence of desire, and with it comes the capacity to suffer. The Omeletron does not actually desire to make omelets -- it doesn't suffer when it's not making omelets. Making omelets has no relevance to it. It's an expression of someone else's desire for omelets. It isn't self-organized or self-motivated.

I see what you are saying. I don't know if this distinction is relevant at all, but I would just say we remain the same person in essence when dreaming and our mode of consciousness and our perspective changes, giving us access to experience we do not have access to during waking consciousness. There is definitely a sense in which our "I" has been dislodged from the person who is dreaming, though.

I think the one who makes the omelet and the one who went to sleep are the same being but not the same person, where "person" means something somewhat more specific: I'm using it here in the sense of an ego-self, a mask made of bundles of experience that are radically different in dreams. If our sleepwalker wakes up and finds that, while sleeping, she has apparently made an omelet, she will simultaneously have the thought, "Oh, I must've been sleepwalking and made an omelet" and also the sense that she did not, in fact, make an omelet, as though her body were haunted at that time by the omelet maker. For legal purposes, we generally do not hold our sleepwalker responsible for the omelet-maker's actions (say, if she had sleepwalked to a neighbor's house, broken in, and made the omelet in their kitchen).

Under idealism, especially of the Western variety, ideational activity and meaning are fundamental. The very essence of the Cosmos is meaning. Our perspective on that meaning is certainly different and becomes even more different when abstract intellect is involved without any higher cognition, but that is our shortcoming and not that of the Cosmos. There is no such thing as my meaning of any given phenomenon and your meaning of that same phenomenon in essence. If we consider how it is possible for us to communicate so well and empathize with what others may be experiencing, and we acknowledge it is truly possible, then I think we are pretty much forced to this conclusion of "shared meaning". It is also roots our ability to truly integrate our conscious perspectives with others in the spiritual evolutionary process.

Fundamentally, I don't accept the idea of a singular all-encompassing perspective from which the play of meaning-making is concluded and to which meaning is fully and finally disclosed, so if that's the sort of thing you're proposing, we may have stumbled upon a big disagreement. For me, meaning is always created, negotiated, and renegotiated subjectively and intersubjectively, and there is no Greatest Subject who gets the final say, and there never will be.

By "reverse the order", I assume you mean that purpose comes before meaning.

I'd affirm that purpose comes before meaning, sure, but what I actually meant to reverse was the relationship between self-reflection and memory. I think self-reflection emerges from memory, and not memory from self-reflection.

I think maybe I am starting to see where we are truly diverging here. It seems like you are holding to an "instinctive MAL" view (similar to BK) where humans are merely advanced instinctual animals and our self-reflective capacity does not raise us qualitatively beyond the level of animal.

I'm not sure that's quite accurate about me or Kastrup. Kastrup's view suggests a kind of transcendental attractor guiding the "blind" impulses of Will, an eternal Telos realized in time that acts as the condition under which the unreflective Will moves at all. Humans are unique in our ability to grasp that Telos, to understand the workings of Will, to grasp the eternal Ideas, and that very ability was the thing Will was striving for the whole time:

To put it more directly, the metaphysical meaning of human life is to achieve meta-conscious awareness of the dynamics of the will. Through introspection we can meta-cognize it as it manifests within ourselves, and through contemplation of the eternal Ideas we can meta-cognize it as it manifests in the world beyond ourselves, both organic and inorganic realms. The metaphysical meaning of all non-human life, in turn, is to enable the realization of the meaning of human life.

But I disagree. That's to posit a "why" for the whole thing, a Big Reason behind all this -- ultimately, it's to posit a final disclosure of meaning.

It does not add any meaning or purpose which was not already there in Nature before it became self-reflective through us (or other animals before us). If that is accurate summary of your position, then we have a pretty significant disagreement.

It isn't, but let's not let that stop us from disagreeing. I think self-reflection generates many meanings and purposes that were not already present, but no Meaning or Purpose.

Not only do I hold that "purpose" only becomes meaningful concept once there is self-reflective thinking, but also that such thinking adds an even deeper 'dimension' to meaning, which, for lack of time and better words, I will for now call, "the meaning of knowing meaning" (also referred to as "awakening" of the Divine in spiritual traditions).

Here I think we might have disagreed to such an extent that we've come around to an odd sort of agreement: we agree that self-reflection enables the meaning of knowing meaning, just not on what it means to know meaning.

[SanteriSatama]

It seems obvious to me that a common event can mean something very different to two localized perspectives.

Deciding perspectival commonality of an event/expression appears often formally undecidable in the current stage of evolution of mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_prob ... thematics)

For example, reading from left to right the expression "<" can be read as "increases", reading from right to left "sesaerced". Event becomes more perspectivally common by concatenating the expressions/operators < and > into palindromes: <>, >< etc.

[DandelionSoul]

It seems obvious to me that a common event can mean something very different to two localized perspectives.

Deciding perspectival commonality of an event/expression appears often formally undecidable in the current stage of evolution of mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_prob ... thematics)

For example, reading from left to right the expression "<" can be read as "increases", reading from right to left "sesaerced". Event becomes more perspectivally common by concatenating the expressions/operators < and > into palindromes: <>, >< etc.

I tried to read the Wiki article, but once again my knowledge of math has been judged and found wanting.

[SanteriSatama]

In that sense I am also distinguishing meaning from purpose - the former is shot through all experience as you say, but the latter came about only in the self-reflective human for me. If we imagine all experiences existing in a "superposition" in eternal space, then I would say self-reflection is what allows them to be collapsed and ordered in a temporal manner, thereby creating the capacity for recalling "past" experiencing in memory.

To stay in the process of Thinking, instead of taking leaps of faith, we can't postulate independently and eternally existing superposition of all experiences.

Superposition, of more generally 'potential', is by it's origin a relational temporal relation-difference of non-being (read Sophist by Plato!!!) , not an absolute existence postulated by an arbitrary axiom "there exists x" (Hilbert is deeply dishonest and wrong with that tool of logicism). Empirically, potential is projectively created by self-reflection of an actual duration. The dichotomy of actual vs potential is relational, it appears and disappears like dichotomy subject-object. There is so far no careful and honest Thinking that can prove and demonstrate beyond any doubt that actual experiencing is dependent from absolute potential, a "world of all possible worlds". Gödel's proof demonstrates the logical impossibility of "world of possible worlds" as a logically coherent and complete "ground".

Let's be careful with the wily verb "is"!!! E-prime is a great tool for learning to think better, more skillfully, and to avoid obvious traps which our collective and cumulative Thinking have already cleared. To ignore Gödel is not skillful thinking, and to steelman and overcome Gödel's argument, if possible, would require very careful and skillful creative thinking.

Gödel's proof concerns self-reflection, and in that aspect expressis verbis denies the kind of ontological self-reflection suggested above. On the other hand there's no convincing argument against view that reflection can act as a purely dynamic and relational mechanism, which can generate possible worlds of experience. But not the complete totality of all possibilities, as reflection is just a generative algorithm among others.

[DandelionSoul]

To stay in the process of Thinking, instead of taking leaps of faith, we can't postulate independently and eternally existing superposition of all experiences.

Superposition, of more generally 'potential', is by it's origin a relational temporal relation-difference of non-being (read Sophist by Plato!!!) , not an absolute existence postulated by an arbitrary axiom "there exists x" (Hilbert is deeply dishonest and wrong with that tool of logicism). Empirically, potential is projectively created by self-reflection of an actual duration. The dichotomy of actual vs potential is relational, it appears and disappears like dichotomy subject-object. There is so far no careful and honest Thinking that can prove and demonstrate beyond any doubt that actual experiencing is dependent from absolute potential, a "world of all possible worlds". Gödel's proof demonstrates the logical impossibility of "world of possible worlds" as a logically coherent and complete "ground".

Let's be careful with the wily verb "is"!!! E-prime is a great tool for learning to think better, more skillfully, and to avoid obvious traps which our collective and cumulative Thinking have already cleared. To ignore Gödel is not skillful thinking, and to steelman and overcome Gödel's argument, if possible, would require very careful and skillful creative thinking.

Gödel's proof concerns self-reflection, and in that aspect expressis verbis denies the kind of ontological self-reflection suggested above. On the other hand there's no convincing argument against view that reflection can act as a purely dynamic and relational mechanism, which can generate possible worlds of experience. But not the complete totality of all possibilities, as reflection is just a generative algorithm among others.

Oh! I followed this one with minimal Googling, and I agree. I don't think there's any sense in talking about eternal, absolute potential or an infinite superposition which is, by means of self-reflection, collapsed into actualized experiences. That seems to me a combination of words that just doesn't mean anything, which was the issue I ran into in the other thread talking about Kastrup's comments on Rovelli.