Purpose of Life

[Dglgmut]

Now that I have been exposed to some Objectivist philosophy, and thought a lot for myself, I think our purpose in life ought to be our work. I think we should have a sense of duty, and that duty should be to our values.

I think that is the only purpose we can make for ourselves.

We owe it to our existence to act, and to be what we are capable of being. Experience should be our guide, not our goal.

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is a set of purposes:

Get fed, get laid and avoid pain.

Next question?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dglgmut]

I think our ability to expend effort is the real blessing. I say expend though there is no real bottom to our "pool" of willpower or whatever you want to call it. In fact, the more challenging our circumstances, the more effort is demanded of us.

Consciousness is largely the use of force... Thought, movement, it takes a conscious force to happen.

You can say it's all just chemical reactions, but that is creating a partition between reality and consciousness that isn't necessary. What's the difference between the chemical reactions occurring in our brains vs any other kind? We have a first hand perspective of consciousness, and so we assume there is a difference, but I think it's all connected.

I mean, we can experience different levels of awareness... Take morphine as an example... Just because you don't have the same grasp of reality that you usually would doesn't mean that it's not you, right?

If we lost our most fundamental capacity of memory, and we could be aware of nothing but our experience in the present moment, well, that wouldn't compare at all to the awareness we are familiar with. So why do we assume there is a clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness? Why isn't it all just existence?

[PDS]

Here is a set of purposes:

Get fed, get laid and avoid pain.

Next question?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thanks a lot Bob. If I ever decide to become an amoeba, I will keep your advice close at hand.

[caroljane]

Here is a set of purposes:

Get fed, get laid and avoid pain.

Next question?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thanks a lot Bob. If I ever decide to become an amoeba, I will keep your advice close at hand.

Since I have yet to find a good answer for Why Does Existence Exist Anyway? Why is there Something instead of Nothing?,I will have to go with Ba'al on this one, striving on a good day for two out of three. And that ain't bad.

Carol

Protozoan.

[PDS]

Here is a set of purposes:

Get fed, get laid and avoid pain.

Next question?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thanks a lot Bob. If I ever decide to become an amoeba, I will keep your advice close at hand.

Since I have yet to find a good answer for Why Does Existence Exist Anyway? Why is there Something instead of Nothing?,I will have to go with Ba'al on this one, striving on a good day for two out of three. And that ain't bad.

Carol

Protozoan.

The fact that existence exists should trouble you in the least. If it didn't, you wouldn't be asking the question.

Asking why there is something instead of nothing, while an interesting exercise, is like asking why Toronto Maples Leafs--notwithstanding many decades of unwarranted swagger and unmerited adulation from a heartbroken nation--struggle to ever defeat the Detroit Red Wings.

Some things just "are", and the rest is dirty dancing, dear Daunce.

[Dglgmut]

Some things just "are", and the rest is dirty dancing, dear Daunce.

Actually, all things just "are".

Existence needs no justification. Actually, it doesn't need anything. Isn't it that simple?

[caroljane]

"Asking why there is something instead of nothing, while an interesting exercise, is like asking why Toronto Maples Leafs--notwithstanding many decades of unwarranted swagger and unmerited adulation from a heartbroken nation--struggle to ever defeat the Detroit Red Wings."

Oh, what's the use. I am trying to divert my mind from the crucial essential cosmic issues of life, with trivia about the meaning of existence, but it's not working - back to what's really important:

If we don't beat the Red Things, we might not make the p-p-p can't say it. I don't mean Detroit either.

God, this universe is heavy

Atlas

[Selene]

"Asking why there is something instead of nothing, while an interesting exercise, is like asking why Toronto Maples Leafs--notwithstanding many decades of unwarranted swagger and unmerited adulation from a heartbroken nation--struggle to ever defeat the Detroit Red Wings."

Oh, what's the use. I am trying to divert my mind from the crucial essential cosmic issues of life, with trivia about the meaning of existence, but it's not working - back to what's really important:

If we don't beat the Red Things, we might not make the p-p-p can't say it. I don't mean Detroit either.

God, this universe is heavy

Atlas

Just shrug...

Isn't it unusual and contrary to the normal cycle of life for the Maple Trees to wilt and lose Leafs in the Spring...I mean I'm just saying...

[caroljane]

Cute as all get out, Adam.

I have given in and masochistically turned on the Game Day show, to be reminded that tonight we face the best power play team around (Canucks) whereas we are, you know, not exactly the best at killing penalties. You are all smart people here, any ideas what they should try? All I could think of was, DON'T GET ANY PENALTIES.

[Selene]

Cute as all get out, Adam.

I have given in and masochistically turned on the Game Day show, to be reminded that tonight we face the best power play team around (Canucks) whereas we are, you know, not exactly the best at killing penalties. You are all smart people here, any ideas what they should try? All I could think of was, DON'T GET ANY PENALTIES.

Hold the refs families/mistresses/boyfriends/farm animals/all of the above hostage until after the game?

[caroljane]

Cute as all get out, Adam.

I have given in and masochistically turned on the Game Day show, to be reminded that tonight we face the best power play team around (Canucks) whereas we are, you know, not exactly the best at killing penalties. You are all smart people here, any ideas what they should try? All I could think of was, DON'T GET ANY PENALTIES.

Hold the refs families/mistresses/boyfriends/farm animals/all of the above hostage until after the game?

That was tried once, but the goat chewed through the hostage room wall and got into the press box, where he bleated out the whole story. And Toronto lost on a shootout anyway.

[caroljane]

There are reports that they are thinking of abandoning the tactic "Just ignore that extra forward and he'll go away", which has not been working too well.

[Guyau]

Calvin,

What did you mean in #1 when you said "Experience should be our guide, not our goal"? The first part is clear and surely true, but I was unsure what you meant by saying that experience should not be our goal.

I thought perhaps you meant that life, our human living existence with productive purposefulness as its central organizing principle, should be our goal. That would seem right. However, I think it would go too far to say that that goal was separable from the desire for further experience, I mean for the enjoyment that is experience. Perhaps you meant only that experience unconnected to and not coordinated with intelligent efficacious pursuit of life in the world should not be one's goal.

Stephen

[Dglgmut]

I was trying to understand the figure of speech "too dumb to get out of the rain." If people like the rain, why shouldn't they stay in it? And what about skydiving, or other forms of exhilarating experiences people make goals out of?

If self-improvement is not the reason for experiencing something, then it isn't a rational goal, I don't think. And as far as experience connected to improving ones own life... I think that's knowledge, not so much experience. We don't experience pride the way we would experience falling through the air.

But, just to make it clear, I don't think something like skydiving is necessarily irrational. Again, it's all about self-improvement, or in this case, perhaps a test. BUT if someone were to make a list of things to experience before they die... there is no reason for it... they want to experience and then take that experience to the grave. Pointless.

edit: Nature would normally take care of our purpose for us... survivol. Because of evolution, survivol is not enough anymore; we have too much extra time on our hands. We are meant to be challenged... but the challenge is not enough anymore. Not that many individuals are capable of taking care of themselves on their own, but their situation is such that they don't have to do much in order to survive.

Even more simply, our purpose is to be challenged, however, we now have the responsibility of challenging ourselves. Willpower is our greatest possession.

[Guyau]

I was trying to understand the figure of speech "too dumb to get out of the rain." If people like the rain, why shouldn't they stay in it? And what about skydiving, or other forms of exhilarating experiences people make goals out of?

If self-improvement is not the reason for experiencing something, than it isn't a rational goal, I don't think. And as far as experience connected to improving ones own life... I think that's knowledge, not so much experience. We don't experience pride the way we would experience falling through the air.

But, just to make it clear, I don't think something like skydiving is necessarily irrational. Again, it's all about self-improvement, or in this case, perhaps a test. BUT if someone were to make a list of things to experience before they die... there is no reason for it... they want to experience and then take that experience to the grave. Pointless.

. . .

Thanks for your amplification. You are using experience more narrowly than I was assuming in my own usage in #14. I was thinking of it as when we say conscious experience, which would include thinking, learning, and working, in addition to emotional experience or sensory perception.

In that wider sense of experience, it is an enjoyment itself to have experience and one of the commonly cited reasons for why the end of life is to be avoided: because then one would have no more experience. It’s been good to be, to be with experiences, to be a human alive having more and more experience.

I’ve had trouble seeing full coherence to the idea of a list of things to experience before dying, even when the list is of things for which there is systematic reason in making a living and a life. Take the whole experience of accomplishment, I mean both the struggle and the winning of it. If I say “here is a list of things I’d like to accomplish in my life,” I will see the items as having a point only if it is an organically interlinked “list” which is a breathing document with a breathing subject (me). It wouldn’t make full sense for me to think “this is a list of accomplishments I’d like to take with me to the grave.” My mention of taking it to the grave, like putting it into my briefcase, seems to spoil the allure and weight of the accomplishments.

I don’t mean to deny sense to the idea that one’s life with meaningful accomplishments can be a meaningful thing beyond one’s own life. For one thing, it might have meaning, for a few or several decades, to others still living who knew one. For another, even without any consciousness (human or divine) of the life one had and the accomplishments by which one composed that life, it was an actual occasion, and remains a real past, holding meaningfulness for intelligent meaning-seeking beings to apprehend were there such beings lighting up the universe.

[Dglgmut]

When I use the term "experience", I am breaking conscious down to two basic elements: sending and receiving. Experience, as I use the word, is every part of the receiving.

An accomplishment cannot fit into an experience; it has to do with truth and reality. An accomplishment is a testament to one's ability, and the experience alone cannot be the goal. We wouldn't choose to be lied to about ourselves; that defeats the curiosity. Experience of desired self-knowledge is satisfying, but only if we believe it... we have to attain it honestly, which can only be through effort.

I've looked at the meaning of "purpose" before and there seems to be a split where interpretation can go either way. Purpose can either be interpreted as an intended function or as a resultant function.

For example, we can sum up the purpose of a door however we want, but if we build a door, and it isn't the right size for the doorway... what is that door's purpose? It doesn't work as intended, but it does do something. This dual meaning must assume conscious design--for humans, perhaps God. But what are we before we act? Our intended function could be as simple as to produce fertilizer and keep the population of certain species down (leaving out reproduction because that would be a circular purpose), but we do so much more. Was there a mistake made? Are we too smart for our own good?

Conscious design doesn't have to pertain to our biology, though... Our actions define us, in many ways, more than our physicality and our instinctual tendencies (always in respect to those two, though), and we are the ones who put the intention behind our actions. For example, we often intend to act in order to attain a desired experience. Our intended purpose becomes the experience, but our resultant purpose becomes the act of pursuing the experience.

Knowledge of our resultant purpose, when chasing experience, is totally unsatisfying. This is why addicts are in such serious denial. Intention and result must be aligned for us to be truly happy with ourselves.

The issue that arises here is, "What should I intend to become?" I think the answer is to try to impress yourself. What's the point of anything that impresses you? The point is besides the point, isn't it? It's not "why" something is, but "that" it is, which amazes us.

[Xray]

Now that I have been exposed to some Objectivist philosophy, and thought a lot for myself, I think our purpose in life ought to be our work. I think we should have a sense of duty, and that duty should be to our values.

Question for clarificaton: have you distilled from the Objectivist philosophy that one should have a sense of duty?

[Dglgmut]

"Sense of duty" as it is used by Objectivists seems to pertain to peer-pressure more than anything else. I believe this "sense of duty" is instinctual; the need to fit in. It used to be for survival purposes, but now it is useless.

[Xray]

"Sense of duty" as it is used by Objectivists seems to pertain to peer-pressure more than anything else. I believe this "sense of duty" is instinctual; the need to fit in. It used to be for survival purposes, but now it is useless.

Duty is a reality of life we are immersed in. In many cases, it is also quite a sensible concept. Imagine a world where no duties existed. Before long, we would probably all have fallen back to a stage of everyone fighting against everyone

Don't get me wrong: I'm not singing the praise of duty above all else, like deontologists who hold that an action is ethical only if performed out of duty. An absurd idea.

But the contrary Objectivist position which thinks of acts performed only out of duty as "evil" is also problematic.

Frankly, who of us hasn't performed acts with 'gritted teeth' because we had to do them (or felt we had to do them), but after the task was finally completed, felt better about themselves? I sure have.

The Objectivist principle of contextuality is not only an excellent concept in theory. One can effectively apply it in practice as well.

So why not extend the important principle of contextuality which applies to values ("Value to whom and for what purpose?") to "duty" as well?

Thus, instead of either condemning or praising duty as such (which would actually be a case of intrinsicism), why not contextually ask instead: "Duty to whom and for what purpose?"

That way, one would get a precise picture of the duty in question, which then can be tested for its validity/soundness.

[Dglgmut]

I think the question that I am focused on most is: Why do we assume there is a clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness? Why isn't it all just existence?

[anthony]

I think the question that I am focused on most is: Why do we assume there is a clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness? Why isn't it all just existence?

It is. Consciousness is an existent. These are two disconnected questions, though.

Objectivists don't speak of "unconsciousness" at all - I suppose unconsciousness is sleep, coma, death.

If you asked if there were a clear line between consciousness and SUBconsciousness, that would be valid.

[Dglgmut]

What I mean is, if everything has some level of awareness, but no capacity for memory, it would be unconscious.

I think there are degrees of consciousness that come from memory created on a chemical level (which isn't any different from us, we just have a ton of it)...

Memory and intelligence are the same thing...

2 + 2 = 4, because I can remember the previous two when considering the additional two. That's all it is.

Someone figuring out how the engine of a car works is doing the same thing... remembering information that allows him to process future information in a context.

Memory gives our awareness width, it adds another dimension that pushes awareness to a much higher level.

[Xray]

I think the question that I am focused on most is: Why do we assume there is a clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness? Why isn't it all just existence?

Because calling it all just "existence" would fail each time you want to become more specific.

It would be like asking: "Why do we assume there is a clear line between animals and plants? Why isn't it all just nature?"

[Dglgmut]

No, no, no... it would be between life and plants. But we acknowledge that plants are living things, we don't acknowledge that awareness could exist without necessarily being consciousness. If something can sense reality, whether it remembers it for a split second, a lifetime, or not at all, isn't it all awareness?