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Meaning

Started by Cramulus, March 20, 2018, 02:28:10 PM

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LMNO

Quote from: Cramulus on March 21, 2018, 03:48:32 PM
Is it a big leap to view these cosmic principles and forces in the same light as 'intention'?

Um... Yes?

Unless, of course, you start with an a priori premise that a consciousness (sure, let's call it GOD) created the quantum laws and set them in motion.  If you do that, [Humans create shoe with intent to fit feet] = [GOD creates universe with intent to X]

However....

That a priori process is itself a subjective act made by you, since it chooses a narrative with which to construct the question, rather than describing the universe objectively.  In a way, if you want all the stuff in the universe to have intent, you have to create a circular narrative that says it does just that, but that was created by you, subjectively.




Cramulus

Solid.

Still thinking about it.

To provide a little more context about my question -- and at the risk of coming off as one of "those people"... years ago, I had a mystical experience. I personally felt something ineffable, something I have trouble describing verbally. I've been trying to understand what happened to me for a long time now. I've found lots of evidence that other people have had this experience. The closest language I have for it is Atman

Without getting too deep into it (becuase I will sound even more like a crazy person) I experienced something which I believe is inside of all of us. It is ancient, and it has an intention. The nature of "meaning" is part of my inquiry into what this thing is, what it does inside of us. Within this ... certain something ... there is meaning, there is purpose. Maybe it's not universal, like some fundamental property of the universe, but I do think it's a quintessential part of organic life on earth.

I know how it sounds, like--"yeah guys I totally met god and he told me his plan, trust me. Now help me justify that this was real and not some imaginary jagoff experience". I'm not trying to sell anybody on this or convert anybody. It's just that my experience doesn't entirely jive with my philosophical frame, and I'm experienceing some cognitive dissonance around that. And I'm still trying to understand.


no replies needed, just wanted to clarify that I'm still in flavor country

LMNO

I've had that, a few times (I think).  When I talk about it objectively, the closest I can say is I had a 'transcendent experience, beyond how language can describe it'.

Something happened, and I can explain how I experienced it in clumsy words, but I don't have the knowledge to explain it in a purely objective way.  That doesn't mean I didn't experience it, it just means I don't have the right means to convey what happened.


AKA, "Weird shit"

P3nT4gR4m

There is no ultimate meaning. Even taking god as a thing for sake of argument you just need to take it up a level and the meaning of god evaporates. Or if god has a god and it has a reason for making god then what's the meaning of god's god? It's turtles all the way up and, at the top? Meaningless.

Finding meaning in life is a simple matter of slotting yourself into a heirarchy. Be a samurai, serve a master. Or don't. Serve yourself or command yourself. Serve god if you like but read the small print. Most god servitude is handled by middlemen so really you're just serving them.

I prefer not to. Universe has no meaning that applies to me. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam? Fuck him, he'll have a long wait. Life is a bit of a laugh then I die. Laughing.

Just so long as you admit it's an opinion, I'll grant you all the meaning you like.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

minuspace

Let me check my bearings [*takes a long pensive look at his effigy of st. Christofer*]
[*phone rings, answered, because significant person calling. Moving on...]

The question originally eschews (previously discussed) non-dual perspective to pose a different kind of 'hard problem'.
Dismissing the subjective/objective distinction...
[*has a brain fart about how examples of arithmetic subtraction best illustrate the relationship of meaning to mathematics*]
[*decides thread needs more wu, rolls 18 on icosahedral die, invokes gods*]
The gods now command me to relate how the tetragrammaton responded, the first, and last time I ever asked them, "what the
meaning of it all was?", as I lay writhing  before their awesome countenances in the perfect desert sky. "Entertainment," they answered
unequivocally. Some kind of diversion that was to what I had otherwise been expecting. Can't really blame them, if I dare to think
of what cosmic solitude an eternal being might endure. But that's another story, at least from my perspective.

Now that that's out of the way, I have fewer fucks to give about whatever conclusions my reasoned arguments may have obtained.
Funny thing though, sidestepping any that teleological stuff about destination, points, and purpose, that this primordial being still
has an intention rings significantly true. Though it sounds from the farthest reaches, it resonates at the innermost core level as the
source calling to itself. Of course this is entirely crazy delusional, but it beats having to think about what kind of perversions an
eternal god may have picked up along the way of it's VERY grown-up understanding of entertainment, not to mention it's expression
of interest in telling me about it. Tag, y'alls are it. :lulz: 

axod

QuoteCh. 1
The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader[...]

While yet a third class strive indeed to transcend the whole creation, which doubtless is changeable, in order to raise their thought to the unchangeable substance, which is God; but being weighed down by the burden of mortality, whilst they both would seem to know what they do not, and cannot know what they would, preclude themselves from entering the very path of understanding, by an over-bold affirmation of their own presumptuous judgments; choosing rather not to correct their own opinion when it is perverse, than to change that which they have once defended...

Again, he who thinks of God as now forgetting and now remembering, or anything of the same kind, is none the less in error; and yet these things are found in the mind. But he who thinks that God is of such power as to have generated Himself, is so much the more in error, because not only does God not so exist, but neither does the spiritual nor the bodily creature; for there is nothing whatever that generates its own existence.
—Augustine, OTT 1.1
just this

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cramulus on March 21, 2018, 01:31:13 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 21, 2018, 03:58:35 AM
Meaning is entirely subjective.

You present any idea - any idea at all - to ten people.  1 person is going to become a crusader for that idea, another person is going to pretend to be a crusader for that idea to be edgy or whatnot, 6 people are gonna be meh about it, 2 people crusade against it, and the last person thinks it's the most depressing shit ever and kills him/herself.

You may notice there's an extra person in there.  Siri hates your fucking idea, too.

:lol: is siri the one that kills themself?

"That is not upgraded which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even your phone may die"

Molon Lube