HH raised some good points in comments on previous posts here. Made me think.
"Significance" and "purpose" are concepts created by mankind. So the whole debating whether there is a purpose or meaning to live is defunct (is that in the correct context?), because those are just words that humankind has applied a definition to.
I still feel like there's something I'm not getting. I don't have the answers, but I'm not even sure of the question. I feel like theres something that doesn't have an answer, but I can't quite figure the question out to ask it. I might make a new blog for this sort of shit. I fucking love blogging, does it make me weird?
I want to drop acid.
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(The word is not "defunct", "having ceased its functions" (OED), because that would imply that discussion ("debating whether there is a purpose or meaning to live") is no longer worth having, but previous was. I presume you don't mean that, but rather that if it's not worth discussing, it was never worth discussing. As opposed to worth discussing last week, but not any more!
As a matter of fact, "defunct" is not the word anyway. You seem to mean "obsolete". For example, a Journal might become defunct if it went out of business, but one wouldn't call it obsolete unless one meant that the journal was no longer required. (Though I can think of plenty of journals in the humanities which are obsolete but not defunct! Yet!))
First, having read "The Absurd" by Thomas Nagel, read "Death" (now PDFs).
I was talking about this with Alistair a few days ago (over coffee (hot chocolate for me)), who reminded my of my "Button" thought experiment.
Pranay introduced me to "The Absurd" by Thomas Nagel, around the time that Mr Beattie mentioned the reference to Wittgenstein in "Dogg's Hamlet" and set me reading the Tractatus. PS had me write an essay "What is a rational reaction to the absurdity of life?". I wrongly interpreted "Absurd" as meaning "Pointlessness". After three years of philosophy training (which is enough), I can say I now can now read Nagel clearly (I didn't think so clearly three years ago. (If you want to become enlightened (i.e. think clearly) just read science and Western philosophy (like Stephen Law, Russell, Popper, Ayer). Anyone who writes clearly.)) Nagel means something different by "Absurdity". I think he's wrong, but I won't bother with it.
So, change the question. "What is a rational reaction to the pointlessness of life?" Assuming life is pointless/purposeless, which it is, as that Watson quotation should have convinced anyone knowledgable of natural selection. And pointlessness and purposelessness are the same thing. (Digression: isn't "The Purpose-Driven Life" hilarious? Even if God did exist, and had a "plan" for you, that would be exactly like discovering you were being raised as food and your purpose was to be eaten. Something could be your whole purpose, but still not adequate to make life not pointless for you.)
My essay, which I could never write now (it contained no clear argument which could be expressed in premise/conclusion form), argued that painless suicide was a rational reaction to the pointlessness of life.
"Would you press The Button?" Imagine there is a button. When you press it, you cease to exist. But so your family don't cry, you also cease to have ever existed. It's painless. And the world is neither improved nor worsened by your absence (so you can have no moral obligation to press or not).
Perhaps it doesn't quite eliminate the survival instinct, though. I though I would have pressed it in 2003, but probably wouldn't have if it came to it. Now, I wouldn't.
What I never quite expressed was an asymmetry between "good-life vs non-existence" and "bad-life vs non-existence". (At least, I believe there is an assymetry:) If you are suffering, badly, then you might press the button, because non-existence is neither good nor bad, whereas suffering is bad. Suffering is a good enough reason to want to not exist. If you are suffering, pressing the button is better. However, if you are having fun, or not suffering, pressing the button is not worse.
Perhaps this is because suffering (like bad, physical pain) is something active, whereas happiness is not. It is a more general state than suffering can be.
Suffering is more bad than happiness is good.
Another assymetry (or is it the same one) is this: If you are suffering (physically, badly), the future promise of happiness is not enough reason not to press the button. However, if you are happy, the possibility of future suffering is enough to press the button. (Or, if you are happy, you might later suffer and then press the button, so if you are happy this is only postponing pressing the button.)
However, I would not press the button. Two reasons. One, I am having quite a good time, and would like to have more (cf Nagel - Death). Two, survival instinct. I am hard-wired by evolution not to. But it's not as if the survival instinct is conflicting with a desire to press the button. I don't even want to press the button. I'm happy.
The above assymetries seem to suggest that the rational response to the pointlessness of life is this button suicide. But I am not convinced that they actually do. I do not think I am acting irrationally by not desiring such a button to exist (so that I could press it). Why not?
But to actually comment on what you said(!),
No. "Significance" and "purpose" may be defined words, but this doesn't mean that it's meaningless to talk about the significance or purpose of things. Why would it? The words' meanings would have meaning whether or not we had a word with that meaning. See?
Or did you mean that because "significance" and "purpose" are man-made concepts, it is wrong to apply them to the universe? Again, no. Why would it be?
Blogging's fun. I couldn't do it now. I'd feel too silly, writing down my opinions when they don't matter.
Hmm, I wouldn't mind trying acid once, and mescaline once. But not twice: the price is too high for it to be worth it.
Ah, see the new blog.
hi jack u should get out more, im back fro the weekend and am gioing to get ewe some acid weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee i'll make it my mission. i havnt read ur thing in ages, sum it up for me in one sentence please. byeeeee xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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