By this I mean does reality have a meaningful narrative in and of itself? In religion for example you have an objective narrative of God creating everything and his epic attempt to save/free man from the bondage of sin/ignorance. But what of science? Is there a narrative going on since the Big Bang and independent of the subjective interpretation of humans? Perhaps reality ISN'T meaningful in itself. Perhaps meaning only emerges from consciousness--the interaction of minds with reality. What IS the narrative of consciousness? “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”--Carl Jung Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
We may typically regard meaning as involving language [especially a 3rd person -like narration when it comes from authoritative rather than personal sources]; but doubtless the understandings of animals and many occasions of such in humans concern memories of past experiences being directly employed as "meaning" for features of immediate experiences [rather than a go-between of propositional thought]. There are also surely cases where a conditioned body response / reaction serves as the lone "significance" of a thing or event -- that is, the organism does not bother to cognize or define it by recruiting either stored perceptions or words. Both reason and communication may have seemed "fundamentally" dependent upon language / symbolic systems throughout history (whether oral or graphic or other signaling). The social exchange of information initially involved those representations deriving their ultimate meaning from empirical content of one sort or another (perceptions, sensations, etc). Early on even generalizations concerned collecting tangible things and events under a concept, category, or set. However, symbols like "5" and "justice" eventually got stripped of the need for empirical content and began floating on their own [mathematical purists may still abhor when of one of their products finds a practical application in technology, science, etc]. Further, more complex abstract inventions sprouted from those basic ones, to the point where it's not clear some of them ever correspond to or trace back to anything concrete. Though they might initially be introduced to the novice with concrete metaphors and analogies, and specific items are plugged into the empty placeholders of "formulas" for their applied purposes. But so much for the supposed primal dependence upon language / symbolic systems. The advent of computers has amply demonstrated that the latter (as well as reason's reliance upon them) can be decomposed down to two states (on/off, up/down, etc) and the working relational connections that integrate / manipulate them. The complex structures that would allow the formal rules for such state / sign manipulations to be instantiated would not exist abroad in nature, though -- only originally coming about via the development and evolution of nervous systems. Thus, an objective world truly considered as something apart from perception / intellect certainly wouldn't be indulging in "meanings" for particles, atoms, planets, stars, galaxies, etc, and their activities. In the same context, it does not manifest to itself as those discriminations or anything else, either -- it lacks sight, hearing, smell, touch, etc. Just as it lacks intellect. But OTOH, the extrospective environment which we are intersubjectively, directly familiar with (as opposed to the invisible, non-represented one devoid of consciousness), is ironically an objective reality that is loaded with meaning. Because considered from even a biological perspective, the brain is interpreting "what happens to the body" as a world -- or more particularly the stimulations of specialized, sensitive body tissues -- as an external cosmos. The latter is unavoidably cranked-out by or filtered through inherent "programs" with the goal of turning body sensations into a "world", and of understanding them as that -- for survival purposes. As a peek back into the history of philosophy, there is the example of Nietzsche (below) referring to a body's feeling of two threads binding the feet as being interpreted as a pair of serpents during sleep. Similarly, I've had those meaningless, colored splotches we occasionally notice when the eyelids are closed suddenly acquire more detail as a dream starts, and turn into the walls of a room and other objects. The mind is geared to spawn a story of reality from whatever input it gets, embedding itself in it with a body even when the "real" biological body has been limited to receiving very little stimulation. Whether the world of dreams or the one of waking, that world's very exhibition of "being there" in the senses means that there is "input" that has conformed to and been infiltrated from "head to foot" by "meaning" -- by the conditions for understanding / interpreting such body stimulations as environmental objects, situations, or whatever. Nietzsche, from Human, All Too Human: During sleep the nervous system, through various inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs act independently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The posture of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. The coverlets influence the sensations in different ways. The stomach carries on the digestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines are in motion. The position of the head induces unaccustomed action. The feet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of other sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entire body. All these things, following the bustle and change of the day, result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entire system that extends even to the brain functions. Thus there are a hundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning as to the cause of this excitation. Now, the dream is a seeking and presenting of reasons for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed reasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled about his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be the causa of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have." So reasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thus conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present realities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a different nature, say, the report of cannon. In his dream he becomes aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. But how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative in its dealings with hypotheses? Why does the first plausible hypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming state? (For in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, we accept our hypotheses as fully established). I have no doubt that as men argue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their waking moments, for thousands of years: the first causa, that occurred to the mind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, was accepted as the true explanation and served as such. (Savages show the same tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). In the dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty developed itself and still develops itself in every individual. Dreams carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a means of understanding it more clearly. Dream thought comes so easily to us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the interminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facile form of theorising has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is a restorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meet the many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of a higher civilization.—We may, if we please, become sensible, even in our waking moments, of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to dreaming. If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking moments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination, transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures, moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort of reasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence these impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such lights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as the occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of every impression of light and color made upon it. Here again the imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it participates in the production of the impressions made through the senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing—that is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and after the effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even. —From these considerations we can see how late strict, logical thought, the true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is spent in the super-inducing conditions.—Even the poet, the artist, ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not the true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can aid us in its comprehension.
Okay, let's start with objective; you state "God creating everything and his epic attempt to save/free man from the bondage of sin/ignorance." If "God" created everything - wouldn't that entail that he "He" created mans "bondage of sin/ignorance"? Am I to believe that this so called, "God" created this reality just to play a game with "His" creations, so as to somehow lead those creations to believe that "He" is making an "epic attempt" to save/free them from "Him"?!! Now, as to "meaningful reality" - isn't it the responsibility of every individual to exercise their own consciousness and perceptive abilities to form their own place of meaning in this reality? I am told that some people see the donut, and other people see the hole. Yet, more often than not, I see something sweet to enjoy with my coffee.
Wow..Nietzsche could've been a great psychological theorist if he hadn't gone into philosophy/classical studies. Accutely analytical and logical. I'm sure his insights influenced alot of the subsequent psychology of the late 19th century. One thing I was thinking about is how dogs and cats and primates dream. Since they obviously do, they must be projecting some sense of narrative on their OWN random synaptic firings much as say toddlers do. This suggests that alot of our meaningful narrative generator may have actually EVOLVED from other speciel stages and become hardwired into the structure of our brains. Which goes back to Jung and his ideas of a collective unconscious which structures itself according to primitive archetypal themes and motifs. Interesting implications about the most ancient animal narratives (the snake, the trickster, bugs, giants, monsters, hunting and being hunted) and perhaps how these narratives evolved (the hero, gods & goddesses, good vs evil) with the increasingly conscious experiences of humans. That residual theriocentric fear of being eaten or bitten or trapped or dismembered--still preserved in some of our most cherished myths and fairy tales (red riding hood, hansel and gretel, the Odyssey). Dream thought indeed. NIGHTMARE thought! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! "Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have won before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” ― Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Whether there is anything of the divine in reality or whether reality itself has divinity, I wonder as well. It is something to ponder at least. I'm not sure consciousness plays a big part of it or any part of a possible divinity really, as the divinity would supposedly count for things without consciousness as well. Is man's supposed moral concerns only his personal, private perversions or is there a divinity in reality, one that man may be further towards or away from? Certainly an interesting question and one that seems quite hard to answer in a final way. Man's own meaning in only created by his being in my opinion, but whether there should anything but the existence and not the other order of the universe, which could compel other possibilities, is something that makes meaning hang by a thread. Is divinity an artifact of the human mind or is it a present condition in the arrangement of the Universe? You could say it has important implications for supposed human morality as we, ourselves, feel it fitting.
I guess that 'narrative' might translate to an account of events playing out over time. The natural universe certainly possesses a history in that sense. That's what evolution is all about. We can speak of the evolution not only of life here on Earth, but also of the evolution of geological landforms, of stars and planetary systems, and in the big-bang scheme, even of the space-time universe itself. And that delivers us to the second and more difficult issue of meaning. Sure the story of the universe can be told as a historical narrative. But is that kind of narrative meaningful? Pretty clearly, the word 'meaning' doesn't refer to the same thing here as it does when we are talking about the semantic meaning of words and signals. It's not really an information theoretical problem. My sense is that stories are meaningful in the sense that MR is getting at, when they are relevant to ourselves and to our lives. We can talk all day about the evolution of stars, but how are those highly abstract and distant matters relevant to my life, right here, right now? How does the evolution of stars influence my life-choices? How does it influence my pleasure and suffering in life? How does it speak to my hopes and dreams? I guess that's part of the continuing attraction of conventional (and unconventional) religious belief for most people. Religion speaks directly to the deepest concerns of human psychology. Obviously there are people who can feel something, some relevance, in the natural universe too. That's what motivates pantheism. In a more austere way, it's what motivated the late Carl Sagan (a self-professed atheist) to intone "Billions and Billions" so reverently on his long-gone TV show. He obviously felt that astronomy had something to say to him not only intellectually but also emotionally, about the scope and grandeur of Being itself. But to answer the very interesting question in the subject line: Is there such a thing as an objectively meaningful reality? I'd say 'no'. Not in this fundamentally emotional sense that religion so ably addresses. That's always going to be a matter of the implications that our view of the universe has for our unique personal concerns. And that's inevitably going to be subjective, probably different and personal for each of us.
Personally I think the word relativity is honest. ******* The beginning of the thread mentions sin/ignorance. I think an aspect of the descriptive word sin is loss of self amidst sensuality. This makes me wonder to define sensuality, seems like a faceted subject word.
Like a ripple effect, everything we do or don't do...has an effect on others. However infinitesimal it may be. Directly or indirectly. That to me, is an objective "truth." I think your question magical, begs another one...is meaning created by man or does he find it somehow, as he moves through his life?
By my own experience meaning comes from a combination of both resolved intention and remaining open to the organic happening of one's life. You can't just make specific plans and goals and then obsessively spend your whole life trying to accomplish them hoping that will fulfill you. That's because struggling for those goals over the years turns you into a different person than you were when you first set those goals. But neither can you just do nothing and passively wait for life to show you the way. There's a serendipitious aspect to it such that you only come to discover the meaning that suits you as you continue to try different things while remaining open to learning about yourself. Meaning comes from a combination of persistance and surprise. To risk a "thought terminating cliche" here, it's more about the journey than it is about the destination..
According to "The Big Bang Theory", it had one (a point), sometime around 14 or 15 billion years ago.
Yes. The meaning is to provide hope to beings approaching mankind in nature with demonic and illusory form in order to preserve misery for as long as possible, before fading into absolute cold such that information is no longer able to be processed. Now, I've decided this isn't good enough for my personal taste and try to enjoy normal things as they seem clearly apparent. That is just me.
Many Points No Purpose The Universe has many points and no purposed. Only humans attempt to assign a purpose to or for Universe. Physical/energy cannot be created nor destroyed......... To go-with-the-flow is ancient Indonesian/asian religon aka acceptance. There is no source. There is only degrees of access to mind/intelligence and the ponderings and discoveroies thereof. r6
Human beings think, mentally function, primarily via metaphor and analogy. That's how we construct, or "know", reality. If we can establish a sense of "objectivity" that incorporates metaphor and analogy as its primary structure, we can define an objective reality knowable by humans. It's an interesting idea, but I can't say I have much of a clue how that would be done.
