It may also be helpful to remember that we live in a world that seems to operate on the basis of cause and effect. We believe that every effect has a cause. Now, when it comes to our voluntary actions, we can only attribute the cause to ourselves. This might account for what we regard as free will. There is no way that free will can be proved or dismissed. But, given that we live in what we believe to be a causal universe, to regard ourselves as independent agents seems perverse. Whatever we believe ,we will continue to act as if we were free because we feel as if we have made choices which, in a sense, we have.
OK everyone so far appears to have some idea of what the word "purpose" means. Either 1) there is such a thing, or 2) there isn't. Like (the word) "meaning". If there is no purpose (i,e, we imagine it), then it shouldn't matter what we do. So, someone who is sure that purpose doesn't exist, can happily walk across minefields, or busy motorways or freeways. Smear themselves with blood and jump into shark-infested waters, or sit and do absolutely nothing - no need to eat or breathe or think about anything. There's no purpose to any of it. If there is purpose, it only explains behaviour, what's behaviour? Do we have any? Does anything behave or is it an illusion? If purpose exists, purposeful behaviour exists. Animals and things that aren't animals behave purposefully (ie, with purpose). I'm sure of this - as sure as I am that if I climbed in the lion's cage at the zoo, the lions would demonstrate this, by attacking me. The Sun behaves purposefully. A pendulum behaves purposefully. If there's no such thing, why do we see purposeful behaviour everywhere? If it's not real, what are you all doing posting all the stuff you keep posting, about the subject? Why do you believe that you can choose to do what you do, in other words? How can anyone "give purpose", or choose to, if it doesn't exist? That must "leave something", can we "desire" it, whatever it is? Can Myles tell us?
You just get more and more confused in your efforts to oppose a rational argument. In the present instance you are confusing determinism with fatalism. Try to think a bit about what you want to say brfore posting.
Vkothii, throughout the debate it seems you have been mixing purposes (of life as a whole, with individual componants/aspects of it), commiting a fallacy of composition. Most of your arguments focus on the purpose (or percieved purpose) of a specific object, eg: an enzyme, DNA, etc... and that therefore, gives purpose to life as a whole. The two are very different purposes, just because individual componants ofa system have a purpose, does not mean that the system as a whole has a purpose. Consider this: I have a calculator. Each button on my calculator has a specific purpose. I give my calculator to a baby, and as it waves it around, it presses a few buttons. Would you say that there was any purpose behind the commands the calculator excecuted as a resault of the baby mashing the buttons? I wouldn't. Even though each command the calculator excecuted had a purpose, the overall sequence of commands was purposeless. Similarily, I can easily find purposes in biological agents, enzymes each have a specific purpose, DNA has a purpose within the context of a specific organism. However, I cannot move from the specific to the general in these cases, and so, even though there are many specific aspects of life which have purposes within thier context, when we step back and look at the grand scheme of life as a whole (as does your argument), we cannot know if it is purposefull. Furthermore, it may be that life is purposefull, but has failed to achieve it's purpose, and rather the function we observe is not what it was supposed to do at all. Consider this: The first replicator was designed to conver the worlds oceans into Jello (obviously, for an alien Jello farmer!) And had some self-replicating properties, in order to repair itself, but mainly catalyzid the Earth->Jello reaction. Unfortunatly, it was struck by lightning, and underwent a reaction which gave it an irreparable error, and it simply replicated itself, rather than creating Jello. The replications subsequently underwent more errors, sometimes forming replicators better adapted at replicating under Earth's conditions. They then took over, and eventualy paved the way for life as we currently know it. Clearly, life is a failed Jello factory. -Andrew
These are small purposes, not purpose to life as a whole. A small purpose is like a frame of reference. I may chose to pursue a purpose within a certain frame of reference, but in the infinite universe, there is no frame, and thus no purpose. Humans can decide to have a human purpose, but that doesn't mean there is a purpose to the existence of humans.
Yes, the baby was examining the calculator, like babies do. Probably it tasted it? The calculator executes commands. A shovel digs holes. How do you manage to conclude that giving a tool to another individual means it loses its purpose (as that "particular use" tool)? What if I took the calculator and used it like a small spade or shovel in a sandpit, and made a sandcastle with it? Purposeless to who? Not to the baby. You're confusing an idea (of the purpose for a tool), with what purpose is. The commands "executed by" the calculator are specific to that tool. The commands executed by a shovel, when it gets used to dig a hole, are specific, too. A shovel and a calculator are tools. How they get "used" is nothing to do with "intended purpose" for a tool. It's to do with adaptation. Like adapting a calculator as a shovel. The baby adapted the tool you gave it - but babies don't have much experience with using tools, they're still learning how to see and hear properly, and distinguish things, So a baby's adaptation of a tool, like a calculator, is along the lines of: "what does it feel/taste like? It's adapting that calculator as a tool to further its experience of things in the world - the first purposeful things we all do as "new" humans. DNA "has" a purpose, but DNA can't do anything about its purpose - enzymes and the ribosomes do that. Does a book have "purpose", or does reading a book? I'd say a book's purpose is reading the book. Why not? If you stand in some jungle, and a hungry-looking tiger comes along, you can't discern any purpose? You know what purpose is. Lifeforms behave (so does everything), Behaviour is purposeful - something we can and do discriminate.
Einstein's theories are "small purposes"? What does that mean: "pursue a purpose"? Everything has a "frame of reference", for the simple reason that "we" put one there, like all the time. We decide if there's a purpose to running away, or fighting, or climbing a tree? Sounds like purposeful behaviour to me. P.S. Purpose is purpose. I don't understand "small purpose". Is there a "large purpose" too? A "medium purpose"?
Nothing make sense, except within a defined frame of reference. Purposes are like this. If you feel your actions have a purpose, that is so only withing the context of your life on Earth, within a certain time period and culture. I'm basically saying something simple, that there is no purpose to life in general. Purposeful behavior on the part of living things has no bearing on the purpose of all living things, or the purpose of existence. Purposes have a cultural context, and not a universal one.
Purpose is purpose. If "forms" with "life" also have purpose, then ipso facto, life is purposeful. Extending this to: "what is the purpose of Life", is also straightforward. The purpose of Life is to behave with purpose. In general.
You summed up my thoughts much better than I did. It would be arrogant of us to believe that our species has a specific purpose in the universe. The universe itself might have a purpose ( which is unknown to us ), but what are we but a speck of colour on a grain of sand in a vast desert? My life might give my grand-father's current state of being a purpose. He wants to see how I do in life, and be there to help me if help is needed for as long as he can. He said that he wants to keep on living because he loves us - his grand-children. In such a small - but significant - scale, my life serves a purpose, and I am happy to be alive if it means that my grand-father enjoys his life more as a result.
So this text I'm looking at, that I've quoted, must have arrived out of the void, totally randomly? No purpose behind it? And because there is no purposeful behaviour anywhere, and lifeforms don't behave. nothing happens? We don't see any events. Right? Life does not behave? So you're not alive then. Well, that explains it.
Yeah, but what does "to live it" imply? Oh yes there is. The point is to survive, and pass on your characteristics (as genes). You must survive, and your genes must survive too. They and you might not, but that doesn't mean you won't give it a try. This is because your existence has a purpose (yes, it does). And it explains why you will behave (in a purposeful way), in order to "fulfil your programming".
Maybe so, but we are arrogant. We do believe that "our species" has a specific purpose in "the universe". That purpose is to live and reproduce, here on planet Earth (or should that be planet Janet?). That's Evolution, our purpose is to evolve. To evolve, we must survive and reproduce "successfully". We behave (everything does, including some non-forms of non-life, one of which appears to be posting stuff here in this thread). Behaviour is something we see all around us. How can things behave, but not behave? How can things that behave not behave with purpose? Despite the nay-sayers, Life (and the planets, and the climate, and swinging pendulums) appears to behave. Time appears to flow. We look for "order", and "meaning". Does meaning exist? Do we see order anywhere?
Not the tool's purpose, but the purpose of the function it carried out. A calculator always has a specific purpose, but what it is being used for, and what it was made for, are 2 entirely different things. A screwdriver is meant to remove screws, but if I stab someone with it, I used it asa weapon (my purpose for it's use was as a weapon, it's purpose in existance is to remove screws.) I used a baby because I would not say they have eanough comprehension to even 'test' it. But forget the baby. Lets say I forgot I left it in my chair and sat on it. Did the resultant computations it carried out have any purpose? No, there was no purporse bhind those computations. I would say the baby gained nothing from waving the calculator, moot point though with my revised example. Strawman. I'm not confusing anything, I am focusing soley on how the tool is being used, not how it was meant to be used. If it is used, but there is no purpose behind it's use, then that instance of use is purposeless. A book has a purpose: to store information, regardless of whether or not it gets read ever. Regardless; this has little relevance to the issue. Oh, I can discern the purpose of the tiger, but that does not prove that I can discern the purpose of life. I have given an example, read the paragraph on hypothertical Jello farming aliens. See how life forms, yet the purpose is extremely different that what you say? (to replicate.) Yes, I can find purpose in a tiger, or another large organism, but your commiting a fallacy of composition again (follow the link): just because oen componant of life has an identifiable purpose, does not mean that life itself hasa purpose. Again, this is a logical fallacy (see above link.) -Andrew
Was there any purpose in sitting in the chair? If so, then sitting on a calculator, that you left on the chair, and so is part of the chair as far as you sitting on a chair is concerned, is part of that purpose. What if the chair "included" a sharp knife, and you bent it, as you sat (on the chair+knife), or blunted it? No purpose to this "event"? No connection? Bending a knife by sitting on it accidentally is purposeless? Bleeding is without purpose? You have to use something, or interact with it in an intentional way, for the purpose of that use to exist. If the calculator "accidentally" calculates something, it's not connected to the purpose of using a chair, but it's part of the outcome, the result of intentionally sitting on the chair+calc. The result of sitting on a chair is that the chair deforms a bit. The calculator also got "deformed" a bit. Or the knife. I would say that's an incorrect conclusion. Babies gain a whole lot by interacting with things - they learn about the shape and taste of things at first. Whatever you "give" to an infant (say < 12 months), will contribute to its learning about the world -so the baby would not "gain nothing". Not at all. So if you stand on a rake, and the handle lifts up and hits you on the head, that's purposeless? What does "no purpose behind its use" mean? If you use something, then that thing has a purpose. How can using a tool (even the "wrong way") be without purpose? What if the book is lost in the middle of a jungle? Or converted into a pile of ashes and vapour? Where is the "store" of information, if no-one reads it? But you've only seen some of the "components", how can you draw the conclusion that all of the "components", have no purpose? If what you've seen so far (and you can only imagine, or project an idea that there are heaps more) are purposeful organisms. how do you avoid the conclusion that "Life (as all the lifeforms I've ever seen so far) behaves purposefully"? You can't make any other conclusion at all. You can only base it on what you know, not what you imagine, Like Einstein's theory, there is no proof it's the "correct" view. But so far, every event measured to intentionally test it, has supported it. I know that doesn't mean there is no example of a contrary observation (we may not have seen it yet), but the observations we have is all there is, therefore we tend to believe Einstein. When we find something alive, that doesn't behave, then we can say "there's a form of life that has no purpose (does not exhibit purpose)". That would allow a conclusion that Life has no purpose. Although a single example isn't exactly a slam-dunk. And I really can't imagine such a lifeform - something alive that doesn't do anything? What you mean is "I can discern the purpose of the tiger, therefore I can discern that it is another purposeful lifeform, like all the others I've seen. So that means Life is purposeful, as far as I can tell". Proof has nothing to do with it.
