If death is only biological then what is life? (1 Viewer)

[loquasagacious]

Cookie182 has provided a particularly prescient lead in for a thread idea I had this afternoon.

I was doing some background reading on the Festival of Dangerous Ideas today and stumbled across the below in an interview with one of the panelists.

He makes an interesting point regarding humanism and the 'meaning of life', stripped of a higher purpose and purely biological in nature what is life? What gives it meaning?

This is of course a contention which Iron has touched upon relatively extensively however I thought a consolidated thread to discuss the meaning of life could be interesting.

Note this is not to discuss the existence of god, because you can do that for years here. This is more a discussion about if not God then what? In what way to we ascribe meaning to our lives?

I think at the moral level, we’re still enjoying some of the achievements and triumphs of Humanism, and particularly the rise of the view of Universal Human Rights, which comes out of the Enlightenment, and is one of the triumphs of liberal Humanism, and our society benefits prodigiously for the fact in the last 50 years this sort of ethical or moral order has spread in its cultural influence. On the other hand, the feeling that is this all there is, the feeling that comes in the crisis moments of life, the big moments of life, the moments in life when we’re not just going through the motions, as pleasant as it may be, walking along that beach in Australia, that those times in life which make you think Yes, this is not just passing the time, those times, which are really metaphysical timers, require a framing story, a higher story, an engagement of the human individual with a sense of being part of a grander scheme of things.

[it] is just simply constitutive of what it is to be human, that we humans, probably unlike animals, need death to be more than just dying in a Darwinian sense, and like a dead fish, rotting and stinking on the beach. If that’s all death is, biological death in that sense, then life loses its meaning. If death doesn’t have meaning, one doesn’t need to argue this, one just needs to look at the great stories and the great paintings, the great wrestlings with precisely this question, from Tolstoy right back to Shakespeare and then back to the Greeks. It just is the case with us humans. If death has no meaning more than the biological sense, then life loses its meaning, and life becomes absurd, or horrible, to quote Nietzsche. So yes, looking back over 500 years of Humanism, Humanism was doomed from the start, and I think this is precisely Shakespeare and Holbein’s point in the Renaissance.

The Religion Report: 14 July2004 - Humanism, the Wreck of Western Culture

 

[Enteebee]

Existentialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

your move.

 

[ad infinitum]

Mmmm after a quick reading of that interview it is quite clear that this John Carroll fellow is quite the muddled no-mind that can't articulate any of his terrible thoughts without referring to some obscure text or category, and instead of directly stating his views (it is quite clear that he is one of those dense religous apologist sheep) the interview dissolves into that familiar white noise that so often accompanies the echo chambers of religous discourse.

I Hope Hitchens can put this random in his place at the festival.

 

[Absolutezero]

If life is biological, then meaning is what we determine it to be, as shaped by our context and ideologcal discource.

 

[Silver Persian]

*discourse.

Life doesn't have any inherent meaning, although we can try and make our lives meaningful if we want to.

 

[Absolutezero]

*discourse.

Gah. My mistake. I'm not thinking at the moment.

Really, is this topic just another way of discussing the meaning of life?

EDIT: Re-read the OP. Apparently it is.

 

[Strawbaby]

Life is nature's way of keeping meat fresh

Thank you, Doctor.

I don't think life has any inherent meaning. The beauty of human culture is its ability to ascribe higher meaning to what is, in the end, really just biology and physics at work.

 

[Iron]

now do you see the importance of the resurrection m8?

 

[Big Boss]

Death is true eternal freedom.
Life is the greatest battle for all biological beings.

 

[HumanDichotomy]

If life is biological, then meaning is what we determine it to be, as shaped by our context and ideologcal discource.

I agree. To quote my English teacher, 'Meaning is constructed' by human perception. Even if life *does* have an inherent meaning, independent of our human ideas, this meaning would be irrelevant because it is outside of our perception and understanding.

So the same thing holds true for the opposite. Even if life has no 'inherent meaning' outside of our perception of it, the very fact that we subscribe meaning to life means that it *does* have inherent meaning, because it does so within the limits of our perceptions.

 

[spyro14]

Only one thing to say, Perception is Reality, so whatever illusion of importance we are able to conjure up in our minds is a legitimate purpose for living, albeit we can never know otherwise.

 

[pman]

from a standard model physics view life is anti death so if death is biological, life is anti-biological

 

[Random_dude]

from a standard model physics view life is anti death so if death is biological, life is anti-biological

i do physics as well and, well, i have really got nothing to say because, well, that is stupid.

life is life and death is death. both are biological. humans' cells degenerate until they stop functioning so..... how the heck did you get that life is anti-biological?!

 

[spyro14]

I don't see how life can't be considered biological since biology is the science of life and death is the end of physical sentience.

biological: Of or relating to biology

biology: The science of life; that branch of knowledge which treats of living matter as distinct from matter which is not living; the study of living tissue. It has to do with the origin, structure, development, function, and distribution of animals and plants

physical: Of or pertaining to physics, or natural philosophy; treating of, or relating to, the causes and connections of natural phenomena; as, physical science; physical laws

 

[Tangent]

Existentialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

your move.

We came from nothing, and will return to nothing. Everything we do in between is meaningless, just a way of passing the time.

Your life doesn't initially have a meaning. Meaning is something that is accumulated across life.

 

[Silver Persian]

We came from nothing, and will return to nothing. Everything we do in between is meaningless, just a way of passing the time.

Your life doesn't initially have a meaning. Meaning is something that is accumulated across life.

But isn't this meaning that we acquire across our life meaningful?

 

[spyro14]

But isn't this meaning that we acquire across our life meaningful?

If there is nothing afterwards, no.

If there is, maybe so.

 

[Silver Persian]

If there is nothing afterwards, no.

If there is, maybe so.

There are other people who live after you die.

 

[spyro14]

There are other people who live after you die.

If I just rott away underground then the people that come after me that I will never know or meet or vice versa have no significance to me....because i'll be dead and forgotten soon after, if there is nothing else then our existance is a sad and pointless one.

 

[Tangent]

If I just rott away underground then the people that come after me that I will never know or meet or vice versa have no significance to me....because i'll be dead and forgotten soon after, if there is nothing else then our existance is a sad and pointless one.

Welcome to life, sad and pointless just about sums it up.

As for the people after us, its not what they can give us, but what we can give them.