We have a multitude of questions in philosophy…
one such question is : what is the meaning of life?
and at one time or another, everyone asks themselves that question…
the problem with this question, as often happens with philosophy questions,
is that if you look at the question, I mean really look at the question, the
question itself has issues…
The meaning of life: we have two key words, meaning and life…
but if we look at these two concepts, we see they are two different
concepts, life is facts and meaning is value…so in essence we are asking,
what is the value of a factual existence…
life has many different meanings, there is that word again,
one way to define life is:
life needs to maintain Homeostasis, it is composed of cells, it undergoes metabolism,
it can grow, it adapts to its environment, respond to stimuli and it reproduces…
to be called life, it must follow these 7 things… or at least that is the
current conception of life… it will change because that is what facts do,
they change…and there are more then one theory as to what is this thing
called life…in other words, we have problems with understanding what exactly
is life… one of our two words, we are not sure what it is… how can we
find an answer to, what is the meaning of life, when we aren’t really sure what life
is…life is a process, not a substance…
as to our second word, meaning, there are even more theories as to what is
“meaning”… Wiki lists at least 5 different theories about meaning…
meaning is about values. look up the work “meaning” and you get something along
the lines of this…
Meaning as nouns:
- what is intended to be, or actually is
- the end, purpose, or significance of something,
what is the meaning of life…
- Linguistics, the nonlinguistic cultural, reference, or denotation of a
linguistic form… expression by linguistic content…
(I have no idea what this means)
meaning as an adjective:
4. intended (causally used in combination)
she is a well meaning person
5. Full of significance expressive…
a meaning look…
in other words, even what the word, meaning, means is under dispute
and in questioned…
so we have two words in a 4 word sentence that we don’t even really
understand… how can we find the meaning of life when we don’t even know
what those words mean?
we have interesting examples of the meaning of life even given we don’t
really understand those words…
for example, this is an example of one version of the meaning of life…
the declaration of independence tells us that…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these,
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, being the meaning of life…
goals to be achieved… and meaning is in part, is a question of goals to be
achieved… and where does all his leave us?
we have at this point a question that unanswerable because we cannot
agree on the term of “meaning” and the term, “life”…
so does answering these questions become a linguistic questions?
some think so and answer it in those terms but that path is sterile
and cannot meet our flesh and blood demands for knowledge and truth…
a word means this… does that really answer our question…
love is defined as… but that certainly doesn’t tell us what love is
as love is greater then any definition we impose on it…
so we are back in the beginning, wonder what is the meaning of life?
and until we understand what the word meaning and the word life, means,
we cannot begin to answer that question and then all we have are definitions
and definitions are not answers…
so what am I left with? an understanding that we cannot answer our
questions about philosophy unless we clarify the questions and then
that is only part way to finding answers…
Kropotkin