Meaning and Existence

[_Coggins7]

It's just that it's a stupid argument,

Fantastic! In one fell swoop you've just overturned Beckwith and everything Light and myself have said about it for the last three days.

Good philosophical work, if you can get it.

[_Analytics]

So in other words, you are admitting that you don't have a logical proof?

Let's say for the sake of discussion that God was generated by a purely random chance. If that were the case, does that render God incapable of creating a universe (or anything else) with inherent value or meaning? Why or why not?

I gave you the inferential and/or deductive logical problem you need to solve in the form of several questions above which you have not attempted to answer. The problem here is that you yourself have no justifiable rational counter-argument.

I’m sorry for being slow; I’m really trying to understand what you’re saying. I may have missed these arguments, or not understood them.

Fleshing out my understanding of your arguments, it appears this is your argument would work like the following:

Premise 1: Meaning can only be given to something by a conscious creator.

Premise 2: Only conscious creators that themselves have meaning may give their creations meaning.


1- Assume there is no God.

2- Assume something exists that has meaning (referred to as MT for meaningful thing).

3- By Premise 2, the thing that created MT must have meaning. Likewise its creator must have meaning, it's creator must have meaning, etc. But as there is no God (Assumption 1), this chain will eventually run into a non-conscious creator--i.e. the natural laws of the universe. However, by Premise 1, the natural laws of the universe, being non-conscious, can’t give meaning. Therefore everything created by them can’t have meaning, and everything created by them in turn can’t have meaning, etc. back down the chain of casualty to MT. Therefore, MT can’t have meaning.

4- But this contradicts Assumption 2. Thus we can close assumption two with its negative: Nothing exists that has meaning.

5- Closing the first assumption, we have proven that If there is no God, then nothing exists that has meaning.

Does that capture the essence of your thoughts on this? I'd like to understand what you are saying before I give a serious response to it.

[_Coggins7]

You speak as if the world "must" have transcendent, teleological meaning.

No, I'm not saying it must (though I believe it must and does) have meaning. My whole argument here is essentially tautological: If the universe doesn't have meaning, then, well, it doesn't.

The universe may not be without an inherent teleology. We don't know--yet--unless we believe we do.

Wait...I think you mean to say that you don't know, isn't that correct?

[_Some Schmo]

It's just that it's a stupid argument,

Fantastic! In one fell swoop you've just overturned Beckwith and everything Light and myself have said about it for the last three days.

Good philosophical work, if you can get it.

It didn't need me to overturn it. It happened upon its creation. Does a table built with two thin legs on one side need any help to fall over, or does it just start out that way?

[_Tarski]

You speak as if the world "must" have transcendent, teleological meaning.

No, I'm not saying it must (though I believe it must and does) have meaning. My whole argument here is essentially tautological: If the universe doesn't have meaning, then, well, it doesn't.

The universe may not be without an inherent teleology. We don't know--yet--unless we believe we do.

Wait...I think you mean to say that you don't know, isn't that correct?

Tautological? That doesn't bode well.
Look, why would you think that meaning must inhere at an absolute universal level or not at all?
None of the thinkers that I admire would consider such a dichotomy as necessary.

Indeed, it is often pointed out that for every context that has meaning there is a larger context that seems to render the smaller context meaningless.
(Why should making mammal-like spirit babies forever and ever not lose its significance from some larger point of view. Its just some repeatative pattern with nothing larger to gather its meaning from)

[_Coggins7]

Fleshing out my understanding of your arguments, it appears this is your argument would work like the following:

Premise 1: Meaning can only be given to something by a conscious creator.

Premise 2: Only conscious creators that themselves have meaning may give their creations meaning.

The first premise is absolutely not like anything I have claimed, and is not taught or implied by LDS theology. I'm going to start another entire thread on this subject because its something I'd like to flesh out, suffice to say I don't accept your premise 1.

This seems to flow from premise one, and it partakes somewhat of that premises inherent problems.

1- Assume there is no God.

2- Assume something exists that has meaning (referred to as MT for meaningful thing).

3- By Premise 2, the thing that created MT must have meaning. Likewise its creator must have meaning, it's creator must have meaning, etc. But as there is no God (Assumption 1), this chain will eventually run into a non-conscious creator--I.e. the natural laws of the universe. However, by Premise 1, the natural laws of the universe, being non-conscious, can’t give meaning. Therefore everything created by them can’t have meaning, and everything created by them in turn can’t have meaning, etc. back down the chain of casualty to MT. Therefore, MT can’t have meaning.

4- But this contradicts Assumption 2. Thus we can close assumption two with its negative: Nothing exists that has meaning.

5- Closing the first assumption, we have proven that If there is no God, then nothing exists that has meaning.

Does that capture the essence of your thoughts on this? I'd like to understand what you are saying before I give a serious response to it.

No. I'm going to explore this in a new thread, as this one is already getting overlong, and this assumption about the manner in which teleology is ascribed to the universe has come up before. A sectarian Christian, especially a fundamentalist, would, indeed, by caught in a vice with this, but not LDS.


_________________
“It is a curious thing, do you know,” Cranly said dispassionately, “how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.”

[_Coggins7]

Tautological? That doesn't bode well.

Why? Are not all Swans white birds?

Look, why would you think that meaning must inhere at an absolute universal level or not at all?
None of the thinkers that I admire would consider such a dichotomy as necessary.

Well, perhaps that does not bode well for either you or your illustrious thinkers.

Indeed, it is often pointed out that for every context that has meaning there is a larger context that seems to render the smaller context meaningless.

(Why should making mammal-like spirit babies forever and ever not lose its significance from some larger point of view. Its just some repeatative pattern with nothing larger to gather its meaning from)

What larger point of view?

[_Tarski]

Tautological? That doesn't bode well.

Why? Are not all Swans white birds?

Look, why would you think that meaning must inhere at an absolute universal level or not at all?
None of the thinkers that I admire would consider such a dichotomy as necessary.

Well, perhaps that does not bode well for either you or your illustrious thinkers.

Indeed, it is often pointed out that for every context that has meaning there is a larger context that seems to render the smaller context meaningless.

(Why should making mammal-like spirit babies forever and ever not lose its significance from some larger point of view. Its just some repeatative pattern with nothing larger to gather its meaning from)

What larger point of view?

Anything a being could imagine. After all, your supernatural context is just imagined.
Could there not be a guy come along in heaven and say that there must be something grander and radically outside the universe as known by the gods? He could say it, imagine it. As the logician Rudy Rucker points out, there is no final context (See his gem of a book "Infinity and the Mind").

[_Coggins7]

A better example of question begging mixed with smarmy frivolity could not be imagined.

[_Tarski]

A better example of question begging mixed with smarmy frivolity could not be imagined.

In what way. Are you not aware of the logical problems associated with the notion of the absolute 'all".
There is always a potentially larger context. This is related to the idea that there is no "set of all sets".


You need to look at Robert Nozick's book Philosophical Explanations. Especially the section entitle "transcending limits" on page 594.