Is life a meaningful concept if Metaphysical Naturalism is true?

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Is life a meaningful concept if Metaphysical Naturalism is true?
 
GEddie said:
It is our aliveness that makes any other meaning discernible. If you were dead, no meaning would be accessible to you.

ICXC NIKA.
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That much is certainly true, but what meaning would life have if metaphysical naturalism were true? What is life or death if there is no God? Everything would be just fluctuations of energy; no life no death. Such concepts would be meaningless.
 
ChainBreaker said:
That much is certainly true, but what meaning would life have if metaphysical naturalism were true? What is life or death if there is no God? Everything would be just fluctuations of energy; no life no death. Such concepts would be meaningless.
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Not really. The life in our human bodies enables us to have a mind, which enables the discovery of meaning. Once we have become victims of death, none of that will matter.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
Not really. The life in our human bodies enables us to have a mind, which enables the discovery of meaning. Once we have become victims of death, none of that will matter.

ICXC NIKA
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How can we discover meaning if there is no meaning?
 
GEddie said:
Meanings, in such a worldview, would be creations of our minds.

ICXC NIKA
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But there cannot be meaning in such a worldveiw. In fact how could our imaginations contain meaning if the universe has no meaning?
 
ChainBreaker said:
That much is certainly true, but what meaning would life have if metaphysical naturalism were true? What is life or death if there is no God? Everything would be just fluctuations of energy; no life no death. Such concepts would be meaningless.
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I object to your idea that your life only had meaning if it is granted eternal status.
I am convinced, you life has meaning, and does not need eternal gratification for it to have meaning.
 
StrawberryJam said:
I object to your idea that your life only had meaning if it is granted eternal status.
I am convinced, you life has meaning, and does not need eternal gratification for it to have meaning.
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Thats only because you perceive meaning. I am asking what meaning would meaning have if metaphysical naturalism is true. Would it not be just another fairy tale for grown ups? Its irrational for you to protest that my life has meaning; how dare you.
 
ChainBreaker said:
Thats only because you perceive meaning. I am asking what meaning would meaning have if metaphysical naturalism is true. Would it not be just another fairy tale for grown ups? Its irrational for you to protest that my life has meaning; how dare you.
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You must allow me to laugh for a change here. Thank you for that.
 
In the absence of a divine being to assign meaning to physical reality, meaning would then be whatever our second-order minds assign to it.

ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
In the absence of a divine being to assign meaning to physical reality, meaning would then be whatever our second-order minds assign to it.

ICXC NIKA.
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And what is it exactly that is being assigned if not just more fluctuations of meaningless energy?
 
If our world, bodies, life, and minds, consist only of patterns of energy, why be concerned with meaning at all?

ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
If our world, bodies, life, and minds, consist only of patterns of energy, why be concerned with meaning at all?

ICXC NIKA.
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A little disappointed by this reply.

Would you not take gratitude for all the wonderful things you have been given or gave in life if you did not have anything more for assurance that you could or would be lawn fertilizer?
 
If naturalism were true, then I would conclude something similar to what Sartre believed: that man is therefore teleologically free; that he is free to determine his own purpose and meaning. I would also agree with Sartre (and Camus) that such a state of affairs is hardly a good thing and actually quite distressing.

The problem with the premise we are asked to accept for the sake of argument is that I think it happens to be among the least reasonable premises you can adopt. Naturalism reminds me of nominalism in that it seems like a very clear path to take at first, but as you continue along, the path grows ever more narrow and difficult, and you must continuously abandon things you at first never would have agreed to abandon. After a while you will have abandoned reason and truth itself.
 
StrawberryJam said:
A little disappointed by this reply.

Would you not take gratitude for all the wonderful things you have been given or gave in life if you did not have anything more for assurance that you could or would be lawn fertilizer?
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Gratitude to whom?

I am very appreciative of my mind, my embodiedness, my aliveness. Aliveness is its own reward. To my mind, any “meaning” would be a priori beside the point.

Now, **if **Life Everlasting were somehow out there to be found, it would behoove us to discover its rules ie, “meaning”. But if it is not to be had, then biological human life remains it’s own reward, no meaning required.

IMNAAHO!!

ICXC NIKA.
 
GEddie said:
Gratitude to whom?

I am very appreciative of my mind, my embodiedness, my aliveness. Aliveness is its own reward. To my mind, any “meaning” would be a priori beside the point.

Now, **if **Life Everlasting were somehow out there to be found, it would behoove us to discover its rules ie, “meaning”. But if it is not to be had, then biological human life remains it’s own reward, no meaning required.

IMNAAHO!!

ICXC NIKA.
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Are you sure, Eddie?
“It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.
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It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
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― John Stuart Mill, * Utilitarianism*
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*%between% *
 
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