What is meaningless?

[Forty Two]

To say lack of meaning is meaning is like saying atheism is a religion or bald is a hair color.

Nothingness lies coiled at the heart of Being. - JP Sartre.

Whatever nihilism holds it holds. But, for me, the existence of a thing is not the same as it's meaning. What I think people mean by "meaning" in things is the express or implied significance of the thing.

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

— Spiderman

Can you give me an example of a meaningless thing?

All things lack inherent or objective meaning.

Anything can have subjective meaning to a brain.

[Jason]

I wonder.. if it was possible to reset your brain to a factory-new specs with no associations at all would it all be meaningless? Would a poke with a sharp stick always mean pain as your mind developed or could it mean something else.. like amusement? Maybe developmental psychology has something to say on the matter.. I think certain stimuli will always mean the same thing - a poke with a sharp stick will always mean pain.

[Forty Two]

I wonder.. if it was possible to reset your brain to a factory-new specs with no associations at all would it all be meaningless? Would a poke with a sharp stick always mean pain as your mind developed or could it mean something else.. like amusement? Maybe developmental psychology has something to say on the matter.. I think certain stimuli will always mean the same thing - a poke with a sharp stick will always mean pain.

It absolutely can mean something else. The only reason a caress is pleasurable rather than painful is because your brain interprets the caress as pleasure. A bat to the head would be pleasure if your brain said so. A rock doesn't feel pain when you hit it, or pleasure. Why? No brain.

Your finger skin doesn't feel pain. A pin-prick touches a nerve, and the nerve transmits signals to the brain which your brain then creates a pain reaction from. The pain reaction is in your brain, not your finger. Your brain uses the information to tell "you" where the pain impulse originated (your fingertip). But, it's your brain that feels the pain, not your finger. Not so much "feeling the pain," but creating the feeling of pain.

A brain with synesthesia can smell colors, hear colors, and see smells. Why? Because it's all created in the brain anyway.

[Jason]

Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion that pain is a learned interpretation of neutral stimuli? How do you suppose we learn that particular stimuli are painful and others pleasurable? Why is there such a confluence of interpretation in development? Surely we should see it in nature at the least - animals biting off limbs for the sheer pleasure of it. We do not. Why?

[Forty Two]

Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion that pain is a learned interpretation of neutral stimuli? How do you suppose we learn that particular stimuli are painful and others pleasurable? Why is there such a confluence of interpretation in development? Surely we should see it in nature at the least - animals biting off limbs for the sheer pleasure of it. We do not. Why?

]

I never said it was a "learned" interpretation. I said it was a function of your brain. This is elementary. by pushing the right button in your brain, you can be made to think someone is touching your finger or foot. The feelings -- all the senses -- occur in our brains. Your eyes don't see. Your brain does. Your eyes just receive light which hits the rods and cones and depending on the manner of hitting the rods and cones signals are sent to the brain and your brain creates the picture. However, the brain can be stimulated directly to "see" things.

I never said we "learn" that some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable. I said that it's the brain that creates that feeling, and not your finger.

I would think we don't see animals biting off their limbs for the sheer pleasure of it because it affords a significant evolutionary disadvantage. The brain evolved like any other organ. Why do we have two hands? Why do we have nerves at all? We have them because they were survival and reproductive advantages all along the way. Interpretation of a pin prick as painful is advantageous.

[Jason]

Perhaps if a brain could exist perfectly disconnected from all reality then it could conceive of things which, in perfect isolation, have no meaning. But as soon as it exists in an environment in which cause and effect are realised the relation between apprehension of a thing and the stimuli of that thing would become unavoidably apparent and consistent from one brain to the next. A poke with a sharp stick - which I'm using as shorthand for type of signal interpreted by the brain from such a stimuli - will always be painful.

Perhaps if the brain could apprehend objects in an environment in stasis then the objects could remain meaningless so long as the environment in which they are apprehended remains in stasis. As soon as cause and effect is allowed to act on them, however, they have meaning in the apprehension as the stimuli is processed in relation to the apprehension of the object.

[Jason]

I never said we "learn" that some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable. I said that it's the brain that creates that feeling, and not your finger.

So from the perspective of a thing which exists outside of reality all things are inherently meaningless. Wonderful. Want to go back to the existence of 'nothing' or shall we stay here?

[Forty Two]

Perhaps if a brain could exist perfectly disconnected from all reality then it could conceive of things which, in perfect isolation, have no meaning. But as soon as it exists in an environment in which cause and effect are realised the relation between apprehension of a thing and the stimuli of that thing would become unavoidably apparent and consistent from one brain to the next. A poke with a sharp stick - which I'm using as shorthand for type of signal interpreted by the brain from such a stimuli - will always be painful.

That, however, is demonstrably not true, as the brain can interpret one stimuli as something other than what is "normal." A sound can be interpreted by the brain as a smell. A pin prick can be interpreted as orgasm inducing, rather than painful. Pain and pleasure doesn't exist outside the brain.

Perhaps if the brain could apprehend objects in an environment in stasis then the objects could remain meaningless so long as the environment in which they are apprehended remains in stasis. As soon as cause and effect is allowed to act on them, however, they have meaning in the apprehension as the stimuli is processed in relation to the apprehension of the object.

What meaning? An asteroid hits another asteroid, and the forces act to cause the two to react -- whether break apart or change vector, etc. That's not "meaning." Cause and effect doesn't necessarily have any meaning. It just is. Gravity causes rivers to run downhill. Meaning? Nothing. It just is a bunch of molecules doing what the forces of nature require. A brain might think it's a nice river and be quite fond of it. It may have "meaning" to the brain, because maybe the brain grew up near the river and the brain gets all weepy thinking about the river. As such, that brain may find lots of meaning in the river. To General Tsao over in the Tsing Tao province of China, the river doesn't mean dick.

All meaning is meaning TO someone. There is no "meaning" inherent in a river or two asteroids hitting each other. They are just bunches of atoms.

[Forty Two]

I never said we "learn" that some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable. I said that it's the brain that creates that feeling, and not your finger.

So from the perspective of a thing which exists outside of reality all things are inherently meaningless. Wonderful. Want to go back to the existence of 'nothing' or shall we stay here?

Who said anything about "outside of reality?"

What are you arguing against?

Look - meaning is entirely perspective. Only brains have perspective. Only brains make value judgments. Only brains have opinions. The "meaning" of a diamond is whatever a brain says it is. No brain. No meaning. Just existence.

Existence exists. That's axiomatic.

Whether what exists has meaning is entirely subjective. If there is nothing to give something meaning, then nothing has meaning. If there is something that can give something else meaning, and it does, then it has that meaning to that something.

[Jason]

Perhaps if a brain could exist perfectly disconnected from all reality then it could conceive of things which, in perfect isolation, have no meaning. But as soon as it exists in an environment in which cause and effect are realised the relation between apprehension of a thing and the stimuli of that thing would become unavoidably apparent and consistent from one brain to the next. A poke with a sharp stick - which I'm using as shorthand for type of signal interpreted by the brain from such a stimuli - will always be painful.

That, however, is demonstrably not true, as the brain can interpret one stimuli as something other than what is "normal." A sound can be interpreted by the brain as a smell. A pin prick can be interpreted as orgasm inducing, rather than painful. Pain and pleasure doesn't exist outside the brain.

You mean to introduce dysfunction in the apparatus as proof of the arbitrary nature of the interpretation of stimuli? You're simply moving the goalposts, and I don't think you even realize it. Uniformity of interpretation is not the point. The point is the unavoidable nature of being in time, the inescapable nature of cause and effect, that a thing is assigned meaning in its very apprehension. I don't care if I fart loudly and you smell calculus. That's irrelevant. You apprehended the sound of the fart and assigned it the meaning of the smell of calculus. I'm not arguing for a uniformity of grammar in stimulus interpretation, I'm making the point in apprehending a thing, whether it be as complex and removed from consciousness as a rock, or as immediate as the electrical impulse sent to your brain as a response to being poked with a stick, you assign meaning in the very process of apprehending. It is the nature of being conscious in time. I don't care whether the flavour of your qualia to a certain stimuli is the smell of daffodils or the sound of thunder.

The point your making is that yes that's nice - we create meaning it doesn't exist on its own. To which I respond fucking duh the only consciousness that can exist without assigning meaning to every last bit of its environment exists would necessarily exist in stasis - removed from time. So.. again.. want to go back to the existence of nothingness? Or maybe read a philosophy book or two.

[Jason]

I never said we "learn" that some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable. I said that it's the brain that creates that feeling, and not your finger.

So from the perspective of a thing which exists outside of reality all things are inherently meaningless. Wonderful. Want to go back to the existence of 'nothing' or shall we stay here?

Who said anything about "outside of reality?"

What are you arguing against?

Look - meaning is entirely perspective. Only brains have perspective. Only brains make value judgments. Only brains have opinions. The "meaning" of a diamond is whatever a brain says it is. No brain. No meaning. Just existence.

Existence exists. That's axiomatic.

Whether what exists has meaning is entirely subjective. If there is nothing to give something meaning, then nothing has meaning. If there is something that can give something else meaning, and it does, then it has that meaning to that something.

Wow.. just.. wow. Maybe metaphysics is too advanced for you. I suggest sticking trying to stick to ethics.

[Jason]

Short answer: Meaninglessness exists in the same way nothingness exists - useful concepts. In reality everything has meaning - it is a prerequisite of existence as a conscious entity in time.

[Brian Peacock]

...not to mention a concept deeply rooted in our relationship with language, our ability to represent the world through language forms, and our apparent desire to communicate that to others.

To say lack of meaning is meaning is like saying atheism is a religion or bald is a hair color.

Nothingness lies coiled at the heart of Being. - JP Sartre.

Whatever nihilism holds it holds. But, for me, the existence of a thing is not the same as it's meaning. What I think people mean by "meaning" in things is the express or implied significance of the thing.

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

— Spiderman

Can you give me an example of a meaningless thing?

All things lack inherent or objective meaning.

Anything can have subjective meaning to a brain.

Accepting your qualification as relevant, and indeed necessary in terms of what you've said so far, this still did not answer the question nor touch on what I have been saying or which led me to start the topic. Perhaps it can be summed up thus:

• Nihilists find meaning in the lack of inherent or objective meaning of things.

For the nihilist, the declaration that things have no inherent or objective meaning carries some inherent or objective significance as, to them, it is held to reflect a kind of truth about the world - a world in which all things have no inherent or objective meaning. If this wasn't significant to nihilists then there would be no motivation to declare it as reflecting a kind of truth about the world, and isn't this kind of declarative truth statement essentially meaningful?

[JimC]

Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion that pain is a learned interpretation of neutral stimuli? How do you suppose we learn that particular stimuli are painful and others pleasurable? Why is there such a confluence of interpretation in development? Surely we should see it in nature at the least - animals biting off limbs for the sheer pleasure of it. We do not. Why?

]

I never said it was a "learned" interpretation. I said it was a function of your brain. This is elementary. by pushing the right button in your brain, you can be made to think someone is touching your finger or foot. The feelings -- all the senses -- occur in our brains. Your eyes don't see. Your brain does. Your eyes just receive light which hits the rods and cones and depending on the manner of hitting the rods and cones signals are sent to the brain and your brain creates the picture. However, the brain can be stimulated directly to "see" things.

I never said we "learn" that some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable. I said that it's the brain that creates that feeling, and not your finger.

I would think we don't see animals biting off their limbs for the sheer pleasure of it because it affords a significant evolutionary disadvantage. The brain evolved like any other organ. Why do we have two hands? Why do we have nerves at all? We have them because they were survival and reproductive advantages all along the way. Interpretation of a pin prick as painful is advantageous.

Your final paragraph offers a path to a pragmatic view of meaning that, while still subjective, is universal enough not to be a uniquely personal meaning. Response to stimuli which have been evolved within a species, and all the cognition that processes the information and the response, contains a meaning that applies to all members of the species in relation to a given environmental stimulus.

[pErvinalia]

Short answer: Meaninglessness exists in the same way nothingness exists - useful concepts. In reality everything has meaning - it is a prerequisite of existence as a conscious entity in time.

That's a fair point, but others (and even you I think) have made the point that nihilism is concerned with objectivity, not subjectivity. So in terms of nihilism, you can be a conscious entity and still believe in the meaninglessness of everything.