Questions tagged [meaning-of-life]
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The "point" to an Atheists existence [closed]
I've recently become Atheist (I am 45).
I've slowly transitioned from my childhood's strong Christian upbringing; through Agnostic; to the point where my rational brain has now extrapolated the ...
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What is the motivation of all individuals to stay alive?
What keeps an individual alive?
If we make the following assumptions:
There is nothing after death, only black. No heaven, no hell, no rebirth.
So we don't take anything with us after death and ...
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Do humans need some agency over the world around them for their lives to have some sense or purpose?
This is a follow up to this question I was told to revise: If all work is automated, what will humans be able to do? After consideration I think that the only way to salvage that question is to break ...
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What are some philosophical arguments for accepting absurdity?
In absurdist philosophy, the Absurd arises out of the fundamental disharmony between the individual's search for meaning and the meaninglessness of the universe. As beings looking for meaning in a ...
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What is the meaning of "meaning of life" and why do people seek it?
One of the oldest questions is "What is the meaning of life?". But what does the concept of "meaning of life" actually mean? What does it mean for something to be the "meaning ...
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Is there a difference between the purpose of life and the meaning of life?
Is there a difference between the purpose of life and the meaning of life? I am asking because most of the time when people ask the classic philosophical question, "What is the meaning of life?&...
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How much suffering is needed for an overall happy life?
Premise: I have not studied Philosophy, and maybe I am out of context.
My question arises from two simple considerations:
Empirically, there seems to be no true happiness without some suffering (...
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Is Sisyphus actually happy or is he content?
I am having trouble understanding what Camus meant when he says "One must imagine Sisyphus is happy" in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus. What does Camus mean by happiness, and how can Sisyphus be happy ...
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What do atheists believe in? (in layman terms)
Issue
I travel quite a bit and am often asked about my religious beliefs. I am atheist. I found it hard for some religious (or spiritual) people (whatever religion) to accept the concept of atheism ...
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How is the meaning of life "recursive"?
I read the following from wikipedia (which I have found quoted in various discussion forums) on the Meaning of Life.
Logical positivists ask: "What is the meaning of life?", "What is the meaning in ...
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In laymen's terms, What is the meaning of 'meaning' in the the question "is there meaning to life"?
Every now and then people talk about whether there is meaning to life, including myself. However recently I have realised I have assumed the definition. My understanding of it is that it is asking ...
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What does it mean to truly fail at life?
What does it mean to truly fail at life? I only ask because I suspect I have. It is not that I am immoral or even inauthentic, but it seems that all I can do is encourage attitudes and behaviours, in ...
user65758
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When someone profits from injustice, is life less meaningful?
Obviously most philosophers (and lay people) would consider injustice morally wrong^, but does it debase the meaning of everyone's life, just the beneficiary, just those that lose out or no-one's?
I'd ...
user67675
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Have philosophers attributed an intrinsic value to life?
I want to know if philosophers have attributed intrinsic value to being alive.
What I mean by this is, does being alive, whether a bug or a human, or a plant itself have meaning just simply by "...
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Will God ever die?
It seems to me that believing in the Big Bang theory and believing in God are not completely mutually exclusive. The Big Bang theory states that from a moment in time, caused by some conditions, the ...
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Isn't there an inherent contradiction in creating your own meaning in life?
I maintain that it doesn't make sense to simply "create your own meaning in life". I have come across this view, which is generally held by most humanists, pretty often, and it doesn't seem to make ...
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What is the purpose of life? Why should we live or even be created? [closed]
I have this empty feeling in life and no matter how many times I try to question myself, the answers don't seem to emerge. I feel like I don't have a purpose to live and consider myself as just one of ...
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Is there a universal, timeless and deeply compelling reason to pursue anything?
Don Jack has a job, a few friends, often goes to the gym and has ambitious dreams of participating in life. Often he finds himself questioning whether he continues to pursue these things. The chain of ...
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How to live the present instead of just surviving?
When I was younger, I always tried to imagine how my future would be, and how it would feel like. I tried to imagine how my relationships would be, how my house would be, what my job would be, etc., ...
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Various Philosopher's Perspective on the Meaning or Purpose of Life
I'm teaching a high-school philosophy club at the school I work at, but the problem is that I haven't had any real formal education in philosophy and have only a novice knowledge of the subject, which ...
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If everything ends one day why don't we end it today?
Is there any doctrine that gives the reason why to wait till the end of the world?
I'm 18 and not depressed.
I am not asking about the purpose of life. I'm asking why should we fulfill the purpose of ...
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Should one learn everything?
I like to learn a lot of things. Like dance , magic tricks , business , physics , geography , chemistry , biology , maths. Just everything. Definitely , you understand that all of these topics take ...
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Why do humans make infants? [closed]
Considering that humans are the most intelligent species on earth, why do humans make infants?
I cannot understand the reason why humans make infants, when
humans can't predict whether the ...
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Why argues Wittgenstein: If someone has solved the problem of life, and believes everything quite easy now, he can see that he is wrong?
Source: The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction (1 ed 2007) by T. Eagleton. p. 50 Middle - p. 51 Top.
We can always ask, after all, why someone should want to
know the meaning of life. Are ...
user8572
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Is our "meaning of life" fundamentally different from that of other animals?
Whatever the "meaning of life" may be (I interpret "meaning" as "purpose" here) is for us, Homo Sapiens, do we assume the "meaning of life" for humans differs fundamentally from the "meaning of life" ...
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What is the purpose of living? [closed]
So I've asked myself this question once and now I'm always trying to find an answer to this question (to be honest I'm not sure if it's possible). So I asked myself: "What is the purpose of ...
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Is 'meaning of life' a recent topic in philosophy?
Thaddeus Metz states in 'Meaning in Life' (2014) that:
And a thorough search by professional philosophers has not been
undertaken long at all, having begun in earnest only in the 1980s or
so.
...
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Can a life have a trivial meaning if it's all there is?
I was thinking about (something like) Nagel's view from nowhere
When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one's
finite—and even downright puny—impact on the world, little of one's
...
user6917
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What's the meaning of the meaning of life? [closed]
Let's say that the meaning of life is X (avoiding evil, fulfilling our desires, obeying God, fleeing the pain of the fear of the death, collecting turtles – anything). What is the meaning of X?
Even ...
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What meant Gilbert Ryle by ‘nothing chatters’?
Source: The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction (1 ed 2007) by T. Eagleton. p. 26 Top.
The sham swamis and phoney sages of our time stand in for
various more conventional gods who have ...
user8572
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Which philosophers have defended both the claim that any attitude can ground meaning and moral error theory?
Which philosophers have defended both the claim that any attitude (a pro attitude to anything) can ground meaning and moral error theory? It may even be the the received view among the population in ...
user67675
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I am struggling to believe there is anything good in humanity: can you help?
I feel neither like a sinner nor sinned against, but I am struggling to see any good in anyone or myself. I am reminded for the 100,000th time of "mankind is a bridge", and that's what we ...
user66760
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Meaning of life, given all my problems have been solved
Except, of course, the problem is that I can't find any meaning in my life.
Suppose I consider the meaning of my life to be
A meaningful life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy ...
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Source of a Russell quote about purpose and meaninglessness
The following quote is attributed to Bertrand Russell:
Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.
The reference for the quote is:
Bertrand Russell, quoted in Rick ...
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Why does striving to achieve my goals make me suffer so?
I am continually confused by my desires. Normally I love being alone, watching movies and eating snacks--just living life. But I don't know what devil has possessed me to desire more, to achieve more, ...
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How one should live a peaceful life knowing this fact that there is no meaning of life? [closed]
So I am going through the philosophical path and I think I am deep into it nowadays.
That old question "What is the purpose of living when we are going to die one day" was eating my mind but ...
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If we forget why do we acquire knowledge which by the way gets outdated?
We learn then we forget. It might seem to be a waste of precious time subtracted from life. Some time ago I started to write every day two things (yes, only two) I learn every day. One column for ...
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Criticisms on Absurdism
Camus' idea to keep the absurd alive by accepting our innate desire for meaning and even pursuing and yet not giving into hope of ever reaching a meaning to life, what he calls the revolt against the ...
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If all life will be annihilated, then why does anything matter?
Source: pp 95 and 101, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (1987) by Prof. Thomas Nagel.
This question assumes 2 below; if 2 is false, then I can understand that 1 is false.
...
user8572
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How does free will give life “meaning”?
Many people have suggested that if we don’t have free will, then life is essentially meaningless because everything we’ve ever thought or done has already been determined. I’m not sure why determinism ...
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Absurdists/Nihilists/Existentialists take on as to why there is no intrinsic meaning to life
So, I just got into absurdism (formally-as a "branch" in philosophy, though I had been thinking in similar terms for a longer period now), and currently am reading "The Myth of Sysiphus" by Albert ...
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What is the philosophical doctrine that most closely corresponds to the listed positions? [closed]
I would like to ask for a possible classification of the following philosophical positions:
Everything is a simple result of natural occurances and as such lacks
any objective value. Even if a god ...
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What're some solutions to the absurd?
Thomas Nagel talks about the absurd as being a necessary side-effect of consciousness, and therefor perhaps something we don't actually want to get rid of. Having said that, I'm curious to what other ...
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The definition of life
The prevailing biology of the modern era describes life as a system. A system is defined a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. The NASA definition of ...
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What is Nagel's definition of 'The Absurd'?
Why does Nagel consider life to be absurd? And correct me if i'm wrong but it feels like he's telling people to live life despite life being absurd? Why does he do that if that's the case?
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If someone lacks the will to live, can there still be anything he is willing to pursue?
After reading some posts such as What is the motivation of all individuals to stay alive? and Why care for anything in life? , we'd like to pose a question in a different (perhaps more accurate) way:
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What to make of "time" and "time rightly spent" in the context of "the purpose of life"?
Friedrich Nietzsche in his Thus spoke Zarathustra told us a man should become a "overman" or "ubermensch" i.e. someone who believes in nihilism of universe (believing that life has ...
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What is the difference, after death, of a 90-year-old and a one-year-old?
If there is a person who died at the age of 90 and a baby who died at one year old, what is the difference between them afterwards? They are both in a state of nothingness, they cannot remember or ...
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Is it sure that there is always room to improve ourselves? [closed]
There is always something that is stuck in my mind. I am afraid that one day... I mean what if one day, we know everything and did everything to improve ourselves and there is no more room for ...
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What is the meaning of sadness?
What does it mean to be sad?
It just occurred to me that this is the (pseudo?) existential question that is making me sad.
user25714