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How does meaning arise in this mechanical universe, where everything comes down to random jostlings of molecules and forces and masses? How is it that life for us humans can acquire the meaning of a story or drama when it seems so unscripted and "unmeant"? Well besides the fact that when humans get together they create meaning thru feelings and language and concepts, meaning is also woven into the fabric of reality itself. The universe is half physical and half mental. The mind we are a part of infuses the stuff of Being with properties and qualia and values that cannot be abstracted or reduced down to nothing. Beauty and desire and evil and terror? They're all THERE as much as matter is. When a storm hits the power and awe of that state actually exists and imparts to my soul the meaning of chance and wildness and danger. It is not just a random collision of inanimate forces. Reality is a dynamic play of metaphors and concepts and transcendent states creating new meaning at every turn. Everything is literally alive with and expressive of the deepest levels of the psyche. There is no escape from feeling at home in this soulscape of dreamful luck and grueling fate.

While I agree with the general thrust of dualism and anit-reductionism expressed, I see no reason to believe that meaning resides "out there" in any sense comparable to matter. All meaning is only significance we assign...in the fullest sense of freedom of choice. This is evident in our ability, perhaps rarely employed, to reevaluate meaning and determine what we find to be significant.

(Nov 25, 2016 07:52 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]How does meaning arise in this mechanical universe, where everything comes down to random jostlings of molecules and forces and masses?

Computers or digital technology are a testament to how a bunch of on/off states, the interactions of electronic components and their relational structure, can eventually add up to "visual / aural signs of significance" at a higher level as represented via monitor, speakers, or whatever. Of course, those systematic arrangements and their "meaning" in terms of the machine responses / activity they trigger are still in philosophical-zombie land till inputted to a human brain / body. [Symbol grounding problem]

Quote:Well besides the fact that when humans get together they create meaning thru feelings and language and concepts, meaning is also woven into the fabric of reality itself. The universe is half physical and half mental. The mind we are a part of infuses the stuff of Being with properties and qualia and values that cannot be abstracted or reduced down to nothing. Beauty and desire and evil and terror? They're all THERE as much as matter is.

A (metaphysical) material world -- normally wallowing around in "not even nothingness" -- would thereby require consciousness to manifest it, and intellect to understand it. So it's not surprising that the extrospective version of the world is chock full of concept-aided discernments and that its individuated, visual objects even possess the qualitative meaning of "color".

But when shifting from that external side of experience to the abstract descriptions of some matter-monism doctrine or scientific realism, the assorted qualia and the everyday things disappear. The language, diagrams, etc still express technical concepts and the distinctions of entities. IOW, the phenomena are gone but the furniture of an intellect still remains in that abstract representation of the world. So those doctrines / approaches still don't get to a truly mind-less manner of existing. Only death or non-consciousness delivers those goods in terms of returning us to the meaningless-ness and "absence of everything" of the mindless realm.

Quote:Computers or digital technology are a testament to how a bunch of on/off states, the interactions of electronic components and their relational structure, can eventually add up to "visual / aural signs of significance" at a higher level as represented via monitor, speakers, or whatever. Of course, those systematic arrangements and their "meaning" in terms of the machine responses / activity they trigger are still in philosophical-zombie land till inputted to a human brain / body. [Symbol grounding problem]    

Does matter have meaning?  Youths can know thousands of facts, without having an understanding of their meaning, and if thinking beings can live without a sense of meaning, surely, matter can exist without meaning.

What a computer can do has meaning why?

"mindless realm"? What is that? What is consciousness? Is there intelligence without consciousness?

(Nov 25, 2016 07:52 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]How does meaning arise in this mechanical universe, ?

i enjoyed reading your post soo much i am at odds to try and press a thumb tack into the map that has been laid out in my mind.
that said... i ponder the construct of all things being connected so the action of the self is always connected to other things... thus in action you change and alter all things and in all things changing so are you altered.
mathamaticaly speaking you can not exist without that which exists and has therefore brought you into physical existance..
many many years ago i divided the world into 2 basic forms.
1. the process of movement
2. the pre event or after event of the movement
all things are divided into "travel" or "stationary" and thus so is the ego and self, the point where attainment of self definition is derived either from one or the other(as a basic formation of self actualisation).
it came to me that those who i respected to attain great skill all had one thing in common.
they did not measure themselves against others to derive personal attainment.
instead they measured themself against themself and thus in so sought to always better themselves.
this in its act defines the definition of "travel" and thus in so doing seek to continually stay in movement as a prefered state.
while others would seek to place themself above, before, behind(comparative liniar self actualisation of worth) as being comparative to and in so, would seek to jump the queue and simply fool themselves by any means nessicery to label themselves as better.
soo how can meanig exist ?
2 ways
1 by maintaining movement
2 by defining a single point in time

Post note i just realised that this may be read different to how i mean it completely...
in that we all do both of these things and we all seek to define ourselfs by both in many forms...
however for self fulfilment when you ask someone to break down the actual thing that makes them happy.. to some it is the game, to others it is the concept of being the winner.
i attempt to not judge either as i recognise we all seek to be both of those and need to attain both to gain balance.. i am speaking slightly more on a philisophical basis.

I do workshops on healthy living and that is a good goal to have. We address positive methods of using our minds to reduce pain, motivate ourselves, make decisions, communicate well, and we address the need for exercise and good nutrition. Are any of these part of your life as you contemplate life meaning ways to improve your life?

I must confess an ulterior motive for embracing dualism beside just that meaning becomes indigenous to our reality. A burr in my saddle for awhile is how to explain paranormal phenomena as well. Seems to me dualism can account for the simultaneous physical and psychical nature of paranormal phenomena ranging from ghosts and esp to ufo encounters and even bigfoot. If mind and matter were at base simply one and the same, as expressed in Jung's idea of the unus mundus or "one world", then such phenomena make more sense than in a purely physicalist or materialist scenario of reality. Mind NOT confined to being a product of brain activity but itself a universal dimension including and transcending the realm of matter and energy.

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.”
― Erwin Schrödinger

First-stage commonsense folk arguably lacked the notion that "outside" was an indirect representation inside them (or whatever) rather than direct contact with a cosmos. So minus the drawn out non-immediacy of our later inferences and speculations, or prior to our acquiring the conclusions / beliefs issued by such activity as later handed-down traditions...

The "external world" just is the extrospective half of experience -- what is intersubjective or available to the public, and what behaves independently of the will and wishes of an individual observer. With the latter corresponding to the introspective half of experience as far as the observer's personal thoughts and imaginations go (featuring only private access).

One of the early (if not the earliest) brands of neutral monism recognized that what that public world (extrospection) and the private domain (introspection) had in common was that they both relied upon experience to manifest or show them. Thus they could be considered different contexts for the same monistic principle. Wherein experience itself was treated as the neutral element, whose affairs could be misconceived as modifications of a "mental substance" in the inner context and misconceived as modifications of a "material substance" in the outer context.

But before neutral monism...

An experience-independent manner of existence was abstracted from the extrospective side, often depicted as a "matter" monism, but sometimes as an intellectual monism (also devoid of phenomenal or qualitative properties). Phenomenal properties could also be merged with intellectual properties to constitute a "mind" monism (or a more complete brand of mind, rather than just intellect alone). In turn, mind alternatively narrowed down from a general concept to referring to the particular perceptions and thoughts of an individual. A combination of matter monism and mind monism yields dualism.

Even after its introduction, neutral monism never acquired the popularity of the others. Long before the term was actually coined, Kant offered an unknown or empty placeholder for something prior in rank to the two halves of experience that had been interpreted by other philosophies as "mental" (abstracted from the nature of the "in" side) and material (abstracted from the nature of the "out" side).

Immanuel Kant: No doubt I, as represented by the internal sense in time [introspective], and objects in space outside me [extrospective], are two specifically different [classes] of phenomena, but they are not therefore conceived as different things [substances]. The transcendental object, which forms the foundation of external phenomena, and the other, which forms the foundation of our internal intuition, is therefore neither matter, nor a thinking being by itself, but simply an unknown cause of phenomena which supply to us the empirical concept of both. --CPR, Müller translation

Since experience factors so much in the above, a quasi-related issue:

WHY GEORGE BERKELEY BELIEVED EXPERIENCE CAN HAVE NO CRITERIA OF TRUTH

Immanuel Kant: [...] truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, [but] experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion;

whereas with us [i.e., the Kantian school], space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein.

[...] up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. --Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

Immanuel Kant: The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth."

The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth." --Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics

CC you totally left me in the dark and my opinion of myself as a reasonably intelligent person is being devastated. This is in a way totally awesome, because of an explanation of mind control I listened to last night. Could there be a better way to devastate our sense of personal power than to convince us can not know truth because truth is some kind of a universal out there and not our individual experience of life? Could all that talk of truth happen without language? Forget it. It is overwhelming and damaging, and I am going to turn to the animal within and rely on it for my concept of reality.

I will choose to be pragmatic. I don't know if a rock has a purpose, but for all living things, the purpose of life is to stay alive and reproduce, and in some cases assure the next generation can do the same. We can observe that modern humans have evolved beyond the controls of nature because they have a collective pool of knowledge, they can pass on from one generation to the next. This is likely what resulted in modern man surviving and Neanderthals being absorbed into our gene pool. While that pool of knowledge is made manifest through nature(our brains), what is made manifested is beyond nature. We perceive a dualism because language has separated us from nature.

Quote:No doubt I, as represented by the internal sense in time [introspective], and objects in space outside me [extrospective], are two specifically different [classes] of phenomena, but they are not therefore conceived as different things [substances]. The transcendental object, which forms the foundation of external phenomena, and the other, which forms the foundation of our internal intuition, is therefore neither matter, nor a thinking being by itself, but simply an unknown cause of phenomena which supply to us the empirical concept of both. --CPR, Müller translation

In other terminology, we can perhaps infer that the noumenal or externally transcendent is but the flipside of the archetypal or internally transcendent. It is the nature of this Other to redefine us in our essence. It is both a domain of transdimensional exploration and a level of mystical collective being. We ourselves become aware of our own double nature as physical/psychical beings. We are matter and consciousness at once--fundamentally united at root as the imaginative mythmaking experience.

“All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
― Joseph Campbell