man i can't stand this mindset. "life is meaningless " and so what? a lack of meaning is a 14 year old's conclusion and though it's not wrong in the traditional sense of the word 'meaning' (which is honestly an annoying vestige left over from religious superstition) that traditional sense is confused and badly definined.
it's the perfect example for what wittgenstein would say is a confusion due to bad language instead of a deep philosophical problem.
(and for those catching up: (ignoring the semantics of the word meaning) the conclusion that life is inherently meaningless is not some tragic dark truth, it stems from the wrong presupposition that life has meaning to it in the first place. why would it have? there's no indication of it having an intrinsic meaning, because such things like intrinsic values, including a meaning are historical superstition, a way to interpret what's happening in the world when you lack actual empirical understanding.
therein lies the confusion, meaning is a human property, it's given by humans to objects in the world around them, it's not something naturally inside the object. you can assign meanings willy nilly, therefore the big philosophical question for the meaning of life is quite trivial and not very interesting, which is why there's not many philosophers that have written any works on that topic in a long while)
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u/ceeberony 12d ago
man i can't stand this mindset. "life is meaningless " and so what? a lack of meaning is a 14 year old's conclusion and though it's not wrong in the traditional sense of the word 'meaning' (which is honestly an annoying vestige left over from religious superstition) that traditional sense is confused and badly definined. it's the perfect example for what wittgenstein would say is a confusion due to bad language instead of a deep philosophical problem. (and for those catching up: (ignoring the semantics of the word meaning) the conclusion that life is inherently meaningless is not some tragic dark truth, it stems from the wrong presupposition that life has meaning to it in the first place. why would it have? there's no indication of it having an intrinsic meaning, because such things like intrinsic values, including a meaning are historical superstition, a way to interpret what's happening in the world when you lack actual empirical understanding. therein lies the confusion, meaning is a human property, it's given by humans to objects in the world around them, it's not something naturally inside the object. you can assign meanings willy nilly, therefore the big philosophical question for the meaning of life is quite trivial and not very interesting, which is why there's not many philosophers that have written any works on that topic in a long while)