The Serpent's Wisdom

I just posted this as a response to a thread in philosophy regarding the meaning of life.

Examine for a moment the idea of "meaning."

The definition of "meaning" frequently involves the words 'reference' and 'significance.' I would add to this 'purpose.' When most of us ask, "What is the meaning of life," what we are really asking is, "What is the purpose and/or significance of existence."

"Meaning" is a neurological strategy that helps us to categorize the things we encounter. A rock we pick up while walking through the woods has many different possible meanings: as something that will hurt if we step on it, as something we might pick up and use as a weapon, as something that might look unique or pretty (or ugly), as something we can't eat, as something that might be valuable if it has precious ore, etc.

These meanings depend on context.

The universe itself does not occur in "context." The universe itself, or even just that cross-section of it that comprises everything an individual encounters, is in a way a singular whole, but it is not something which can be boiled down to a singular purpose or significance.

Now, consider that humans are the first animals ever to contemplate the "big picture." It is therefore not something which evolution has equipped us to ponder. The "big picture" is obviously important, and so we 'should' be able to assign some tangible sort of significance to it, but our neurological strategies fail to find one.

I will speculate that this failure triggers in turn a reaction in the "alarm!" portion of the limbic system, which is a part of the brain that assesses the level of threat posed by anything we encounter. This could well explain the experience of "existential angst," wherein pondering the meaninglessness of existence and failing to produce an answer causes a response of fear and dread.

As humans we have devised a strategy for coping with this. We will either recall, or devise, a cognitive answer designed to quiet the limbic system's fear/dread response. This cognitive solution explains how myths are born.

aarondarling posed this link and asked for opinions about it. Mine were strong enough to make a post about.

what is postmodernism?

I agreed with the author up to the last point. It is a common misconception about postmodernism that it holds truth to be subjective and relative.

Truth is not, is never, has never been, subjective.

Rather, postmodernism recognizes the fact that people do not interact directly with the objective world. Instead people construct a neurological holograph of the world and interact with that. This holograph is made of semiotic elements -- symbols with meaning.

The absolute is not denied -- only our direct knowledge and experience of it.

For each of us, Truth must be evaluated in terms of "truth statements," or collections of symbols with meaning that relate to truth.

Truth statements are relative. The so-called relativism of postmodernism comes from the fact that a postmodernist would say, "my truth statements conflict with your truth statements," instead of, "I'm right and you're wrong." The postmodernist recognizes the limitations of truth statements and so avoids evaluating them as "right" or "wrong."

So, WRT religious, philosophical, and metaphysical statements: statements of this nature tend to be highly subjective -- whether or not there is an objective truth out there to know. But the one who wants to break religious truth down to a series of statements of fundamental truth will reject the idea that statements are inherently subjective, and will, like the author of this article, display a total inability to distinguish between the assertion that statements are subjective, and the assertion that there is no objective truth.