Talk:Meaning of life

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I added this item, tracing it to two sources. Specific quotations:

• David Hockey (2004). Developing A Universal Religion

  "Given that there is no detectable purpose pre-designed into life or the universe, then, if we must have one, we must adopt a surrogate. To my mind, the only viable option is to support life’s continual evolution and focus upon helping it to achieve an omnipotent ability. Such a purpose is universal and rational; it is a purpose that will last as long as life itself lasts. It accommodates the whole of life, and shows that we care about more than just our own well-being. It declares that we value life for its own sake and think little about the death that must follow, taking it simply as the price to be paid for living."

  Making life "omnipotent" is impossible so I read it as "as powerful as possible".

• Is this the meaning of life? by John Stewart, 2010, guardian.com

  "Extrapolating the trajectory further would see the continued expansion of the scale of cooperative organisation out into the solar system and beyond. [...] If the trajectory continued in this way, the scale of cooperative organisation would expand throughout the universe, comprised of living processes and intelligence from multiple origins. As it increased in intelligence and scale, its command over matter, energy and other resources would also expand, as would its power to achieve whatever objectives it chose."

John Stewart created http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/; the pdf is also available from https://philpapers.org/archive/ESTTEM.pdf. There is a related Wikiversity course Wikiversity:Intentional Evolution.

Whether this is popular I do not know but there are at least two people above who apparently independently published similar ideas and a third person is the author of the Wikiversity course.

Some objections and reservations to the ideas are available in the comments section of the Guardian article. Multiple comments echo the objection that there is no direction in evolution, a position held by Stephen Jay Gould. An obvious objection to Stewart is that expansion beyond the solar system is impossible given current knowledge. An earlier Stewart's article is The Meaning of Life in a Developing Universe, web-archive.southampton.ac.uk. Dan Polansky (talk) 08:05, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky: I removed the reference to David Hockey's book, which is self-published (WP:SPS) by an author who does not appear to be otherwise notable by Wikipedia standards. We would need a reliable independent secondary source to establish that his views are more worth including than any other David who has used the Internet to self-publish musings about the meaning of life. Biogeographist (talk) 14:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Biogeographist: David Hockey's book has ISBN and is on Amazon[1]. The paper book is self-published by "Stephenson-Hockey Publishing", but does it make a difference? To answer myself, a self-published paper book seems not much better than a web page, per your quoted WP:SPS: "That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources." --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, and that's the only book published by "Stephenson-Hockey Publishing". Case closed, I think! Biogeographist (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section title can be gleaned from the two sources mentioned above in #To help life become as powerful as possible.

• David Hockey (2004). Developing A Universal Religion

  "Surely, as the sole and complete repository of all that is to be learned from within the universe, oB [omnipotent Being arising through evolution of life] wouldn’t just wither and expire. I find that very hard to imagine. But, there might be one last endeavour that it might undertake, some deed that would represent a fitting end for a being of such capability. Conceivably, oB could perhaps arrange matters so that the universe would rebound and restart, creating a new one from the old. Such a scenario might just be possible. Knowing all there is to know might point to a way that this could be done. A complete fantasy to us, yes, but to it? We do not know enough to judge.

  "The additional challenge for oB then, would be to see if it could somehow improve upon the past universe, perhaps slightly modifying one or more parameters, so making it possible for life in the subsequent universe to develop in new ways.

  "This, to me, is a very attractive thought. It opens the possibility of life being truly without end. In this fantasy, life effectively hibernates at the end of each universe, its existence to be reconstructed in the next. Each successive universe is given its initiating parameters in the final act of the oB of the universe past. In this way, we might have an endless, continually varying succession of life-bearing universes. Reincarnations without end.

• Is this the meaning of life? by John Stewart, 2010, guardian.com

  "What might organised life and intelligence do with this increasing power? One possible answer was developed as an attempt to solve the "fine-tuning problem" – the enigma of why the fundamental laws and parameters of the universe seem to be fine-tuned to support the emergence of life, with even slight changes leading to a universe in which life is unlikely to emerge. Supposing the trajectory of evolution eventually produces life and intelligence with sufficient power and knowledge to reproduce the universe itself? This intelligent universe would fine-tune "offspring" universes so that they are even more conducive to the emergence and development of life and intelligence. And so on.

  "According to this scenario, our universe itself is embedded in larger evolutionary processes that shape universes. And life (including humanity) has a function and purpose within these larger processes in the same sense that our eyes have a purpose within the evolutionary processes that have shaped humanity.

To my mind, the above is a sheer wild fantasy, not even science-fiction; I have no idea what it means for a universe to produce another universe as long as causation is within a universe and we have never observed any other causation. And if we consider a universe to collapse and expand again, it is unclear how something within the universe could ever affect parameters of its physical laws. But it is there, in these sources. No petty goal indeed. I hesitate to add this to the page in the mainspace since it sounds so crazy, but there are other crazy items there such as to become immortal using scientific means. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:17, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky: As I mentioned in the previous section above, David Hockey's book is self-published (WP:SPS) and therefore is not a suitable source.

I would note that this topic ("To help life produce another fine-tuned universe") and the previous one that you mentioned above ("To help life become as powerful as possible") are both teleological. I see that someone perceptively included Teleology among the "See also" links in the Fine-tuned universe article (it's also mentioned in the "Religious apologetics" section of that article). Teleology and Ultimate fate of the universe are both also linked in the "See also" section of this article. By the way, teleology is more related to the sense of "meaning of life" as "purpose" rather than as "significance". (On this distinction, see, e.g.: Martela, Frank; Steger, Michael F. (September 2016). "The three meanings of meaning in life: distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance". The Journal of Positive Psychology. 11 (5): 531–545. doi:10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623.)

This stuff reminds me of some of the wild speculations of the technological singularity community. Biogeographist (talk) 14:58, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose of life redirects to Meaning of life and the two terms seem to be often used interchangeably, although the implied metaphorical meanings seem to be slightly different. I understand the implied meaning of "purpose of life" (what is it for?), whereas I am not all that confident about meaning (what does it mean, right, but I am not sure what the word "means" means there.) Technological singularity seems pretty wild and implausible to me as well, not least since Moore's law is running out of steam and improvements of chip technology are limited by atomic level and cannot exponentially grow for a whimsically chosen period of future, but producing and fine-tuning a new universe is on a whole different level of "wild". --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:31, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, to be clear, I didn't mean to imply that it didn't belong in this article; I was just stating as an aside that there are various aspects to "meaning of life", and teleology is one of them. I probably said more than was relevant. Biogeographist (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have reviewed the entire article and made several edits. The subject is complex and this article, rather than taking a freshman undergrad approach to the topic takes a more expansive one, which I appreciate. While I could make it more focused with less detail, I'm leaning toward thinking that would be a mistake. Thus, I'm proposing removing the two tags at the top of the article that were placed there seven months ago. Is there any discussion on this topic?

I agree Spicemix (talk) 15:14, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The description for Mahayana Buddhism in this article is fairly uninformed about Buddhism. I would cite the Buddhist Philosophy article for more information on the topic. Also, Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism both appeared about the same time. The idea that Theravadan beliefs are older than Mahayana beliefs is a recent view. (Recent meaning around the 18th century.) Pfstevenson32 (talk) 13:29, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't "meaning of life" focus strictly on direct interpretations of life purpose, without philosophies that prescribe ways to live. Stoicism for example, guides living rather than answering the existential question directly. NeutralNugget (talk) 09:27, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Thinglandowner (talk) 21:51, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Meaning of life is to expand as far as possible like a virus so that it can't be destroyed, that is why humans exist, to help life expand across space and to live for as long as it can. Making you as a human being a insignificant part of a much larger goal.

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 22:03, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]