Comment by gchamonlive
8 months ago
It's because meaning isn't essential to the universe, but derived from human experience. The universe needs us just as much as we need the universe. Actually this separation is an artifact of reductionism we have to let go.
In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
Nothing is essential to the universe, the universe does not need us. We need it exactly as it is today, and that is it. Everything else is stuff we made up to understand the universe weakly, or to cope with life. This is not nihilism, but meaning to life is meaningful only in the context of humans and has nothing to do with universe needing us.
If we’re gonna talk trip philosophy, then:
This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both.
You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
It's a nice thought. If an idea could be encoded... that each persons idea of a concept, viewed in the right dimensionality, has a rough, similar outline. At least, that's my interpretation of your idea. :-) Your comment either triggered, or made me notice an ongoing shift in my worldview. Thank you!
> But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind.
As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
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I don't believe ideas are eternal.
Their instantiations are based on either some physical hardwiring (instincts) or cultivated though observations. If an idea has the appearance of being eternal, it's because either there's a process in place for that physical structure to be replicated though time, or because new minds are making essentially the same observations.
I suspect even some of the most "eternal" of ideas are less so than you might think. If we were capable of communicating with a human from 100,000 years ago, in detail, how many identical ideas would we share? I think it would be very few, given that many people's ideas already differ subtlety even when they live in similar environments.
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The only way we see ideas manifest is in a physical world, and via minds (predominantly human at that). While ideas are not made out of atoms, they exist within atoms (brains, computers, sound, books and so on). We can imagine ideas exist on their own independent of their manifestation - but its just that - an imagination.
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I have nothing more to add but... Yep, spot on!
Meaning seems to be both — otherwise we wouldn’t mind it.