LukeFromPhilly t1_ixamzmi wrote on November 22, 2022 at 12:40 AM

It's not clear to me what the psychiatrists position on meaning actually is. He says that it's a human construct; does that mean that we invented it? He later says that it's irrelevant after prescribing that the patient use his intuitions alone to resolve the issue. Why give him advice on how to resolve the issue if it's irrelevant? Is the psychiatrist really a nihilist with respect to meaning or merely a relativist and an intuitionist.

I think you're very apt to point out that it's not surprising that our intuitions will often contradict each other. The solution is clearly that we can't rely on intuitions as foundational truths. If two intuitions contradict each other then at least one of them must be unreliable.

Does that mean that we are epistemically (as opposed to metaphysically) hopeless with respect to meaning? Well only if we accept that intuitions are the only candidate for foundational knowledge about meaning. In this piece the phrase "feelings and intuitions" is used but I think that they're importantly different. One can have an intuition that A is true and also a different intuition which logically implies that A is false. But a feeling is actually nothing like a belief in this respect. Feelings can't contradict each other in this way. They can be inconsistent in the sense that yesterday I was sad and today I'm happy. They can even be inconsistent in what once made me happy may one day make me sad, but there is no actual contradiction here.

I would argue that it is only through examining what feels meaningful to us that we can learn what is really at root meaningful to us. To the extent that our beliefs about what is meaningful to us are dependent upon other beliefs then they're going to be dependent on those other beliefs in specific ways and knowing in which ways they are dependent upon other beliefs will help us to further abstract those beliefs away and get closer to the root of what is meaningful to us.

I would differentiate what is meaningful from what is good generally speaking and say that meaning is a specific type of good. To the argument about instrumental vs intrinsic good I would say that I think we both agree that there are instrumental goods and I think we both know what we're talking about when we use that term. Could it be that all goods are instrumental? Not unless you believe that there is a never ending infinite chain of good things. Since I find that implausible I have to say that there probably are goods which are not instrumental and I would call those intrinsic goods.

Now are the good and the meaningful specifically "human constructions". I'm not sure I know exactly what that means but let's suppose that they are. Does knowing that make a difference? Perhaps what is meaningful to me is purely a product of the culture I was raised in. So what? If that's really true then that means that fundamentally the type of entity that I am is culturally determined. Does that make it any less relevant? If so, why?

Michael23-Hyh OP t1_ixjnbv5 wrote on November 23, 2022 at 10:56 PM

Thanks for your detailed reply and thoughts!

I think by "irrelevant" as used the in the context "to put it more simply, logic and human intuitions are, at the most basic level, irrelevant," I just mean that logic is not inherently related to human intuitions. I do not mean the question of "meaning of life" is irrelevant. I actually do not take a stance on whether the question "what is the meaning of life" is relevant/important.

The psychiatrist's basic point (and my current position on the issue) is that: "meaning of life" is a human construct. Being a human construct, its definition inherently depends upon each and every individual's different human intuitions. Since different people have different definitions of "meaning of life," there's no hope at arriving at a universal answer to the question---so there is no thing in the universe that is objectively meaningful and have intrinsic good/value to all humans. That is my first point. The second point is that because the whole concept of "meaning" is very much an intuition of the human mind, and human intuitions are not always logically consistent, may be we should not trust logic so much as a tool to arrive at an answer to the question, "what is the meaning of MY life." If two pieces of intuitions are logically contradictory, it is not because one piece of intuition is "true" while the other piece is "faulty." Both intuitions are valid---we should not extrapolate intuitions too much using logic. Because human constructs are based upon individualized human intuitions, there is no such a concept as "universal truth" with regard to human subjects. This is not a claim that is isn't "universal truth" about any question in the universe. It is just a claim that there isn't "universal truth" about human-related questions in the universe. So, the basic claim is that logic is overused in arriving at answers about meaning of life, and it is perfectly fine living a life that intuitively feels meaningful to you without giving much weight to a logical argument that tries to disprove your intuition about what is meaningful to you.

>I would argue that it is only through examining what feels meaningful to us that we can learn what is really at root meaningful to us. To the extent that our beliefs about what is meaningful to us are dependent upon other beliefs then they're going to be dependent on those other beliefs in specific ways and knowing in which ways they are dependent upon other beliefs will help us to further abstract those beliefs away and get closer to the root of what is meaningful to us.

I agree with that!