life is meaningless but not purposeless??i read this phrase somewhere but never understood it,could u help me?

Question

i thought upon this sentence many times, but could never make any thing out of it.i will be obliged if you help me.

Answer 1

Bertrand Russell writes in his book “The History of Western Philosophy” that there are two perspectives of seeing things. First teleological, which seeks “For what purpose a thing is made?” Second mechanistic, which looks for the cause of a certain thing (cause and effect). When we see around us, we see things which are made by men for a certain purpose, like a table, a chair or a computer. This is why we have a habit of looking for the purpose of things. Even when it comes to the Universe and life itself, we always wonder about their purpose. This is not a correct way of thinking, because the universe and the life are not created for a purpose, they have evolved randomly. In this context, there is no fixed and ultimate purpose of life. Therefore all our purposes depend on our inclinations. Whatever you are interested in is your purpose or meaning of life.

The difference between meaning and purpose IMO would be that meaning refers to the ultimate or final purpose of life while purpose refers to all the other intermediate goals which we have in life.

Answer 2

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a purpose.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us a purpose are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary purpose to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.

Answer 3

Purpose can be personal. You can have a purpose without telling any other person about it, in other words, purposes don't need an explanation. Meaning, on the other hand, does need to be interpersonal. Meaning- merely to be what meaning is- must be capable of being communicated and agreed upon among people.
However life is neither meaningless nor purposeless unless you decide it is. This phrase says little about life. It mostly says something about language. The author felt that he could not define (give meaning to) life in a way that he could be certain of the agreement of others, however, he was able to define his own purpose in life.
As far as I can tell.

Answer 4

It could mean the following:

"Life" is a vacuous word, it doesn't have any fixed referent. It's not the living organisms alone-- "Life" also requires the living creature to be embedded in a world (which may or may not be living). That is, "Life" refers too broadly to the universe as a whole, and doesn't pick out any object qua set of all sets.

But that doesn't mean there aren't, as aforementioned, teleological systems in the universe. Evolution isn't a random collision of particles, but a purpose-driven selection process. In physiology, we posit purposes on the level of organs, for instance: the heart is FOR pumping blood.

Any functional arrangement will have a purpose, natural or otherwise, where there is an efficient causation. A pleasurable desire is FOR engaging the organism in respect to the desideratum.

There are manifold purposes to be found in life, but life as such eludes us of any meaning. The two are distinct.

Answer 5

I like that quote. I have never heard it before. Life is meaningless but not purposeless. Meaning varies so much depending on how you feel and what kind of value you inherit on certain objects but purpose, purpose is the thing that drives you. Life is everything and nothing at all because it means everything to us but could mean nothing once it is gone. If you give life meaning then you are giving it value and thus treating it like a material thing, that can be easily taken away and must be treasured. But treasures are usually vaulted and kept away and never much enjoyed. While if you give life purpose you give yourselves guides that lead you to wonderful places and things that you never thought were imaginable. Purpose thus is the best thing to give life because it will reciprocate guides that you can follow. Do not value life because this demeans it, instead give it purpose and you set yourself as the master of your own life instead of life being your master and you a mere puppet.

Answer 6

Well to me it means that we really don't know why we exist although many of us have speculations and our lives my seem like they have no direction. We are actually here for a reason a purpose much bigger than the physical realm we call reality. As much as we think our lives have no direction it serves a purpose in existence.
Think about when you changed someones life even by doing something small like giving him your last slice of bread, even though for you it's no big deal you can by more bread today or tomorrow but to that person your an angel a purpose for living, for him not dying, carrying on with his 'meaningless' life.

Answer 7

Your one life, compared to everything in the HUGE universe is, yes, meaningless compared to all the others around you. But purposeless? One person can make a difference.

Answer 8

Life is meaningless but not purposeless means to me that we should focus on the purpose for our life rather than trying to find the meaning of life...pupose requires action.

Answer 9

enable me play devil's recommend (excuse the pun, i could no longer face as much as). i could opt to argue that existence *loses* which potential whilst an afterlife is introduced into the photograph. If the assumption is universal that all people guy or woman will spend an infinite quantity of time in afterlife whilst they die, how significant can something you do in decrease than a puny century be? If, in spite of the undeniable fact that, it particularly is believed there is not any afterlife, the assumption consists of that each and everything you do in this lifetime is all you get, and could motivate you to make it constructive, to make an impact on how the international, to alter issues for posterity (and proceed to exist in a distinctive experience. in spite of everything, they are saying we die two times). the assumption is often to lengthen the inevitable "peetering-out," to apply your words. it constantly has. that's what we do in existence, in any different case each and every person could have killed themselves previously. sooner or later the sunlight will swallow up the Earth. possibly by using then adequate human beings could have desperate to do something with their existence to construct the mega-spaceship and recolonize, (subsequently prolonging the loss of existence of the Earthlings) particularly than purely taking convenience interior the thought that there is an afterlife to pass to following each and every person's loss of existence. My substantial element, if there is an everlasting, completely happy afterlife, why trouble residing right here in any respect? Why no longer purely kill your self (be forgiven for killing your self) and pass to blissfulness now? (do no person try that at abode. It substitute into no longer a tenet.)

Answer 10

what I get from this is kind of cynical, yet optimistic too.
I think its saying that there is nothing after death..(thats why its meaningless) ...but that doesnt mean that you shouldnt live life to your fullest and help others in the world. Work towards a worthy goal...
thats just my own interpretation...hope it helps!