Pursuing praxis

"What is [the meaning of] life?"

People today equated the two questions. (They even said, "The question is, What is - bracket - the meaning of - bracket - life?". I do not. But I think it’s an interesting and telling conflation.

Interestingly, one must grasp (in some, inchoate form) what life is, in order to define its meaning. But this logical necessity doesn’t flesh out the metaphysical question "What is life?" very much, before moving on to "What is the meaning of life?" Without a well-grasped answer to this second question, purpose and systematic action are impossible. Hence, science is impossible, and scientific answers to the question "What is life?" are impossible.

In idealistic form, the answer to these intermingled questions would have just the three steps outlined above. However, revisions, waffling, and inconsistencies in the question of meaning may tangle up the thought-processes of scientists (and agents and agencies funding scientists and, thus, the questions that science asks). In turn, science can feed back facts and information to the question of meaning so that, over time, we have a more precise (though not essentially different) understanding of what the meaning of life entails (the meaning remaning relatively fixed, as I see it). But, if the perceived meaning of life is contradictory to the facts, then all hell may break loose, or at least seep out over time, spawning all manner of ill-formed philosophic progeny.

Least, that’s how I see it.

I read a good article yesterday by Brian Kim, on finding your purpose in life. As a means to that end, he made the great point that to get a clear answer, you must ask clear questions. Clarity of thinking, and thus clarity of concepts are, as I see it, woefully lacking.

There are an awful lot of historians and philosophers standing, chest-deep, in mid-stream. They have failed to start at the beginning, and it shows in the tangle of words, concepts, and methods that they use. At that point, you might as well grab for anything - as they do - to prevent being washed downstream by the pressure of verbal garbage and non-sensical conceptual baggage. Learn to swim, and swim fast, or you are swept right out of academia. It’s a kind of differential survival of the fit-enough, that selects for the mal-conceived.

And the few students too early in their careers to know better, stand firmly on an Aristotelian foundation, with trust in science and the ability to grasp the causal structure of reality, get shot down by the gray-beard(s) with scoffs and sputtering disbelief and ridicule.

Time to go find him, this idealistic philosopher, and grill him and pick his brain in sanction of his intellectual virtue.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring greater optimism. It’s genetics, interdiciplinary study, and (heart-be-still) levels of selection.