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7/25/2025, 6:15:24 PM
>>17870005
>On the most basic level; how can you notice the absence of something you have not defined??
By paying attention.
There is a distinct smell that transports me right to my childhood. I have no idea what it is or what it reminds me of. But I know for a fact I smelled it a couple years ago on a street. And I know I'm not smelling it now. If you asked me for a definition, I could not tell you anything except tautologically insist that the smell from my childhood is the smell from my childhood. Definitions don't precede recognition. They merely codify it.
>>"This room is meaningless"
>l would have to ask you in response
>>"What is meaning?"
Meaning is intentionality. It's the property of being "about" something, and preferably about some underlying reality.
>X-Y=1
>X+Y=3
This is a meaningful set of equations because underneath them is the idea that X=2 and Y=1. However, those equations can be rendered meaningless when we realize they don't point to any actual underlying reality after all.
>X-Y=1
>X+Y=3
>Y+X=-1
This is meaningless. It isn't pointing to anything deeper, anything that stays invariable across individual events (equations).
In human life, meaning is defined by coherence, purpose and significance Your life being a consistent narrative, pointing towards something and that something being important. You might not have a language to define this just like an baby cannot articulate the word "milk" or "hunger", but your circuitry seems to respond to this fairly reliably.
>On the most basic level; how can you notice the absence of something you have not defined??
By paying attention.
There is a distinct smell that transports me right to my childhood. I have no idea what it is or what it reminds me of. But I know for a fact I smelled it a couple years ago on a street. And I know I'm not smelling it now. If you asked me for a definition, I could not tell you anything except tautologically insist that the smell from my childhood is the smell from my childhood. Definitions don't precede recognition. They merely codify it.
>>"This room is meaningless"
>l would have to ask you in response
>>"What is meaning?"
Meaning is intentionality. It's the property of being "about" something, and preferably about some underlying reality.
>X-Y=1
>X+Y=3
This is a meaningful set of equations because underneath them is the idea that X=2 and Y=1. However, those equations can be rendered meaningless when we realize they don't point to any actual underlying reality after all.
>X-Y=1
>X+Y=3
>Y+X=-1
This is meaningless. It isn't pointing to anything deeper, anything that stays invariable across individual events (equations).
In human life, meaning is defined by coherence, purpose and significance Your life being a consistent narrative, pointing towards something and that something being important. You might not have a language to define this just like an baby cannot articulate the word "milk" or "hunger", but your circuitry seems to respond to this fairly reliably.
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