Are you aimless?

@Val Killmore,

Your purpose might be to serve as a bad example to others.

I'm serious about that.
Many people have turned their lives around by seeing how badly someone else has behaved.

If we have a purpose in life, who's to say we're supposed to know what it is, or when we've accomplised it?

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@chai2,

I've considered that as a career goal, but it never seems to end well...

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@Val Killmore,

My ultimate purpose in life is to live until I'm dead. Everything else is just gravy.

1 Reply

@thack45,

At a very young age I had a vision, I felt that I was walking down a long passage and that was what life was. Then I realized that there were doors on either side of me, so decided to open one to alleviate the boring walk. On opening the first door ( going to school ) I enjoyed it somewhat but was happy to leave aged 14.... Continued on down the passage of life and have opened as many doors as possible. I can assure you there were many doors I never opened... Am now seeing that last door in life's passage and am trying hard to open all the one's left. So ,no matter your age go and open them doors.

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@JLNobody,

That was my thought when writing that post.. Is it possible to miss the sky? What is the sky? To my mind it is just as intangible (even though it is right there) as the idea of an ultimate purpose. My intuition tells me that to aim for my ultimate purpose would only cause me to define something I can imagine or conceptualize, and I do not wish to limit myself in such a way.

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@Cyracuz,

Yes, I agree. A very provocative/evocative post.
Life seems to be, like the sky, an open-ended, spacious and mysterious adventure. I feel I've reduced its mystery a bit with the single anchoring intuition that I am my experience , not some self-entity surrounded by and pushed around by everything else. Otherwise I simply enjoy what I am able to enjoy. Isn't appreciation of the adventure itself our principal goal?
Amor fati.

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@tenderfoot,

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now.

Might just've been the result of fas... at any rate, I never saw no allegorical doors...

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@JLNobody,

Interesing. No more than 10 or 15 minutes ago I was looking up at the sky- - which is a lovely blue today, with white coulds - - and thinking: "If my eyes were constructed differently from the way they are, if they were, say, like the eyes of a fly, I wonder just what I'd be looking at right now. It wouldn't be a blue sky. It probably wouldn't ven be blue. Hmmmm."

1 Reply

@Lustig Andrei,

And THAT is consistent with the realization that we ARE our experience. Flies cannot see what we see because they are not like us (and vice versa, of course). In a nutshell: we see what we are.
Thanks for the observation.

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

And THAT is consistent with the realization that we ARE our experience. Flies cannot see what we see because they are not like us (and vice versa, of course). In a nutshell: we see what we are.
Thanks for the observation.

That we see what we are is not a problem the problem goes about the definition some people have of what we are means regarding reality...while each perspective upon reality has from its own specific position its own particular point of view that doesn't mean that reality is not there if not only through that particular perspective...after all how come each of all potential perspectives was possible in the first place...the thing about perspectives is that they point outward even if starting inward...the bridge they bring about in the distance they lead into automatically creates the inverse path from the other side...the "other" reaches us and becomes tangible.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Your not in your top form tonight, Fil. You're usually quite lucid, even when I disagree with you. But this post perplexes me at least somewhat. I'm not quite sure what you're saying.

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@Lustig Andrei,

I think he is speaking from a empiricism perspective.

I sense Perspectival variation.

As you said with the fly, If one has an experience of seeming to see something blue, then one's sense datum is blue; equally importantly, if one is not having an experience of seeming to see something blue, then one does not have a blue sense datum.

A problem is raised by the observation because it is sometimes indeterminate what properties objects appear to us to have. To say that it is indeterminate what properties an object appears to have is to say that the object appears to instantiate some determinable, but there is no specific determinate falling under that determinable that it appears to instantiate. For example, an object might appear to fall within a certain range of colors, while there is no exact shade of color that it appears to have.

If the apparent properties of objects of perception are sometimes indeterminate, then the sense data involved would have to be metaphysically indeterminate — that is, they would have to actually lack definite characteristics. This, however, is logically impossible — an object cannot be colored but have no particular shade of color.
This sort of problem only arises when one analyzes appearance in such a way that there must always be an actual object that has all and only the properties that appear to the subject.

Correct me Fil, if that is not what you meant.

So Lustig, you are saying mental phenomena involved in perception do not have the properties that appear to us.

And Fil, you are saying that our data from the senses are alleged mind-dependent objects that we are directly aware of in perception, and that have exactly the properties they appear to have, in real life, independent of our mind.

Again, I'm just assuming this is what you guys are saying, so correct me if I'm wrong.

1 Reply

@Val Killmore,

Sorry for the confusion.

Quote:

As you said with the fly, If one has an experience of seeming to see something blue, then one's sense datum is blue; equally importantly, if one is not having an experience of seeming to see something blue, then one does not have a blue sense datum.

A problem is raised by the observation because it is sometimes indeterminate what properties objects appear to us to have. To say that it is indeterminate what properties an object appears to have is to say that the object appears to instantiate some determinable, but there is no specific determinate falling under that determinable that it appears to instantiate. For example, an object might appear to fall within a certain range of colors, while there is no exact shade of color that it appears to have.

If the apparent properties of objects of perception are sometimes indeterminate, then the sense data involved would have to be metaphysically indeterminate — that is, they would have to actually lack definite characteristics. This, however, is logically impossible — an object cannot be colored but have no particular shade of color.
This sort of problem only arises when one analyzes appearance in such a way that there must always be an actual object that has all and only the properties that appear to the subject.

Ignore :
Correct me Fil, if that is not what you meant.

What I meant was,

Correct me Lustig, if that is not what you meant.

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@Lustig Andrei,

I can explain hopefully, perspectives in order to be true dont have to exhaust a complete description on the object they aim into...now perspectives bring about who you are in space time and what you see from your unique position, but as they unfold they show that the inverse path is also possible and that your position is also subjected into the contextual frame of someone else while looking at you at your location...and yet none if you are wrong and both describe the same thing...as you can see what I meant was very simple...

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I can explain hopefully, perspectives in order to be true dont have to exhaust a complete description on the object they aim into...now perspectives bring about who you are in space time and what you see from your unique position, but as they unfold they show that the inverse path is also possible and that your position is also subjected into the contextual frame of someone else while looking at you at your location...and yet none of them is wrong and both describe the same thing...as you can see what I meant was very simple...

again corrected, was posting from a mobile device...my apologies !

...the intended sense of it all was to explain that sometimes that which is evident suddenly becomes obscure when we speak on that which is true mainly because of this obsession with uncertainty...descriptions and knowledge are perspectives that describe functionality on objects but that do not need to exhaust all possible property's of such objects to be true, they only have to fit factual operativeness in a certain direction...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

perspectives in order to be true dont have to exhaust a complete description on the object

Ya, that's true.

It can also be the case that an organism's sense is deceiving it, and another being's senses are not, then they are not seeing the same thing.

For example when walking down a forest floor, as a human, my senses are deceived by the mouse's camouflage, and I don't even notice it in the carpet of leaves of the forest. But to a pit viper, the rat is an organism, seen by thermal image, with the help of heat sensing pits in the face.

I think we can never have complete description of an object because we are limited by our five sense, and furthermore, an object's characteristic is mind-independent. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it's there.

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@Val Killmore,

not just that, senses are limited all right but the perspective itself is limited is like a vision in tunnel, it provides you with certain functional aspects while leaving others aside which are irrelevant to you from the view point you are taking...a bit like resolution going up or down as you look closer or further...each perspective has its own "needs" to operate with the remaining of the world...for instance I don´t say a grain of sand in Mars is pulling the sun which is true but at best that Mars also exercises some pull on the Sun and mainly that the Sun pulls Mars...there you go, the functional and practical value of perspectives at work !

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@chai2,

Quote:

If we have a purpose in life, who's to say we're supposed to know what it is, or when we've accomplised it?

Not necessarily, for example following happiness is a good purpose because happiness is a way of travel, not a destination for you to know.

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