The reality is that we can only have a sensible conversation about, or write sensibly about, concepts and facts within the context of our epistemic limit as a species.
The meaning of life? Doesn't make sense outside of the context of human life. In that context, it's whatever you want it to be or decide it is to you. Outside, well, you'd have to die to see if there's anything beyond, and as Spock points out in ST4, it would be impossible to discuss without a common frame of reference with someone who hasn't died.
~~~
To claim that math is a human invention or a noumenal language of nature is futile, the answer is not within our ability to determine. It is, for all intents and purposes, undefined. Unknowable.
That's not to say that the conversation is meaningless, as the logical positivists would claim, as this is also a leap too far.
Early Wittgenstein, big influence on the logical positivists, didn't try to claim that philosophy was meaningless, just that if you try to talk beyond the facts, you won't get anywhere.
Bradley aways summed it up nicely for me: "anyone ready to dispense with metaphysics is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of his own"
In other words, to rule out metaphysics (defined as concepts and ideas that lack empirical data or basis in fact) is to make a metaphysical proposition, since by definition, there is no data to disprove the metaphysical propositions, just as much as there is no data to validate them.
Most metaphysical philosophies caught on because they can be presented rationally as a chain of propositions and conclusions, but they only add up within their own framework that is upheld by an unprovable assumption or set of assumptions.
Example, cogito ergo sum makes perfect sense, provided that you accept that the speaker is I, that the speaker thinks rather than simply utters, and that to be means anything at all. In the end, cogito ergo sum can be accepted intuitively within the framework of "let's not be sceptical of every thing" but what can you conclude from it?
"I think therefore I am"
well, I is a thing that thinks
-> "I thinks, therefore it exists"
I think presupposes I's existence
-> "I thinks"
That is a definition of I
I = thinks
===
I is a consciousness
which is a tautology. And that's why is makes sense, because it doesn't go anywhere than where it started, it's algebra.
It starts off as a = b where b = a and can be reduced to simply a
Math is privileged in that its algebraic statements can be used to model things in the world because it's numbers and functions of numbers, but ultimately the usefulness emerges from proving that a equals a very complicated statement that isn't obviously tautologically equal, or not equal to, a.
Math is a tool. It's a way of reasoning that comes bundled with reasonably standardised notation that enables boosted productivity compared to reasoning about the same problems in regular languages.
~~~
It's the same reason why I find "simulated reality" questions rather dull. If the world is a perfect simulation, we have no way to distinguish it from the real thing, and so to our frame of reference, there is no difference about which we can have a discussion that makes any sense.
If there are cracks in the simulation, sure, then you have a fact to talk about. But then the discussion isn't philosophical, it's practical: We've been brain-hacked, what do we do? and the conversation ends rather abruptly.
You may have noticed that a lot of the cliché philosophical questions haven't really shifted for as long as people have been asking them. It isn't because there is no answer, but rather the question itself is null and void. It's answer is beyond our ability to find or compute because you would have remove yourself from the human frame of reference to find it.
The meaning of life? Doesn't make sense outside of the context of human life. In that context, it's whatever you want it to be or decide it is to you. Outside, well, you'd have to die to see if there's anything beyond, and as Spock points out in ST4, it would be impossible to discuss without a common frame of reference with someone who hasn't died.
~~~
To claim that math is a human invention or a noumenal language of nature is futile, the answer is not within our ability to determine. It is, for all intents and purposes, undefined. Unknowable.
That's not to say that the conversation is meaningless, as the logical positivists would claim, as this is also a leap too far.
Early Wittgenstein, big influence on the logical positivists, didn't try to claim that philosophy was meaningless, just that if you try to talk beyond the facts, you won't get anywhere.
Bradley aways summed it up nicely for me: "anyone ready to dispense with metaphysics is a brother metaphysician with a rival theory of his own"
In other words, to rule out metaphysics (defined as concepts and ideas that lack empirical data or basis in fact) is to make a metaphysical proposition, since by definition, there is no data to disprove the metaphysical propositions, just as much as there is no data to validate them.
Most metaphysical philosophies caught on because they can be presented rationally as a chain of propositions and conclusions, but they only add up within their own framework that is upheld by an unprovable assumption or set of assumptions.
Example, cogito ergo sum makes perfect sense, provided that you accept that the speaker is I, that the speaker thinks rather than simply utters, and that to be means anything at all. In the end, cogito ergo sum can be accepted intuitively within the framework of "let's not be sceptical of every thing" but what can you conclude from it?
"I think therefore I am" well, I is a thing that thinks
-> "I thinks, therefore it exists" I think presupposes I's existence
-> "I thinks"
That is a definition of I
I = thinks === I is a consciousness
which is a tautology. And that's why is makes sense, because it doesn't go anywhere than where it started, it's algebra.
It starts off as a = b where b = a and can be reduced to simply a
Math is privileged in that its algebraic statements can be used to model things in the world because it's numbers and functions of numbers, but ultimately the usefulness emerges from proving that a equals a very complicated statement that isn't obviously tautologically equal, or not equal to, a.
Math is a tool. It's a way of reasoning that comes bundled with reasonably standardised notation that enables boosted productivity compared to reasoning about the same problems in regular languages.
~~~
It's the same reason why I find "simulated reality" questions rather dull. If the world is a perfect simulation, we have no way to distinguish it from the real thing, and so to our frame of reference, there is no difference about which we can have a discussion that makes any sense.
If there are cracks in the simulation, sure, then you have a fact to talk about. But then the discussion isn't philosophical, it's practical: We've been brain-hacked, what do we do? and the conversation ends rather abruptly.