If the natual world is all there is?

Feelings, even logic, cannot be broken down into particles the most basics building blocks of the material world. In a purely natural world with nothing but material, why would there be life, love, consciousness, purposes, right, wrong, good, or evil? It isn't like rocks concern themselves with these things why should anything else if that were all there is? For me, this is another reason I reject the limitations of a purely material natural view of the natural world. I believe there is more to this life than living and dying.

There're aspects of the physical Universe that are still baffling to us. I cite Quantum Physics as probably the best example.

Untangling how natural systems function is an endeavour, a journey rather than a destination. That's to say it's a work in progress & we shouldn't think the current limits of our knowledge point towards this or that conclusion.

"I believe there is more to this life than living and dying" - I prefer to think of my living and at some point living no longer. And when we no longer live, there's no good reason I can think of to believe that any part of what we were in life endures.

I think there're perfectly good reasons to believe that this mortal life is all we experience & whether people find that insufficient or disturbing is really neither here nor there.

I am moving away from particles and molecules for a moment. Life depending on the starting point of all of this, we see very different ending results that vary from nothing to a myriad of other outcomes. I see no meaning in life if life were nothing but particles and molecules as I pointed out, and I wasn't the first one to say this; if the material is all there is, the meaning would be what rocks think about, which is nothing.

We do see there is meaning in life, and it is so much more than just the material things in it; the good stuff is what transcends matter. We can see what happens to a person who spends all their time acquiring material things to the exclusion of everyone else in their lives; they end up empty. One who whose life which is loved and loves those around them, in the end, will have a fulfilled life.

The importance of all of this revolves around that which transcends the material makeup of the universe.

The subject of meaning is rather fraught. But I find meaning in those things that lend meaning to my life.

It's a form of circular thinking surely? A person's life doesn't have any meaning other than the meaning they ascribe to it. And those things, people & passtimes, that have meaning for us may change over time. Claiming that there's such a thing as objective meaning in this context makes no sense.

For some people, a life spent aquiring what we might regard as clutter, really does lend meaning to their lives. For others, all manner of other pursuits give their lives meaning.

I agree with you, (meaning) is one of the words that carry a lot of weight leaning a specific way. I still want to use it, because it means something. We see it, we feel it, we experience it, and know it is a real part of our lives in reality. The meaning in life goes way beyond the cellular makeup of our bodies. Not much different than the words of a book do, we can see the chemical makeup of paper and ink, but words we understand take it far beyond atoms and molecules. That said, I believe it is as much a part of our reality and everything in it, transcending even the bonds that make up all things.

We experience certain emotional states subjectively. Some of these may be very intense but are still subjective. There's no reason to assume that feelings we have regarding meaning have any relevance beyond the scope of our emotions.

Very much wanting & needing there to be an objective form of meaning in this Universe doesn't make it so.

Do you think all meaning is altered or dismissed within reality by assigning or experiencing subjectivity and objectivity truth? If there is no real meaning within the universe, then it cannot be assigned and categorized, what would be the point of even having these two words? Besides truth is a very real thing, next to it all else isn't.

That's a little garbled? I don't understand the first sentence.

The term 'truth' is thrown around quite carelessly by some people & I like this (philosopher's) definition:

Truth is the set of all true statements

So if you're claiming that something is the case, a fact, or state of affairs, what true statement(s) are you able to make about it?

Truth is truth, suggesting one truth is not the same as another, is a contradiction; something is either true or not. Logic doesn't allow for again A and not A to be true at the same time. Subjective or objective truths are either true or not. The point of reference to the truth claim is essential; there can not be multiple contrary truth claims about the same thing at the same time, and they all be correct while in contradiction to each other. They can all be wrong, or only one is right.

"suggesting one truth is not the same as another, is a contradiction" - hardly if you mean, more correctly, fact rather than truth?

• Mercury is the planet with an orbit closest to the Sun.
• Jupiter has the greatest diameter of any of the planets.

Both of these statements represent matters of fact but those facts are not the same facts! The only thing they have in common is that both have truth-value.

You miss this important point?

"The point of reference to the truth claim is essential; there can not be multiple contrary truth claims about the same thing at the same time, and they all be correct while in contradiction to each other."

You made two different truth claims about two different facts. Of course they are not the same facts, for crying out loud.

But I was responding to this....

"Truth is truth, suggesting one truth is not the same as another, is a contradiction"

What precisely do you mean by 'one truth'? It's meanigless for the reasons I've described.

We can make true statements about matters of fact & we can make false statements about them but I don't understand what you mean by one truth or even truth in general.

And come to that, what is a 'truth claim'?

Truth is truth; if something isn’t true, it is an error. One of the main ways to tell if a truth statement is an error or not, does it contradict itself, is it self-defeating in some manner. You gave two different truth claims; they were both true as they related to themselves. You suggested the truth about them because they were types of claims for different reasons meant truth was somehow different, it isn’t. Truth, as it relates to it's reference point, is what matters! I can say I’m 6 feet tall, because someone else isn’t that doesn’t make my truth statement inaccurate because another is a different height, what is true about them is about them. This makes all truth absolute, for everyone, for all time, in all places.

It was your use of language that I was challenging, not the principle that there're factual matters about which we can make truth-valued statements!

But referring to 'truth' as though it's an object you can possess in some way? By saying that we know the truth of some matter, we're saying that we're able to make one or more true statements regarding that matter.

Are there any true statements you'd like to make?

I'm saying truth statements either are or are not true, what is so difficult with that? Changing language to muddy it up isn't something I believe in, we need to be clear. If I make a truth claim it either is or it is not true and that is absolutely true of me and everyone else. I believe we have to be very clear on the words used and their meanings. 

There's no such thing as a 'truth statement', unless of course it's stating something about truth itself? If you mean a true statement then by definition it cannot be false!

Statements are said to have 'truth-value' in the sense that if they relate to matters of fact, such statements are either true or false.

The value in any statement that declares something is true, is in its truthfulness, and if it isn't true it isn't a real truth statement. You saying this or that is true is a truth statement, if those things are true then you made a truth statements in truth, if they are not you didn't. All truth is absolute as it refers to its reference point that is being discussed. Saying there is no such thing as a truth statement is a truth statement, and fails because that truth the statement itself was a truth statement about all truth statements, so therefore it is false, it isn't an accurate truth statement.

The value or how important something is meaningless as it relates to truth. It can be meaningless and true, or all important and false, its importance and its truthfulness are two different things.

Reading through this thread leads me to make a couple of comments.

First, about explanation: all explanation has to stop somewhere. You can't explain A by B, B by C, C by D, and so on, infinitely. You are always going to leave something unexplained. You might leave certain basics unexplained--like basic laws by which the universe works--or you might leave a putative final explainer unexplained--like God--but you have to leave something unexplained. Given that we live in a physical world, it makes sense to come up with more and more general scientific explanations, until you reach the most general possible one, and then to *stop*, leaving certain features as just brute facts. It makes sense to acknowledge the limits of explanation. 

Second, it makes sense to notice that "There must be a final explanation--an ultimate one beyond which there can be no more explanation. Let's call it 'God.' There, now we know the final explanation" is a mistake. Yes, you have committed yourself to the belief that there is a final explanation--there might not be one--and you have given that putative final explanation a name. But that's all you've done. You don't "know the final explanation" any more than you used to. You've just postulated that there is one and given it a name. Big deal. That's not *understanding*.

Third, I am wary of saying something like "Meaning is part of the world." There are things that metaphysically exist--physical objects, and perhaps spiritual objects like souls or spirits, angels or demons, or God, and perhaps alternate universes--but meaning isn't one of them. Meaning is a feature of mentality, which itself is a feature of human beings that I don't know how to explain. (I could understand the existence of walking, talking, mindless robots in physical reality, but actual mental states? I don't know how brains give rise to them. I accept that brains do in fact give rise to mental states, but I don't know how that can happen.) Anyway, we *talk about* thinking, feeling, hoping, imagining, and so on, by using nouns. We talk about thoughts and feelings and hopes and imaginings. But we shouldn't let the structure of the language dictate to us how we conceive our conceptions. It is one thing for me to say, "Bananas are yellow." It is another for me to say, "Bananas exemplify the property of yellowness." If I intend the second as a rephrasing of the first--oh, OK. But if I intend, by the second phrasing, to say that there are real things called "properties" of which one is the real property of "yellowness"--and if I then start asking, "What is a property made of?"--because, after all, I used a noun for it, so it must be a *thing* made of some *stuff* or *substance*--then I'm letting the language make me create a philosophical thought-structure that might not actually correspond to reality. Similarly, if I say, "I find a beautiful painting meaningful," that's one thing; but if I say, "A beautiful painting has meaning," and then start asking what kind of *thing* meaning is, I might be letting the language dictate how I conceive of mentality. I don't think of my "mind" as a containerlike *thing* that contains metaphysically existent *things* like thoughts, feelings, and so on; I think of myself as a (partially) mental being who experiences thinking, feeling, imagining--and who finds some mental experiencing meaningful. 

OK. Now. Yes, we human beings do experience mentality. And yes, we human beings do find some of our mental experiences meaningful. Yes. And although I have some understanding of how beings might evolve that can process information, I have no idea whatsoever how that processing of information could give rise to the experiencing of mentality. 

But here's the rub: I have no idea how information-processing brains could give rise to mentality if there is a God, and I have no idea how information-processing brains could give rise to mentality if there isn't a God. I don't see how bringing God into the picture helps explain it at all. And that means that asking how we could experience meaningfulness in a God-less universe doesn't, as far as I can see, point us toward thinking that there is a God, at all.

What makes an interpreted statement true is simply its correspondence to fact.

I'm having great difficulty understanding what the argument about truth is in the last several posts. In matters of fact, one's belief one way or the other may be true or may be false--that is to say, in matters of fact, one may believe correctly or incorrectly, in accordance with fact or in opposition to fact.

Where I would be cautious is about thinking of truth itself as a metaphysical existent--as a thing that exists. (This reification of truth, treating it as a *thing* that can *exist*, is used by Matt Slick in his version of the Transcendental Argument for God's Existence ("TAG"). I can't entirely blame him, as Plato treated Truth, Beauty, and Goodness as Platonic Ideals that had a kind of existence.) 

To say that "Either Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont or Secretariat did not win the 1973 Belmont" is to say something eternally true (assuming the normal interpretation of it), but to say that it is eternally true is not to say that it is a truth that exists forever; it is simply to say that at any possible time, any possible thinker, believer, or conceiver of it would be thinking truly, believing truly, or conceiving truly.