In a previous post, Austin Stiller responded to a video in which an aging philosopher discussed the question “what the point of it all?” In this post, a reader replies to Stiller. Here is that reply.
Stiller’s reaction to Fingarette’s video and my comments in this blog’s previous post have cleared up something of a mystery for me about Thoreau that has troubled me for the longest time. Continue reading What’s the Point of it All? Reply to Stiller
My last post featured a video of a philosopher’s reflections on the meaning of life as he neared death. The post elicited this response from a reader, Austin Stiller, which I reprint here in full.
It’s foolish to think that there’s an answer out there in the world to this question, [what’s the point of it all?] that there’s a transcendental answer … Those answers seem like self-delusion to my mind. The universe doesn’t care about life, about anything. We do and we’re indebted to each other. Continue reading What’s the Point of it All?
Sisyphus by Titian, 1549
This essay by Sara Jane Wojcik reminds me of E. D. Klemke’s “Living Without Appeal.”)
The most basic form of integrity is to accept reality for what it is rather than how we would like it to be. I have always loved science fiction writer Phillip Dick on this when he says, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Continue reading Against Suicide: Coping with Reality
What does it take for a person to persist from moment to moment—for the same person to exist at different moments? Continue reading Derek Parfit, Personal Identity, and Death
Chris Crawford at Cologne Game Lab in 2011
My recent post elicited this thoughtful response from the game designer Chris Crawford. His thinking reminds me of Thoreau and the Taoists.
… The very question “What is the meaning of life?” raises my hackles, because the question has no intellectual substance. One might as well ask “What is the meaning of hamburgers?” My physicist-mind demands that I boil it down to something concrete, something — well, not tangible, but certainly something that I can nail down. Continue reading Communing with Nature: Is That How We Find Life’s Meaning?