[MD] Free Will

[Steven Peterson]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Steven Peterson
<peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:50 AM,  <craigerb at comcast.net> wrote:
>> [dmb]
>>> To ask about the "meaning" of life in the first sense is to ask for the definition of the term "life".
>>> To ask about the "meaning" of life in the second sense is to ask about the nature of human existence.
>>
>> It's not just the word 'meaning' that has 2 senses in the above, but also the word 'life'.
>> The use/mention distinction is fundamental to philosophy, e.g.:
>> Life has 4 stages.
>> 'Life' has 4 letters.
>
>
> Right, and obviously I wasn't referring to the meaning of the word
> "life." I was discussing the meaning of life. In pragmatic terms,
> "what does life mean?" cashes out to "how is life used?" Obviously
> life is used in lots of ways. Some good and some bad. The intent of
> someone asking the original question is then likely more clearly
> stated as "how ought life be used so as to be a good life?" That is,
> unless someone presupposes that life has some externally imposed
> purpose in which case the question amounts to "why was life created?",
> but that is a question that anyone who does not believe in a great
> nonhuman power with intents and purposes does not have.
>

Obviously there is a boot strap problem with humanity thought of as
sustaining its own value, but note the inherent problem with the
notion that the value of human life can only come from something
non-human. By attempting to ground human worth in a God, one has to
start by devaluing the worth of humanity as incapable of sustaining
its own value. (There is also the problem of regress or the same
bootstrap problem in the question of the value of God.)