Meaning is a difficult thing for many to wrap their heads around. Some people start at God, other people start at Nihilism, and there's a whole bunch of other angles stacked on angles... But the question I want to ask today is:
What is meaning itself?
Start with a belief that seems to mean something to you, and imagine someone that believes in that thing. This hypothetical person is like your best self, at all points. If I asked that person "Why?" and had them answer honestly, then asked "Why?" again, and we kept doing that again and again, would we be able to keep going forever? Let's say this hypothetical could go on for infinite time, and we have everything that you have learned in your entire life to work with. Do we just keep going and going, or does it stop somewhere? If it's the former, then in what way would it keep on going? If it's the latter, then where exactly would it stop?
I think that many people would get to a point where they'd cycle "God because God because God because God." or "Nothing because nothing because nothing." or even "I don't know because I don't know because I don't know.", and each of this holy trinity of sorts is seemingly rooted in faith. The first is self explanatory, but the second and third need some kind of explanation. 'Nothingness' as a subject we can refer to with physical ramifications, with synaptic chain reactions and vibrations in the air whether from typing fingers or speaking tongues, is a wholly unique matter to grasp. It's a seemingly paradoxical subtraction through addition.
Negative numbers allow us to functionally subtract while performing addition, but somehow we produced a negative to add to something. How did we do that? I consider it relative; that each object has potential for every nothingness except for itself. A table that's been broken apart and put back together has realized its potential for nothingness, because it presently was a dismantled table and 'not' a functional table. After getting fixed it was presently a functional table and 'not' a dismantled table, and these two things it can 'not' be simultaneously. Why is that potential for 'not' irrevocably fixed within that table?
What is nothingness?
On a mereological level, is the potential for nothingness baked into what composes all things? Bananas are 'not' oranges, and oranges are 'not' bananas, but is 'not an orange' a true component baked into the very fabric that composes a banana? If so, then were does 'not an orange' come from? If bananas have to have 'not an orange' as part of their composition, then oranges have to have 'not a banana' as part of their composition. This seems to imply that nothingness is the blood that flows within all things, whether we respect nothingness as a positive or a negative, and that each thing simultaneously exists whether or not we observe them.
Plotinus believed, around 200 A.D., that all things emenated from a trinity. Hen, Nous, and Psyche; or One, Mind, and Soul, to put it one way. He wasn't a Trinitarian Christian, but a lot of Trinitarians read his work and used it to inform their own faith. The earliest manuscript we have of 1 John, the one that mentions 'spirit' 'water' and 'blood' before being rewritten as 'father' 'son' and 'spirit', dates around 400 A.D. ...and I wonder if it could have been an addition from a fan of Plotinus. Either way, at some point it got combined with Plotinus' Hen, Nous, and Psyche. Plotinus predates the writing of 'father' 'son' and 'spirit' which I find intriguing.
We use words like 'paradox' as comprehensible vessels for the incomprehensible. The kinds of rabbit holes one shouldn't even begin thinking about, lest one wants to bear the cross of thinking about them so that hopefully nobody ever has to again, are considered paradoxes. The very figment of 'nothingness' as a thing I can refer to, as a subject of conversation, feels like one of the most paradoxical things I can imagine. It feels terribly wrong to treat 'nothingness' with any 'thingness'. And yet, I need to write 'thingness' to write 'nothingness'... almost as though it's some kind of convolution... How exactly do I square it? How do I know if I have?
What is knowing knowledge?
There might be something observing my brain, that acts through my brain, that serves as some kind of invisible organ within a greater 'me'. It might carry all the ripples of every act, like the memory of water, while I get to use that memory to come to my conclusions. I might see a time where a table was expected, and a table wasn't there, or where a lack of a table was expected and a table was there. Both of these events depend on a preconcept that could have been born of a lie, like simulation theory, and yet I believe these preconcepts are true. All due to faith. And that's why I think that all philosophy is religion crossed with applied mathematics.
The part that distinguishes philosophy from religion is that math isn't required to be religious. Someone can hand you an answer, and you can take it for granted. Meanwhile philosophy implies work, and then often showing one's work and displaying the results. It isn't someone's philosophy to take something for granted, it's their method for getting there. Maybe they start with taking 'x' for granted and work their way to 'y' being granted, but it wouldn't be philosophy if there wasn't any work. This is why I consider a person's philosophy the collective sum of each of their works, and their religion to be the sum of all they currently 'know'.
Thinking, in and of itself, requires work. It's an action that burns calories that we need to replenish in chemotrope fashion. At some point stellar fusion happened a bunch, lots of stars exploded, and sulfur ended up on Earth where ancient chemotropes fed on it. Then some of those chemotropes got photosynthesis, while our ancestor stayed a chemotrope. We started the cycle of feeding on dead stars, and all that energy passed on until a living star's light entered the energy picture. That means that somewhere between sulfur and sunlight, maybe other stuff, you have the energy that fed all the works that led you to this point.
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And now here you are, maybe thinking "What is thinking?" or "How do I know what I know?" using a little sliver of that energy. That's calories, so that would make you a philosopher. What do you think meaning is? Could it exist independent of interpretation?