Sonuvah....
So, you'll have to trust me when I say I spent the last 2 hours writing a gigantic, long, unusually-detailed reflection on the inherent purpose of objects, in response to a post by Lusca (Lisa, right?). It devoted several paragraphs to defining 'purpose' solely for this discussion alone. It then analyzed how that definition compared to other, more gut-level valuations of purpose, and concluded by saying that Humans Are Special, a nice controversial statement that I felt would at least lead to some ongoing debate. I even added the little 'warning: unrelated nerdiness below' line and gave a quick review of Eden of the East, which I finished watching today and rather liked.
And then I picked a title (this post's title, in fact) that references an almost-wholly-unrelated Beatles song. And then I got the urge to listen to that Beatles song. And then I followed a link that said it would let me listen to said song, and instead it crashed Firefox and lost my entire essay.
Screw you too, Internet.
Anyway, there would've been a great post here, I swear. I'll sum up what I concluded, though, and hopefully that'll serve to at least give you my perspective on it.
1) For now, we'll define a thing's 'purpose' as its "ability to enact (or facilitate the enactment) of measurable positive change with respect to a human being". This definition was reached because a) We're humans, so it makes sense to define purpose by its relation to ourselves, b) if a change is immeasurably small, you might as well round down and ignore it (otherwise everything's having an effect purely by dint of its gravitational field), and c) the possibility of a negative purpose wasn't addressed in the initial post, and complicates things somewhat.
2) From this, a great many of the things in question may have a purpose, but none inherently have a purpose. This is because their purpose is defined in relation to an external object (the source of purposefulness?), namely human beings, without which a purpose as defined is not possible.
3) The exception to this, you might have guessed, is human beings themselves. Because they are both an object and a source of purpose, a human can have purpose purely internally, through the enactment of positive change upon oneself. Of course, this self-importance is only present because of my definition, which in turn suggests something inherently subjective about the assignment of purpose. Humans are capable of creating their own raison d'etre.
That is, essentially, the gist of what I was saying, albeit the Cliff Notes version. I suspect there's some fatal flaw in my reasoning, which happens when you make up your own definitions on the fly, but I don't see it. If you do, well, let's hear it.
Next Time: More Cop Stuff - PRISM/Firearms Scenarios(!!)
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Yeah, I liked Eden of the East.
Also: Otakon is this weekend! Liz'll be there, which is exciting because she's awesome and I haven't seen her in ages.
JulNoWriMo is going slowly; it's taken a decidedly Sci-Fi turn, which I hope was sufficiently foreshadowed...
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I like it and I concur, for the most part. I agree that "purpose" is entirely subjective, and regards our perception of how things serve us humans (although I'd say that living/natural phenomena, though they might help us, can't be said to serve a specific purpose because they are not created by us). There are only a couple things I would question - one is the use of "positive" in your definition, although you're right in pointing out that I mentioned only positive actions. I think something can serve its purpose without creating any positive change in a human being. Take the hypothetical situation in which I accidentally shoot and kill my older brother while I am playing with a gun. The gun in this situation served its purpose a bit too well, but it didn't help anyone change for the better. If the gun had misfired, in effect not doing what it's properly made to do, thus not serving the purpose for which it was created, we would have been better off. You could argue that I might become stronger by enduring and overcoming my grief, but in this case I'd say the negative effects overwhelmingly outweigh the positive. (Sorry to use such a morbid example). Also, I wonder whether the purpose of a thing is determined by the person who creates it in the first place, or does it change depending on who is using the thing and what they are using it for?
ReplyDeleteP.S. I'm sorry the internet lost your first post. :\ I think you did a good job summarizing.
ReplyDeletedoesn't blogspot save drafts? it does belong to google now and all.
ReplyDelete