100 | Solo | Life and Its Meaning

A podcast only hits the century mark once! And for Mindscape, this is it. There have been holiday messages and bonus episodes and the like. But this is the 100th officially-numbered episode. To celebrate, I decided to treat myself to a solo episode in which I reflect, somewhat non-systematically, on the age-old question of the meaning of life. I end up spending a lot (most?) of the time talking about the meaning of "life," i.e. what it means to be a living organism in a naturalistic universe. But then I go on to muse about the construction of human meaning in a world where values are not imposed on us or objectively grounded in physical facts.

I think life does have meaning, and it's important to understand what forms it might take. I settle largely on the idea that humans can conceive of different possible futures, assign value to them, and work against the natural order of things to create something that otherwise would not have been. This is far from the final word, even in my own mind; it's an invitation to think and converse in a reasonable way about some of the biggest questions there are. Just like the podcast in general.

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Here are some modern works offering other perspectives on the meaning of life:

Episoder(418)

48 | Marq de Villiers on Hell and Damnation

48 | Marq de Villiers on Hell and Damnation

If you're bad, we are taught, you go to Hell. Who in the world came up with that idea? Some will answer God, but for the purpose of today's podcast discussion we'll put that possibility aside and look...

27 Mai 20191h 11min

47 | Adam Rutherford on Humans, Animals, and Life in General

47 | Adam Rutherford on Humans, Animals, and Life in General

Most people in the modern world — and the vast majority of Mindscape listeners, I would imagine — agree that humans are part of the animal kingdom, and that all living animals evolved from a common an...

20 Mai 20191h 38min

46 | Kate Darling on Our Connections with Robots

46 | Kate Darling on Our Connections with Robots

Most of us have no trouble telling the difference between a robot and a living, feeling organism. Nevertheless, our brains often treat robots as if they were alive. We give them names, imagine that th...

13 Mai 20191h 6min

45 | Leonard Susskind on Quantum Information, Quantum Gravity, and Holography

45 | Leonard Susskind on Quantum Information, Quantum Gravity, and Holography

For decades now physicists have been struggling to reconcile two great ideas from a century ago: general relativity and quantum mechanics. We don't yet know the final answer, but the journey has taken...

6 Mai 20191h 13min

44 | Antonio Damasio on Feelings, Thoughts, and the Evolution of Humanity

44 | Antonio Damasio on Feelings, Thoughts, and the Evolution of Humanity

When we talk about the mind, we are constantly talking about consciousness and cognition. Antonio Damasio wants us to talk about our feelings. But it's not in an effort to be more touchy-feely; Damasi...

29 Apr 20191h 12min

43 | Matthew Luczy on the Pleasures of Wine

43 | Matthew Luczy on the Pleasures of Wine

Some people never drink wine; for others, it's an indispensable part of an enjoyable meal. Whatever your personal feelings might be, wine seems to exhibit a degree of complexity and nuance that can be...

22 Apr 20191h 46min

42 | Natalya Bailey on Navigating Earth Orbit and Beyond

42 | Natalya Bailey on Navigating Earth Orbit and Beyond

The space age officially began in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite. But recent years have seen the beginning of a boom in the number of objects orbiting Earth, as satellite tracking and...

15 Apr 201959min

41 | Steven Strogatz on Synchronization, Networks, and the Emergence of Complex Behavior

41 | Steven Strogatz on Synchronization, Networks, and the Emergence of Complex Behavior

One of the most important insights in the history of science is the fact that complex behavior can arise from the undirected movements of small, simple systems. Despite the fact that we know this, we'...

8 Apr 20191h 14min

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