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User:奔流沙/生命的意义

维基百科，自由的百科全书
  此页面介紹的是the philosophical concept of the meaning of life。关于其他用法，请见「奔流沙/生命的意义 (消歧义)」。
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?《我们从哪里来？我们是谁？我们往哪里去？》
One of Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings.后印象派画家保罗·高更著名作品之一

zh:生命的意义
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of human existence. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as Why are we here?, What's life all about? and What is the meaning of it all? It has been the subject of much philosophical, scientific, and theological speculation throughout history. There have been a large number of answers to these questions from many different cultural and ideological backgrounds. Albert Camus observed, we humans are creatures who spend our lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. [1]

The meaning of life is deeply mixed with the philosophical and religious conceptions of existence, consciousness, and happiness, and touches on many other issues, such as symbolic meaning, ontology, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will, conceptions of God, the existence of God, the soul and the afterlife. Scientific contributions are more indirect; by describing the empirical facts about the universe, science provides some context and sets parameters for conversations on related topics. An alternative, human-centric, and not a cosmic/religious approach is the question "What is the meaning of my life?" The value of the question pertaining to the purpose of life may be considered to be coincidal with the achievement of ultimate reality, if that is believed by one to exist.

Meaning of life as a question

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Philosopher in Meditation《冥想》或《沉思中的哲学家》(局部)：
荷兰现实主义画家伦勃朗的作品(detail) by Rembrandt

Questions about the meaning of life have been expressed in a broad variety of ways, including the following:

对生命的意义的疑问有很多的表达方式，主要包括以下几种：

  • “生命的意义是什么？”“”
  • “我为何于此？”“我在此为何？”
  • “何为生命之源？”
  • What is the nature of life? What is the nature of reality? [14][16][17]
  • “何为生命的本相？”“何为实存的本相？”
  • What is the significance of life? [19]
  • “何为生命的意义？”
  • What is meaningful and valuable in life? [15][20]
  • “生命有何意义与价值的东西？”
  • “何为生命价值？”
  • What is the reason to live? What are we living for? [13][15][22]
  • “生的理由是什么？”“我为何而生？”

These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations...

这些问题，科学理论、哲学、神学、灵修学等都做过形形色色的解答，但并没有达成共识。

Scientific inquiry and perspectives

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DNA, the substance containing the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of all known living organisms.

Claims that descriptive science can shed light on normative issues such as the meaning of life are highly disputed within the scientific and philosophy-of-science communities. Nevertheless, science may be able to provide some context and sets some parameters for conversations on related topics.

科学探究与观点

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Psychological significance and value in life

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Science may or may not be able to tell us what is of essential value in life, but some studies bear on related questions: researchers in positive psychology (and, earlier and less rigorously, in humanistic psychology) study factors that lead to life satisfaction,[23] full engagement in activities,[24] making a fuller contribution by utilizing one's personal strengths,[25] and meaning based on investing in something larger than the self.[26]


One value system suggested by social psychologists, broadly called Terror Management Theory, states that all human meaning is derived out of a fundamental fear of death, whereby values are selected when they allow us to escape the mental reminder of death.


其中有一个大体称为“恐惧管理理论”价值系统被社会心理学家所提出，理论宣称，人类对死亡产生本能的恐惧，因此它会促使我们对逃离死亡做出心理提醒，从而做出生命价值选择。


Neuroscience has produced theories of reward, pleasure and motivation in terms of physical entities such as neurotransmitter activity, especially in the limbic system and the ventral tegmental area in particular. If one believes that the meaning of life is to maximize pleasure, then these theories give normative predictions about how to act to achieve this.


神经科学已经对神经传递素运输，特别是在边缘系统和独特的腹侧被盖区等物理实体也有很多的理论研究，例如激励、愉悦、动机等。如果相信生命的意义在于争取最大限度的快乐，这些理论有给出标准式的预测实践。


Economists have learned a great deal about what is valued in the marketplace; and sociology examines value at a social level using theoretical constructs such as value theory, norms, anomie, etc.


经济学家则在市场上实践了何为价值。社会学则用价值观、规范、失范等理论概念在社会层级中检验价值。

Origin and nature of biological life

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The exact mechanisms of abiogenesis are unknown: notable theories include the RNA world hypothesis (RNA-based replicators) and the iron-sulfur world theory (metabolism without genetics). The theory of evolution explains the process by which different lifeforms have developed throughout history via genetic mutation and natural selection.[27] At the end of the 20th century, based upon insight gleaned from the gene-centered view of evolution, biologists George C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, David Haig, among others, conclude that if there is a primary function to life, it is the replication of DNA and the survival of one's genes.[28][29]

However, though scientists have intensively studied life on Earth, defining life in unequivocal terms is still a challenge.[30][31] Physically, one may say that life "feeds on negative entropy"[32][33] which refers to the process by which living entities decrease their internal entropy at the expense of some form of energy taken in from the environment.[34][35] Biologists generally agree that lifeforms are self-organizing systems regulating the internal environment as to maintain this organized state, metabolism serves to provide energy, and reproduction allows life to continue over a span of multiple generations. Typically, organisms are responsive to stimuli and genetic information tends to change from generation to generation as to allow adaptation through evolution, these characteristics optimalizing the chances of survival for the individual organism and its descendants respectively.[36][37] Non-cellular replicating agents, notably viruses, are generally not considered to be organisms because they are incapable of "independent" reproduction or metabolism. This controversy is problematic, though, since some parasites and endosymbionts are also incapable of independent life. Astrobiology studies the possibility of different forms of life on other worlds, such as replicating structures made from materials other than DNA.

The Big Bang and humanity's fate in this universe

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The metric expansion of space. The inflationary epoch is the expansion of the metric tensor at left. (NASA image, 2006)

Though the Big Bang model was met with much skepticism when first introduced, partially because of a connection to the religious concept of creation, it has become well supported by several independent observations.[38] However, current physics can only describe the early universe from 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang (where zero time corresponds to infinite temperature), a theory of quantum gravity would be required to go further back in time. Nevertheless, many physicists have speculated about what would have preceded this limit, and how our universe came into being.[39] Some physicists think that the Big Bang occurred coincidentally, and when considering the anthropic principle, it is most often interpreted as implying the existence of a multiverse.[40]

However, no matter how the universe came into existence, humanity's fate in this universe appears to be doomed as —even if humanity would survive that long— biological life will eventually become unsustainable, be it through a Big Freeze, Big Rip or Big Crunch. It would seem that the only way to survive indefinitely would be by directing the flow of energy on a cosmic scale and altering the fate of the universe.[39]

Scientific questions about the mind

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The true nature and origin of consciousness and the mind itself are also widely debated in science. The explanatory gap is generally equated with the hard problem of consciousness, and the question of free will is also considered to be of fundamental importance. These subjects are mostly addressed in the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, though some evolutionary biologists and theoretical physicists have also made several allusions to the subject.[41][42]

Hieronymus Bosch's Ascent of the Blessed depicts a tunnel of light and spiritual figures, often described in reports of near-death experiences.

Reductionistic and eliminative materialistic approaches, for example the Multiple Drafts Model, hold that consciousness can be wholly explained by neuroscience through the workings of the brain and its neurons, thus adhering to biological naturalism.[42][43][44][45][46][47]

On the other hand, some scientists, like Andrei Linde, have considered that consciousness, like spacetime, might have its own intrinsic degrees of freedom, and that our perceptions may be as real as (or even more real than) material objects.[48] Hypotheses of consciousness and spacetime explain consciousness in describing a "space of conscious elements"[48], often encompassing a number of extra dimensions.[49] Electromagnetic theories of consciousness solve the binding problem of consciousness in saying that the electromagnetic field generated by the brain is the actual carrier of conscious experience, there is however disagreement about the implementations of such a theory relating to other workings of the mind.[50][51] Quantum mind theories use quantum theory in explaining certain properties of the mind. Explaining the process of free will through quantum phenomena is a popular alternative to determinism, such postulations may variously relate free will to quantum fluctuations,[52] quantum amplification,[53] quantum potential[52] and quantum probability.[54]

Based on the premises of non-materialistic explanations of the mind, some have suggested the existence of a cosmic consciousness, asserting that consciousness is actually the "ground of all being".[17][53][55] Proponents of this view cite accounts of paranormal phenomena, primarily extrasensory perceptions and psychic powers, as evidence for an incorporeal higher consciousness. In hopes of proving the existence of these phenomena, parapsychologists have orchestrated various experiments. Meta-analyses of these experiments indicate that the effect size (though very small) has been relatively consistent, resulting in an overall statistical significance.[56][57][58] Although some critical analysts feel that parapsychological study is scientific, they are not satisfied with its experimental results.[59][60] Skeptical reviewers contend that apparently successful results are more likely due to sloppy procedures, poorly trained researchers, or methodological flaws than to actual effects.[61][62][63][64]

References

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zh:生命的意义

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