Just doing some Major Premise Validation here: Is it possible that there is no Most Important Thing? Is the opposite of the Most Important Thing that nothing is important, that everything is irrelevant? What proof is there that anything is important? Is the concept of "importance" purely subjective, and that if we consider the bigger picture, that nothing matters at all to anyone except ourselves? Or, as Wittgenstein is purported to have said, that there is no "meaning" anywhere in the universe, outside of the sentence which creates it?
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The term ''important'' has no absolute ''meaning'' except the meaning of ''preventing, relieving, or minimizing suffering'', and also (which is the same thing), ''bringing, increasing, or maximizing pleasure. All possible definitions of ''important'' really mean: ''minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure, in the long-range net effect, throughout one's life. Nothing else is ''important'', unless it does that. That is what the term ''important'' MEANS. It cannot possibly have any other 'meaning'.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Wittgenstein said: ''The only place that meaning exists is in a sentence, including not in the so-called 'mind' of the utterer or of the auditor of the sentence, but only in the sentence, and nowhere else in the universe. 'Meaning' is a human invention, and existed nowhere in the universe until man came along and invented the sentence, and 'meaning' therewith. 'Meaning' is what a sentence says.
ReplyDeleteOf course there are important things. The definition of important means ''that which will reduce, prevent, or eliminate suffering''. So it would be hard to support the conclusion that there is nothing that is ''important''. That is a contradiction in terms, if it is important to eliminate suffering, and this actually defines what is important, and we know that there is suffering.
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