Analytical structure
Framework
Four intellectual directions are introduced without declaring any one correct. A fifth category, MADE, is a working hypothesis of this observatory.
Continuation modes
These are not religions. They are structures humans have used when a verifiable answer to why life should be lived is not available.
Continuation mode
RECEIVED
Meaning is understood as coming from outside the self.
God, transcendence, tradition, revelation or inherited purpose. Not a proof that such a source exists. A structure in which some people continue.
Continuation mode
RELEASED
The demand for permanent meaning or a permanent self is loosened.
The question may turn from “what is the meaning of my life?” to “why do I require a permanent meaning, and a permanent I?”
Continuation mode
CREATED
Meaning is constructed through choice and action.
Where the world does not answer, a person may still choose a form of life and continue inside it.
Continuation mode
RELATIONAL
Meaning emerges through relationships with other people.
Care, love, teaching, and shared work may continue without a final metaphysical settlement.
SHIRO & Co.
MADE
A person continues making without requiring a final explanation.
Painting, music, breakfast, code, a garden. The act may precede any account of why a life should continue.
Continuation mode
UNKNOWN
Available evidence does not justify classification.
If the record cannot support a mode, the observatory leaves the field empty of interpretation.
Analytical categories, not religions
Do not equate Christianity with RECEIVED, Buddhism with RELEASED, or atheism with CREATED. A single observation may contain multiple modes. If evidence is insufficient: UNKNOWN.
Reference directions
Christianity, Buddhism and Camus are not ranked. Each is a way of inhabiting the absence of a compulsory answer.
Reference direction
Christianity / Kierkegaard
Near RECEIVED
Meaning may be received through relation, faith, hope and love even where certainty is unavailable.
Kierkegaard’s problem is not that uncertainty disappears and faith then arrives. Faith is described as a relation that must be lived while uncertainty remains. This observatory does not treat Christianity as a solved answer. It treats a structure in which continuation can be received rather than proven.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Søren Kierkegaard
Do not equate Christianity with RECEIVED. A Christian life may also be relational, made, or unknown.
Reference direction
Buddhism
Near RELEASED
Rather than supplying a permanent meaning to a permanent self, the demand for permanence itself can be examined.
Indian Buddhist analyses of mind do not place a substantive, independent, enduring self at the center of experience. The Four Noble Truths are operational: suffering is observed; it has conditions; it can cease; a path is practiced. The observatory does not rank this as truer. It records a structure in which the craving for a permanent answer can itself be loosened.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy
Do not equate Buddhism with RELEASED. A Buddhist life may also be received, relational, made, or unknown.
Reference direction
Camus / The Absurd
Near CREATED
The universe may not answer the human demand for meaning. Continuation remains possible without resolving that silence.
Camus describes a collision between the human need for meaning and a world that does not supply it. In that account the problem is not solved by suicide, nor by a forced hope. The task is to continue without converting silence into a hidden answer. This is close to CREATED, and sometimes closer to continued action than to a constructed doctrine of meaning.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Albert Camus
Do not equate atheism with CREATED. An atheist life may also be relational, made, released, or unknown.
SHIRO & Co.
MADE
Near MADE
Meaning may not always precede action.
A painter is not always painting “the meaning of life.” A musician is not always answering why a life should be lived. A parent making breakfast is rarely doing metaphysics. And still the act continues. The working hypothesis is that meaning may appear later, as a residue of what was done.
SHIRO & Co. · Working hypothesis of this observatory
WORKING HYPOTHESIS. NOT AN EMPIRICAL CONCLUSION.
Working hypothesis
Not an empirical conclusion
Meaning may not precede action.
Meaning may be a residue of action.
意味は、行為に先行するとは限らない。行為の残滓として現れることがある。
A person may continue to make, care, build, teach, love or work before possessing any final explanation for why life should continue. Painters are not always painting the meaning of life. Parents making breakfast are rarely doing metaphysics. The act can come first.