Fido, depends on what being you eat, I mean the fart will certainly smells differently.

I believe that Heidegger says something like...

being is a thing that has an issue with it's own existence...

I don't disagree.

Are you defining being as a state? And if you are then is Being the functional presence of consciousness.

Or are you defining Being as the action of an (social) actor with particular ends?

so that life is the equal of meaning, and so meaning is the essense of being.

I think, you are reffering to Heidegger;s Dasein. Dasein is only part of the totality of Beings. The only being that is concern with his Being. in simple word. Man.

I dont want to sound like a semiotic gorilla but essence is a quality or if you will an attribute of being, meaning is something we generate in the process of our existence, as much as i admire the ethical life i would not define ethics as the function and purpose of being. Ethics provide a moral light house in a sea of absurdity eg the current state of the world.

Being is the state of conscious perception which allows the individual to interact with other sentient beings to engage and experience life.

One could argue that the whole idea of being inheres 100% in its linguistic use. Bertrand Russell pointed out that there were several sub-definitions of the verb "to be", including predication (i.e. fire IS hot) and existence (there IS a mountain). So "being" is a linguistic phenomenon first that relates subject / predicate or describes existence vs nonexistence.

VideCorSpoon could probably elaborate further.

If you are saying that for people, being is life, well, yes. But life is different from any other form of being. We have to be made by living beings to have life. Life is not only a quality we have, but one we must share. And in relation to life all things have a value, a meaning in relation to their effect upon life. These things we find meaningful do not have meaning on their own, and we do not generate meaning. We recognize life in what supports life, and hold it highly valuable. We find no meaning in all that does not, in some sense, support life, and we find a negative meaning in that which endangers life. Ethics is one of those qualities concieved only of meaning because as a consideration, ethics support life. Since meaning is insepparable from life, so that one implies the other, I think it is pointless to try to talk of one without the other. Being is meaning, and when the matter of life, our meat, and our motation is removed from us all that is left that is common to all life is meaning. Certainly consciousness as we consider it is not common to all life. And still it has meaning.

Being is the substance of my life, it is made up of my presence in both time and space. I agree with you that ethics are central to my behaviour and my conduct as an individual and i perceive that ethics are a property of my being but ethics are not a given, ethics are qualities which we learn to live by.

Meaning is attributable to the actions which i take that are influenced in turn by my ideology of life. Meaning is constructed by individual actions and social agreement we discus debate and then if possible come to form particular positions and agreement which influence our actions which in turn generate meaning

Being as presence has categories of substance, attributes of the body eg perception which is filtered by the brain into information for the mind, observation and analysis which i draw upon to define my own existence through language and action.

Sadly the 20th Century has proved that inherently life has no prior given meaning we construct meaning though the actions of our being and our interaction with others to derive some meaning from the society we live in.

What is "being"? Can one answer this question without a tautology? And if not, why?


Feel free to interrogate the assumptions behind these questions. I don't really mind how you approach the whole matter, as long as you can in some way satisfy my curiosity

To be is to not to be, for if ye can see, then ye can be

Or

You could just simply say, "being" is the act of precieving the perception of "being"

Hence to "be" you must precieve your self to "be"

Or

The even more easy way:rolleyes:. Look at your self, rub your hand's togeather, feel your hair, blow some air, so what's there?(what's there is your "being" and also the answer to your question)

(defined the "being" of one's self and not the self of another)

So, rocks are not because they cannot percieve that they are?

Wouldn't it be more truthful to say: to percieve one must be, but to be one need not percieve.

They 'are' to us as Perspectives/Perceivers.


No. To Perceive is to 'be'. We are 'Perspective' and therefore 'exist' (be) (from our perspective, anyway...). Yes, to 'perceive' is to 'be', exist. We exist as and in our Perspective/perception. We are an intrinsic component of the 'perceived' universes.
No 'Perspective' = no universe = no one to see it = no 'us'.

I think Schopenhaur said: The world will die with me; and also: The world is my idea. The later may be correct, since we know the world through our ideas; but the former is not so, or at least, not obviously so, because humanity continues to exist while we no longer live,

So, when we die we lose our form of being, but all about us loses meaning to us.

Moral phenomena have no objective being what so ever, but only meaning.

In the rush to save the ultimate moral meaning of life,

nameless wrote:

Truth is never 'obvious'.
And you can possibly know this, "humanity continues to exist while we no longer live", how?
Besides, you speak of 'the world' as if there is only one objective world that everyone sees. There are 'our worlds', 'my' world, the only 'the' world, is 'our individual Perspective' as a 'world'.

It is axiumatic: Since the world was here when I arrived, I will expect it to hang on after; but to think it will mean anything after, when it meant nothing before is a stretch. Like wise; there is one world, but as many subjective experiences of it as there are people. It is like the joke about the amoeba that walked out of a bar, and one asked: is that the sun or the moon? And the other said: I don't know; this isn't my neighborhood. We have to realize that even beyond our sight the sun shines, and that it is the same sun for everyone. And the same earth. But we do have ideas that are formed solely of sibjective impressions. If we compare love, virtue, or justice we can never be certain that we are talking about the same idea, which has no physical being.

Quote:

When we die, there is no longer an 'us' for anything to be 'about', meaning or no. We and our universes are One. When the observer is 'not', there can likewise be no observed. Observer and observed are One.


And only to specific individuals (Perspectives) who practice 'morality'.


Save it? There is nothing to 'save'. It is no more than a fantasy of the 'believers'.
(From the Judeo/Xtian perspective, 'morality' is a 'sin', odd that it is so blatantly practiced and condoned!)

So, rocks are not because they cannot percieve that they are? Wouldn't it be more truthful to say: to percieve one must be, but to be one need not percieve.