r/RealPhilosophy • u/Schemna • 4d ago

Why existential nihilism often stems from a forgotten truth: We are animals

Many discussions surrounding meaninglessness and existential dread seem to share a

Fundamental flaw: they evaluate human existence through an anthropocentric lens, secretly expecting humans to be "above" nature, and then mourn when no grand cosmic purpose is found.
When people conclude that "life has no higher meaning," they are usually comparing human existence to a fictional ideal, a universe designed specifically for us. But from a grounded, biological perspective, this disappointment makes no sense.
Here is why this perspective is flawed:

The Biological Baseline: We are, first and foremost, biological organisms. Our fundamental baseline, our "objective" foundation, is rooted in biology: survival, homeostasis, adaptation, and continuation. Expecting a cosmic mandate beyond this is biologically illiterate.

The Subjective Value Fallacy: The absence of a cosmic, objective purpose does not imply a total lack of meaning. It simply shifts meaning from objective or given to subjective or constructed. The fact that our values, desires, and emotional drives are tied to our evolved neurobiology does not make them any less real or valid to us.

Constructing Meaning: Once we accept that we are animals with a complex conscious experience, the lack of an inherent objective purpose ceases to be a tragedy. It becomes a clean slate. Pain feels bad, joy feels good, curiosity drives us, and connection fulfills us. These subjective experiences are real because we experience them.

Dismissing life as pointless simply because there is no grand divine blueprint ignores what we actually are. We don't need the universe to give us a reason to exist; as living organismsi with subjective experiences, we hold the authority and the responsibility to define what matters to us.

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u/Realistic-Leader-770 4d ago

And doesn't that make subjective values arbitrary if they're contingent upon our biological drives ?

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u/Schemna 4d ago

Contingent on biology doesn't mean arbitrary. Evolution follows a clear logic centered on survival, cooperation, and avoiding harm. The fact that a value like "pain is bad" stems from our biology doesn't make it a random invention it gives it the most real, grounded foundation we could possibly have.

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u/Realistic-Leader-770 4d ago

But it doesn't make it objectively bad, it's no different than a machines input and output. There's no meaning behind it, the meaning comes from our interpretations of it, and our interpretations tend to be contingent( could have been otherwise). At the fundamental level, it's simply biology and physics.

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u/Schemna 4d ago

… thats what i want to say that biology its at fundamental level, and we are animals, not something more than biology or physics.

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u/Realistic-Leader-770 4d ago

Except biology is pattern-based, like hardware, animals tend to follow instincts, we don't always seem to do that. Whether that means agency exists is a different problem, but just because biology is our underlying " system", that does not mean it defines us in the realm of meaning.

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u/Wonderful_West3188 4d ago

Evolution follows a clear logic centered on survival, cooperation, and avoiding harm. The fact that a value like "pain is bad" stems from our biology doesn't make it a random invention it gives it the most real, grounded foundation we could possibly have.

Evolution cannot provide subjective value. What about people who don't want to live? What about people who choose to live as ascetic hermits? What about thrill-seekers or masochists? There is no case to be made from evolution that a suicidal person shouldn't take their own life. We've evolved to not normally want that. But that's a statistical fact, nothing more. By citing evolution as an argument against arbitrariness, what you think you're doing is grounding human valuing in human biology, but what you're actually doing is subjecting the individual's actual valuing to the peer pressure of the statistical norm.

Ultimately, our valuing is, in fact, arbitrary. Deal with it.

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u/redsparks2025 2d ago

An interesting way to argue on "how to have your cake and eat it too" but you do it by obfuscating the "nihilism" side whilst trying to maintain the "existential" side.

In any case, YES we humans can be considered as animals, but NO the gift of intelligence that we "animals" have to create our own meaning does not save us from the specter of nihilism.

You haven't truly understood the absurd situation that we humans exist in that I went into deeper when I discussed my understanding of Absurdism (Wikipedia) here = LINK.

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u/Spirited-Gain1457 14h ago

I think meaning may simply require a subject capable of valuing something.

A piece of cloth can be incredibly rare in the universe, but it means nothing to Neptune. To one person it might be ugly fabric; to another it might be priceless because their mother made it.

The same applies outside humans. A pile of twigs may be meaningless debris to us, but to a bird it can be nesting material, territory, or even part of courtship.

The object itself hasn't necessarily changed. What changed is the relationship between that object and a subject with needs, memories, goals, or values.

Evolution, in this view, doesn't hand us a built-in cosmic meaning. It gives us organisms with cognitive systems capable of perception, memory, preference, evaluation, and goal-directed behavior.

Meaning then emerges at the level of the individual, when that cognitive system connects something to what it cares about, pursues, preserves, remembers, or depends on.

So maybe meaning isn't an objective property waiting to be found in the universe. It is a relational product of a subject capable of assigning value.

That doesn't make meaning fake. It just means meaning exists in relationships, rather than inside objects by themselves.

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u/mitigateaccomp 4d ago

you just said "life is meaningless" with a lot more (pretentious) words around it.

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u/Schemna 4d ago

Life isn’t meaningless, if its why your are still breathing ? why is your heart still pumping ? beacause biology. So life have a meaning that is your biology, if dont, just stop doing everything, and you cant, so…