The Meaning Of Life vs. Meaning In Life

Reflections on what we want to know.

What is the meaning of life? This is a question that has been asked by people over the years perhaps more than any other. It is also one of the most elusive, not only in our ability to answer it but also in our ability to understand just what it is that we are really asking. In the following pages I intend to examine, and hopefully help to clarify, what it is that we might mean by this question. In doing so I will also address Nozick’s theory of meaning in life and try to show how it contrasts with the meaning of life problem and also how the two might interact with one another.

Nozick begins his discussion of the subject with the story of a man who travels a long distance to question an Indian holy man about the meaning of life. The answer he receives is that life is a fountain. Nozick offers a couple of variations as an end to this story, but in either case the traveller is dissatisfied with the answer and feels that his trip has been a waste. He is unable to understand the answer and so assumes that it cannot be the real one.

A parallel to this story can be found in the various versions of Douglas Adams’, A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. In this book (or series or radio play) the philosophers who ask about the meaning of life (the universe and everything) are told that the answer is 42. They are baffled by this, yet, unlike the traveller in Nozick’s story, they do not give up. They think that the reason for their misunderstanding of the answer may simply be that they hadn’t understood the relationship between question and answer. Their next action is to ask what the question was, but the answer to this results in something just as ambiguous as the answer to the original question.¹

There are several important ideas that can be found in these examples. The first is, is there a meaning of life at all? It is perfectly possible that there is none, that we are all just here. The answers that the “wise men” and oracles commonly give may not mean anything to us because they are not supposed to. It could just be a way of saying, “The meaning of life? Don’t be silly.” Alternatively there could be a meaning of life, and this would present us with several possibilities. The answers make no sense because the oracle² doesn’t really know the answers itself; if the real answer were given it would make sense. Then again, maybe life is a fountain. Well, just what does that mean? Either the oracle knows what that means or it doesn’t. It’s possible that it could have gained its own knowledge in a fashion similar to its questioners and is only repeating this knowledge. Or else, it does understand the answer and the traveller, the common person, doesn’t because such understanding can only come about in a Zen-like way; the traveller must follow the path of regimen that the oracle did until s/he “becomes” the oracle and realizes the answer.

These would seem to be the only possibilities regarding the existence of a meaning of life, but knowing them still leaves us feeling unsatisfied. For some reason we reject the notion that there is no meaning of life, and that, even if there is such a meaning, it cannot be known or expressed in a way that we can understand. The level of this “dependance” of ours on there being a meaning of life that we can understand goes far deeper than any academic question with which we might be concerned. In general people are not viscerally disturbed when faced with the question of the existence of God. It is an intellectual decision, and is largely unaffected by anything other than our mental processes (although emotional perspectives attach themselves after this decision is made). But it doesn’t make us stay up at night thinking about it, and this may be because the very idea of God is something that is removed from us. Except on some very theoretical levels of discussion, representations of God are separate from us; such a being is (possibly) there but that being has no direct control over our lives.

We like to think that we are responsible for our own actions and that we also know what we are doing, that our actions are right, and we feel this on that visceral level which theology escapes. When confronted with the idea of a mechanized society, although such a description may be arguably true, or even theoretically advantageous, we are emotionally repelled by the concept. Similarly we are unable to feel that there can be no meaning of life, because that would make us just random “things” of no consequence. But such a position may very well be irrational, and the only real reason for which we feel there must be a meaning of life could be because we misuse the term. Is it not possible to have a condition where there is no meaning of life, but there is still value in it, such that while we may be random we are certainly not just “things”?

Nozick claims that it is the question of what meaning our lives have that drives us to ask about the meaning of life; we ask this question to “camouflage our vulnerability with jokes”.³ It is true that we often light-heartedly dismiss events as being related to this question (“Who knows what this means in the greater scheme of things.”), and that underneath this dismissal does lie an insecurity about ourselves.

Up until the previous statement I have said that we address the meaning of life in a very serious fashion, but I have also just said that we treat it lightly. While this may seem to be a contradiction it is not; the resolution of the problem lies in what we mean when we ask about the meaning of life. On one level we question what our purpose is here on Earth, and this is a very objective question much along the lines of the existence of God. It is difficult to become too emotional about it, because of its objectivity, and so we pass it off as a joke. On the other level though, what we mean when we ask the question in earnest, is how we ourselves could matter in any way, how we can make a difference in the world so that we can justify our own limited existence. I distinguish these two questions in the following manner: the first concerns the meaning (purpose) of life, and the second deals with the meaning in life. Nozick’s chapter in his book deals extensively with the latter question (even though it is titled to indicate the former) and I want to also turn my attention to it.

We want to be assured of the fact that we matter in some way, for if this is not the case then we really are just a collection of “things”.⁴ Nozick calls this “mattering” meaning, value, and, ultimately, worth. He says that in order to increase our worth we must do so by interacting with other people in such a way that we “connect” to another person’s value as value. In other words, we must respect other people for the valuable agents that they are; acting in a moral fashion and not just because we are moral but because those we come into contact with are moral. Embedded in such an idea is the concept of breaking loose from the limits that we have imposed upon us; reaching out from our own selves to those of others.

Nozick is answering our question of whether or not there is meaning in our lives. He says that there is, and he tells us how we can go about deriving it. Regardless of whether or not there is a purpose to life, we have worth so long as we seek to improve (go beyond) ourselves and act morally. But has Nozick’s answer satisfied us? Perhaps we do have worth, and perhaps our worth can be defined in the way that Nozick proposes, but the need for us to know, or more accurately to feel, that we have meaning continues on even after Nozick’s explanation.

If we accept his explanation of worth then we are still prone to ask ourselves if we have meaning, because his system is an ever continuing one. We can never be satisfied being what we are, with the meaning that our lives currently have, because we must be aware of how much more meaning we could have. The meaning that we have “accumulated” through our past actions, and which is attached to us at present, is nothing in comparison to a theoretical (Platonic) meaning that could be achieved.

Nozick deals with the problem of any finite thing being meaningless when compared with something “bigger”, by trying to show that it has meaning by its very virtue of being connected to it. But what degree of meaning is that? When he proposes a system where worth (meaning) can be varied (and perhaps judged) by those actions that we perform, where one person can have greater worth than another, then he hasn’t really escaped the problem at all. The most virtuous person on our planet would still be “meaningless” when compared to something else in the universe which had a much greater worth. It would seem that we have only returned to the beginning of Nozick’s argument, with no “real” solution to the problem that he had posed.

His explanation must therefore be in error, or incomplete, if an explanation of our meaning in life is to satisfy us on an intuitive level. We have to arrive at a theory that will account not only for meaning in our lives, but also for “meaningful” meaning such that it remains no matter what we are compared to. If we are to have such “meaningful” meaning then there can be no theory which proposes varying worths, for if this were the case then there would always be something that is worthier (and more meaningful) than us.⁵ This presents us with only one solution: everything has an equal meaning.

So far meaning has ostensibly been equated with action, so that we have meaning because of something that we’ve done. But this cannot be the case if it is possible for someone (or something) to not perform that action, because then there would be those who didn’t, and there would again be a difference of worth.⁶ We must all have meaning then, and equal meaning, simply because we exist. It could be argued that we are all part of the universe (Life itself), each part contributing in its own and unique fashion without which the universe would not be the same; the smallest grain of sand making as greatly valued a contribution as any sentient being. In any case, and however you wish to argue for equal meaning, the fact remains that an “equal-meaning” system is the only alternative to a “varied-meaning” system such as Nozick’s.⁷

If everything has an equal worth, and it’s impossible to change that worth, then what does that say about moral decisions? It is possible, using this theory of meaning, for a person to be moral or immoral, but still retain the same worth. Conversely, when judging a persons value (Nozickian worth) it is unimportant whether or not they are morally culpable. Every human being has the same essential worth and so should be given the same moral consideration as a person. Morality still carries the same weight that it did in Nozick’s system but for the fact that a person’s worth cannot be determined by a moral act.

Now that we’ve established what this “equal-meaning” theory implies we have to ask whether or not it satisfies our question about meaning in our lives. Unfortunately the answer to this is no. Just as Nozick’s solution gave an answer to the question but was un-satisfying, so too is this answer equally unwanted. It doesn’t help to alleviate that aching feeling that we have, to know whether our lives have meaning. It is like receiving the answer to the meaning of life. We might say in response, “Oh, I see. Now what?” Because Nozick was right when he said of his story that the traveller might have been expecting the holy man to give him instructions on how to live his life. We want to know what we can do that will mean something.

Again, we fall back onto the problem of what we mean when we ask that question. It started off as meaning “What is the purpose of life?”, then became “What value does my life have?”, and now it has turned into something like “What should I do that matters?” If we take “matters” as meaning worth then we should pursue moral⁸ decisions (Nozick’s view) or, either we don’t need to “do” anything (we matter already) or we can do anything we like (it all matters). But this can’t be what “matters” means because we are already aware of all this. So just what does it mean?

I fear that if I were (able) to answer that question then “What should I do that matters?” would simply turn into yet another question; this is an endless series of questions that cannot be answered because we don’t know what we want to know, and we wouldn’t take any comfort in it if we did receive an answer. The whole problem lies in our nature. We are always seeking to discover new things, yet we can never be finally happy with such discoveries because we at least feel that there is always more to know, even if this may not actually be the case. We are also afraid of the unknown even as we seek it out, so that if we don’t discover something we are both disappointed and relieved.

The questions we ask of the oracle can never be answered, and can never even be “questioned”. Perhaps our asking them is only our way of seeking some sort of relief from our own subjective and finite lives. They are not questions but rather pleas for comfort. As a final thought: even though we may not be able to receive such comfort directly, is it still not comforting to know that we are not alone in this plight?

Endnotes

1. In fact, it results in something absurd. The question turns out to be, “What is six times eight?”, and the answer that was originally given, 42, cannot be correct. Adams seems to be making a statement about the futility of searching for the meaning of life. Note that even if the”question” had been, “What is six times seven?”, it still would have done nothing to answer the original question.
2. I objectify the “oracle” here not only because I want to get away from sex-roles, but because I want to raise it to a theoretical level where the question is asked not of a specific person but of a “body” of knowledge.
3. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 571.
4. It would be interesting to question what our intellectual objection could be to being just “things”. We might say that to be “things” is to reduce us to a mechanized world(and offer the objections that we raise to that), but this isn’t necessarily the case. When I say that we are”things” I don’t mean that we don’t have feelings,thoughts, and other necessarily subjective interactions,but simply that they don’t matter. An objection to us as”things” on the ground that this would deny morality would be useless; if we were “things” morality itself would be a useless concept as it would have nothing to apply to. The only way that I can see of intellectually refuting such a state is if there were a purpose to life. In this way our lives would have a goal, a purpose, and give us value, even if, outside of this purpose, we had none. But the question of the meaning of life is one that we have already looked at and it isn’t the case that there must necessarily be one.
5. It could be argued that there are different levels of worth and that we, as human beings (sentient creatures), are more worthy than anything else (being on top), but this would bean irrationally egocentric viewpoint, and quite difficult to defend against criticism without falling into tautological arguments (something which I find distasteful and inconclusive).
6. Note that this might imply a two-valued meaning, such that you either have meaning or you don’t. This is a very intriguing and interesting notion, and on the surface it is quite reasonable, but on an intuitive level I also find it to be just plain silly. Just what would that action be that engendered meaning? Perhaps it would be to treat others’ value as value in Nozick’s sense (to perform a moral act),but whatever the action is it would mean that some people(such as infants) didn’t yet have worth and could be treated as “things”. To reconcile such actually mechanistic and moral worlds (some people would really bepeople and some really wouldn’t be) is seemingly impossible.
7. I don’t really mean that it’s the only alternative, but rather that it’s the only alternative I can think of. I am willing to admit that there may be another system which my(Aristotelian) mind is incapable of conceiving.
8. Don’t forget that, for Nozick, value, and hence worth, can also be found in activities other than simply the moral.These include such things as artistic and creative expression as well. I don’t include these things in my analysis, but that doesn’t mean that they should be ignored.