Abstract GTMoLaMLDJH
#axiology #meaning_of_life #moderate_supernaturalism I argued that Life, meaning the sum of the lives of all living things, had a meaning if and only if it had been purposefully brought about by a designer or creator. Michael Hauskeller has recently criticized this argument, responding that this sense of ‘meaning’ is not the one in view when we are discussing ‘the meaning of life’... still works but I a moving to moderate supernatiralism.Despite this distinction, Metz has argued in this volume that moderate supernaturalism is vulnerable to the same objection as in his view defeats extreme supernaturalism, and I close by responding to this argument.
- The Meaning of ‘The Meaning of Life’ Peter van Inwagen writes: If we have a purpose, then our existence ‘has a meaning’ in the only sense these words can be given. It must be admitted that it is not at all clear what these words do mean. The term ‘meaning’ has various senses, but none of them lends any sense to the question, What is the meaning of our existence? other than this sense: Explain why we exist in terms of the purposes we serve. (If Alice surprises a trusted employee who has broken into her office and is going through her files and asks that person, ‘What is the meaning of this?,’ she is requesting an explanation of a certain state of affairs in terms of the purposes of her employee or those whose agent the employee is.)
Van Inwagen mentions that there are ‘various senses’ of the term ‘meaning’. Robert Nozick distinguishes eight such senses in his Philosophical Explanations. The first is‘meaning as external causal relationship’. Nozick gives three examples in a row: ‘those spots mean measles, smoke means fire, red sky at night means fair weather’ (Nozick, 1981, p. 574). This sense of ‘meaning’ seems to be similar to H P Grice’s ‘non-natural meaning’, and Nozick’s first example is in fact taken from Grice (Grice, 1957, p. 213). Nozick’s third sense is the one that van Inwagen has in mind, ‘Meaning as intention or purpose’. Nozick’s examples include ‘what is the meaning of this outburst?’, ‘did you mean to do that?’, ‘this play is meant to catch the conscience of the king’, and ‘by that gesture he meant to insult us’ (Nozick, 1981, p. 574). In what follows I restrict myself to this third sense of ‘meaning’. so not true as Can Inwagen says that "none of them lends any sense …other than this sense"
On this understanding, the primary use of the word ‘meaning’ in the sense of intention or purpose would be to refer to something that agents had in their minds, and the secondary use would be to refer to something that actions had in virtue of their being performed by agents with purposes in their minds.so the word ‘meaning’ in the present context may be extended from the agents to the acts performed and then to the events or states of affairs produced by those acts. Imagine, then, to vary the example slightly, that Alice discovered the state of affairs of her papers’ being in a mess on the floor of the office, and asked ‘what is the meaning of this?’. An answer to her question would consist in telling her that the state of affairs was the result of a purposeful action, and what the purpose behind that action was: for example, that someone wanted to upset her.
however, would have no meaning in the sense of intention or purpose if it were the result of a purely natural process – if it had been caused by the wind, perhaps.4 It would also have no meaning in this sense if it had been caused aimlessly by a conscious agent’s accidentally knocking the papers onto the floor, or by a drunken or entranced agent’s throwing them on the floor without any ulterior motive.5 A more difficult case would be if a preoccupied agent randomly hurled them over their shoulder without having any intention concerning where or how they should land: in this case the mess would have been produced by a purposeful action, but the production of the mess would not have been a purpose of the action, so the mess would have no meaning in the sense of intention or purpose
Suppose that the papers were left in a mess in order to upset Alice, is it still the case that there is a meaning in the sense of intention or purpose to the continuing existence of the mess if, after getting upset, Alice makes a full recovery, or even if she never gets upset at all? One thing we can do here is to distinguish between the bare existence of the mess, on the one hand, and, on the other, the continued existence of the mess after a certain time: it may be that the continued existence of the mess has no meaning in the sense of intention or purpose even if the fact of its bare existence does have a meaning. It seems to me that if Alice asks on her return ‘what is the meaning of this?’ having forgotten about the incident then the correct response is to say ‘the meaning is that it was put there in order to upset you’. But if Alice asks ‘what is the meaning of this mess’s still being here?’ it is clear that she is asking what the purpose of her staff was in failing to clean it up.
We have to distinguish between, for example, asking at 11pm ‘what is the meaning of this?’, on the one hand, and, on the other, asking (whether at 11pm or not) ‘what is the meaning of this at 11pm?’. These two questions may have quite different correct answers.
t if the existence of the World, by which I meant the sum of contingent states and events, had a meaning, then that meaning had to be a purpose that it gained in virtue of being an intended product of the purposeful action of a necessary being (Hill, 2002). This was because, for one thing, no contingent being would have existed beforehand to have endowed the World from its very first moment with meaning in the sense of intention or purpose,6 and, for another, no contingent being as a matter of fact creates itself or even everything else, or even most other things.
it would not seem to suffice, if Life had no beginning, for each individual life to have its meaning in the sense of intention or purpose given to it by an antecedent living thing in a backwards-infinite sequence, as Life as a whole would still not be the intentional product of a purposeful action. Also, what would be the meaning in this sense in our example of this Life, this endless backwards-infinite sequence of lives, rather than another one? What about individual lives, especially human lives? It is possible that an individual’s life could be endowed with meaning in the sense of intention or purpose by their parents. For example, it may be that the parents brought the child into existence in order to have someone to look after them in their old age. This example shows that a life can have more than one meaning in this sense, since a life can be the product of a joint action undertaken with different intentions. It is possible that the parents had different purposes in bringing the child into the world. Indeed, it is possible that a life could have two meanings or purposes that could not both be fulfilled: perhaps one parent decided to bring the child into the world to provide someone that would go away and earn money to keep them well off, whereas the other parent decided to bring the child into the world to provide someone that would stay at home as a full-time carer for them.
Also, while (given the assumptions above that retrospective and simultaneous donation of meaning are impossible) one cannot give meaning in the sense of intention or purpose to one’s own life as a whole, one can give a large part of it meaning in this sense. Imagine someone tempted to commit suicide deciding at the last moment ‘no, I shall live – and devote the rest of my life to the relief of suffering’. In this case, the person has, in a way, brought about the existence of the rest of their life by refraining from suicide, and brought it about with a specific purpose, the relief of suffering. This suffices, in my view, to give meaning in this sense to the rest of their life. (Perhaps more disturbingly, if my would-be murderer changes their mind and decides to spare my life in order that I may cook and clean for them for the rest of my days, that would also give meaning in this sense to the rest of my life, albeit a meaning that I might want to reject.) It is not necessary that one explicitly consider and reject suicide. If one thinks simply ‘I shall devote the rest of my life to the relief of suffering’ then one has repurposed the rest of one’s life, just as one might repurpose a book as a paperweight or doorstop. Nor need this decision be conscious or explicit.
Drawing an inference from all the above, I wrote in 2002 that someone that believed that Life had no creator or designer was rationally compelled to believe that Life had no meaning in the sense of intention or purpose.
Not only does it not follow from Life’s having a meaning in the sense of intention or purpose that each individual life has a meaning in that sense, but it also does not follow from an individual life’s having a meaning in that sense that every moment or period of that life has a meaning in that sense. Indeed, it is possible that most of the life will have no meaning in that sense if, for example, the purpose for which the being was brought into existence was fulfilled pretty much immediately, and the being did not repurpose the rest of its life.
On the other hand, it does not follow from a life’s lacking meaning overall in the sense of intention or purpose that every significant period of it will lack meaning in that sense. Further, it does not follow from one’s whole life’s having a meaning in that sense that one is able to make it one’s own meaning, that one is able to adopt it as one’s own purpose for one’s life – perhaps my parents intended that I be an Olympic athlete, but this dream is sadly impossible for me. Or perhaps my parents brought me into the world simply to show that they were capable of bringing a child into the world, leaving me nothing left to do to achieve this goal. Nor does it follow that if one is able to adopt it as one’s own purpose that one should – perhaps my parents brought me into the world intending that I pursue a long-standing vendetta, but it would be wrong for me to do so. I should also stress that the argument concerns just states of affairs and events, such as lives. It does not concern individual substances, such as human beings, considered in themselves apart from their existence or lives.
while I insist that if someone denies the existence of a necessary being then they cannot consistently affirm that the World (i. e. the sum of contingent states and events) has a meaning, I do concede that if someone denies the existence of a necessary being and even of any creator or designer, they could nevertheless consistently affirm that Life (i. e. the sum of the lives of living things) had a meaning. This meaning would be a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life in terms of non-living things.
- Michael Hauskeller’s Critique Michael Hauskeller has criticized this account of mine in some online Reading Notes not only with respect to Nozick’s ‘meaning as intention or purpose’ but also with respect to Nozick’s first sense, ‘meaning as external causal relationship’: The problem is that when we ask about meaning in life we are not really asking for an explanation at all. Instead, in many cases what we are asking for is a justification. If life has a purpose, that purpose does not answer our question about life’s meaning, or if it does, then not because it is life’s purpose, but because it gives us a reason to live and to find our life worth living. The question we want answered is why we should live, or why we should go on living. It is not impossible that what gives us a reason to live and what makes our life worth living is in fact also the purpose of our life. But even if it were not the purpose of our life, whatever it is that gives us a reason to live and makes our life worth living would still continue to do so. (Hauskeller, Daniel_Hill_on_God_Purpose_and_the_Meani)
It should be noted that Hauskeller’s focus here is on the individual’s life, not, as mine was, on Life as a whole.
Hauskeller also deploys three counter-examples to my account, including the famous example of Sisyphus, who was punished for tricking Death by being forced to roll a rock up a hill only for it to roll down when it got to the top, forcing him to go down to the bottom and repeat the process. If, for instance, God had created life because he thought he might enjoy the spectacle of our suffering, then that would be the meaning of our life. Or if my role in God’s plan were to amass the largest collection of bottle caps, then this would be the meaning of my life however trivial collecting bottle caps may appear to me and to everyone else. If God had created us to forever roll rocks up a hill only to see them roll down again shortly before we get to the top, then this would be the meaning of our life, even though such a life, the life of a Sisyphus, is widely seen as a paradigmatic case of a life entirely devoid of meaning. Of course God, being God, would not think of creating life for such reasons. But that is beside the point. (Hauskeller, ibid)
It should be noted that these counter-examples are against the assertion that purpose is sufficient for meaning in the sense relevant to ‘the meaning of life’. They are not against the assertion that purpose is necessary for meaning in that sense, though Hauskeller disputes that too.
- Response to Michael Hauskeller I still believe that one meaning of ‘meaning’ in ‘what is the meaning of life?’ relates to the notion of purpose, just as it did in the example from van Inwagen of ‘what is the meaning of this?’ asked about the reading of private files or the making of a mess in Alice’s office. In each case, one is looking for the purpose of the phenomenon (life, the existence of the mess or its being made) in terms of the intentions of agents in the purposeful action that had the phenomenon as its intended product. Nevertheless, I accept that Hauskeller is right that when people talk about the meaning of life it is often in fact the case that what they really want is an answer to what seems to me to be a different question, about what would make their lives meaningful.
Here is the connection I see between the two notions. In the case of ‘the meaning of’, we look at the purpose with which the thing in question, be it the World as a whole, or an individual constituent element of it, such as a human being, was brought into being. In fact, when people ask ‘what is the meaning of life?’ they often really mean ‘is there a purpose that I should make my own for the rest of my life?’. I agree with Hauskeller that knowing the purpose for which one was brought into existence, if there was one, does not in and of itself tell one whether one should make that purpose one’s own for the rest of one’s life.
Suppose two humans bring a child into the world to provide genetic material to save an older sibling.13 Suppose further that the sibling sadly dies before the child is born, and that the parents lose interest in the child, who grows up to become a drifter with no set projects or purpose and accomplishing little of value. In this case, even though there was a meaning to the bringing into existence of the drifter it does not seem right to call the drifter’s life ‘meaningful’, absent further information. And that is because neither the purpose with which the drifter was brought into the world nor any other purpose (I also suppose in this example that neither God nor anybody else has a different purpose for the child’s life.) actually governed the drifter’s life. For someone’s life to be meaningful it has to be that the living of at least a significant portion of their life actually fulfils a purpose. In other words, a purpose actually has to direct at least a significant number of their major decisions, priorities, and plans. (Even a perfectly happy existence would be meaningless, it seems to me, if one’s happiness were not the result of any purposeful actions, if one just sat there serenely doing absolutely nothing).14 This issue is also raised by Hauskeller’s counter-examples. On my account, Sisyphus’s existence would have a meaning in the sense of intention or purpose if his parents brought him into the world for a purpose. What is more, if his parents did bring him into the world for a purpose, then even the fact that he ended up being punished as he did in Tartarus would not bring it about that his existence overall lacked a meaning in the sense of intention or purpose. Furthermore, if the gods could have annihilated Sisyphus, but purposefully allowed him to continue to exist, then, on my account, Sisyphus’s continued existence in Tartarus would also have meaning in the sense of intention or purpose, and it would also give meaning in this sense to his activity in Tartarus: the gods purposed or meant to punish him by it. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that the object of his activity, the task that occupies Sisyphus’s postmortem life, is meaningless in and of itself, and that is precisely why that task was chosen for him: it is of no value in and of itself, and, in and of itself, does no good to anyone
Further, the intuition is that even if Sisyphus devoted his life to the rock-rolling, so that he literally lived to roll rocks, his life in Tartarus would still not be meaningful despite his giving himself this purpose,16 at least, if he did not do it for an ulterior valuable purpose, such as punishing himself for his crimes by doing it.
This last point provides material for a response to Hauskeller’s other two examples, featuring a trivial purpose and an evil purpose. What if my parents brought me into existence with the purpose of bringing into existence a bottle-top collector, and that for its own sake, not for any further purpose? Or what if my parents brought me into the world for sadistic reasons, to see me suffer? There would be no moral obligation on me to make those purposes my own, but what if in fact I did dedicate my life to one of those purposes? Would my life be meaningful in those conditions? On my account it would have meaning in the sense of intention or purpose, but I accept that it would not be meaningful. This is because these purposes are not valuable (even if they are mistakenly valued). Hauskeller is correct that a life’s having a meaning in the sense of intention or purpose is not sufficient for it to be meaningful; the intention or purpose needs to be a valuable one.
Is it necessary, however, for a life to be meaningful that it be lived for a meaning or purpose for at least a significant proportion of it? Yes. Suppose that there were someone for whose life neither they nor anyone else, including God, had a purpose. Suppose further that, as it happened, this person aimlessly did things that, by accident, turned out to promote goodness or happiness: for example, in blundering about they accidentally broke a gun, thus preventing a murder from taking place, they accidentally dropped food that saved the life of someone starving etc. Would such a person have a meaningful life? No. They may have had a lucky life, or their life may have been lucky for others, but it was not meaningful if there was no purpose to it or any significant part of it.17 What is more, this would apply, I think, even if they were brought into existence for a definite purpose, as long as that purpose did not control their actions.
I have been adding ‘or any significant part of it’ because it would be pedantic to insist that if someone dedicated their life from childhood to helping others they still did not have a meaningful life on the ground that they did not dedicate their life as a baby to helping others. When we ask whether someone had a meaningful life we do not insist that they must have had a purpose governing every second of it right from its beginning.
What, however, if someone, perhaps like Zorba in Zorba the Greek, had no long-term goals at all, and drifted from situation to situation, but, nevertheless, in each situation fulfilled a short-term intention of doing something worthwhile in that situation?18 It is not a requirement of a life’s being meaningful that it be lived with just one purpose. It seems obvious that a life can be meaningful even if a third of it is spent in a state (sleep) for which one might have no purpose at all.19 It also seems obvious that a life lived half in pursuit of one purpose and then half in pursuit of a different purpose would not on that account be meaningless. So, it seems that a life composed of short-term purposeful episodes interspersed with purposeless episodes and with no overall long-term purpose would not on that account be meaningless. It seems, intuitively, however, that a life would not be meaningful if one had a purpose for it, but one couldn’t implement one’s purpose.
In short, it seems that it is necessary for a life to be meaningful that it be freely lived, at least in significant part, for a valuable (important and morally good) purpose, and that, to a significant degree, the life achieve that purpose. Is this condition also sufficient for a life’s being meaningful? I am of the cautious view that it is, but I do not need this assumption in what follows. I deny that it is necessary that the life be enjoyed, or enjoyable, or satisfying, or varied, or interesting, or spectacular, or out of the ordinary, or allow for ‘self-creative autonomy’, 21 or that it be recognized in any particular way by others. Nevertheless, I do not deny that any of these features might increase the meaningfulness of a life, since it is possible for one life to be more meaningful than another not only in the degree to which it is devoted to a given purpose and the degree to which it achieves that purpose, but also in virtue of the degree of value embodied in the purpose.
Meaningfulness is, thus, I think, like a recipe with some necessary ingredients and some optional ingredients, which, despite being optional, might nevertheless improve the whole.
- Glorifying God and meaningfulness In 2002 I wrote more generally about a ‘creator or designer’. Now, for the sake of convenience, I write more specifically about God. I assert that God created the World as a whole, Life as a whole, humanity as a whole, and each individual human being in order that the World, Life, humanity, and the individual human being might glorify him. So, my view is that we should glorify God (a) because it is morally obligatory, (b) because our creator and benefactor asks us to, and (c) because it will make our lives more meaningful. Glorifying God is, thus, overdetermined as something we should do.
Now, Metz in his piece in this volume seeks to build on this to argue that on this basis moderate supernaturalism must also be rejected: If a life of eternal significance would bring an infinite amount of meaning in its wake, then consider that no life with a finite amount of meaning can compare and hence the supernaturalist cannot account for the intuition that such a life could be meaningful (Metz, 2021b, p. 117). It seems to me that there is an important difference between saying that life not lived in relation to God must be totally meaningless, on the one hand, and, on the other, saying that life not lived in relation to God can be meaningful, but is always far less meaningful than, and even paltry in comparison with, life with God. Metz argues, however, that there is no real difference, saying that the meaning of a life not lived in relation to God would not be a ‘flat zero’, but it would, compared to infinity, come about as close to zero as is mathematically possible for a non-zero number, and that arguably fails to capture the judgement that [a life not lived in relation to God could be] meaningful on balance absent God and a soul. Just as we would not describe someone’s life as ‘happy’ if it had only a smidge of happiness compared to what is frequently on offer, so we cannot plausibly describe someone’s mortal life as ‘meaningful’ if it has only a small dollop of meaning compared to infinity. (Metz, 2019, p. 31).
I agree with Metz that we normally use words such as ‘happy’ and ‘meaningful’ in a comparative way, such that it would seem wrong to call someone’s life ‘happy’ or ‘meaningful’ if its level of happiness or meaningfulness were very low ‘compared to what is frequently on offer’. But the problem is that there are at least three different possible classes in relation to which we could be making the comparison:
(i) The class of all logically possible lives (or activities (which would be my preference)), including lives spent in, for example, Nozick’s experience machine; (ii) The class of all actual lives (or activities), including those after death; (iii) The class of all actual lives (or activities) in the here and now, before death.3
The most natural comparison class is (iii). It would seem wrong to describe, in Metz’s words, ‘someone’s life as “happy” if it had only a smidge of happiness compared to what is frequently on offer’, i. e. frequently on offer in this life. If I asked someone whether they were happy, they would not normally reply ‘I cannot say that I am, when one thinks about how much happiness is on offer in the next life’, any more than if I asked whether they were healthy they would normally reply ‘I cannot say that I am, when one thinks about how much health is on offer in the next life’, or if I asked whether they were old they would normally reply ‘I cannot say that I am, when one thinks about the longevity on offer in the next life
So, the intuitive judgement to which Metz refers that a life not lived in relation to God could be ‘meaningful on balance’ is similarly based on a comparison with other lives in the here and now, not in the hereafter, and is accommodated by moderate supernaturalism. What is more, it is based on a comparison with the publicly accessible appearance of people’s lives or activities, rather than on the secret state of their souls. Now, it is true that in one of the passages quoted above Metz drew a comparison between certain lives in this world on the one hand, and life in the experience machine on the other. This would direct us to the first comparison class that I suggested, the class of all logically possible lives or activities, (i). But it is extremely difficult to work out an average over the whole class of logically possible lives or activities, and, for any possible life you choose of finite meaningfulness, there exists, it is plausible to think, a logically possible life (even one lived without reference to God) containing a life so meaningful (while still being finitely meaningful) as to make the one in question paltry in comparison, even if the life in question consisted of delirious happiness in millions of years of productive work in eliminating suffering. What is more, it is plausible that this point goes not only for lives measured extensively, but also for activities measured intensively, i. e. for any activity you choose of finite meaningfulness there is a logically possible activity whose intrinsic meaningfulness makes the one in question paltry in comparison. So, Metz’s argument cannot be applied in connection with (i), for it would forbid one from calling any possible finite life or activity ‘meaningful’.
I agree that if we adopt (ii) then Metz can compare lives or activities now with lives or activities in the hereafter, and say that all those in the here and now are meaningless by comparison with lives in the hereafter or the activity of sinlessly praising God in the hereafter, and I agree that here moderate supernaturalism gives us a verdict similar to that given by extreme supernaturalism.33 But I deny that this is a problem. I simply do not have the intuition that a life in the here and now spent in alleviating suffering, say, must be meaningful in comparison with a life of infinite meaningfulness in the hereafter.
What is more, even what I have said is the most meaningful activity possible in the here and now, glorifying God, will look meaningless when we compare it in our current sinful states with how the activity will be in the sinless state in the hereafter. I simply don’t think that anybody routinely uses the word ‘meaningful’ in comparison with lives in the hereafter, any more than they routinely use the word ‘happy’ or the word ‘old’ in comparison with lives in the hereafter.
In sum, I insist that moderate supernaturalism does not fall prey to Metz’s argument, and can accommodate the intuitions about which he worries. And I say this despite the fact that I assert that our lives in the hereafter, if lived in sinless union with God, will be, at every moment, actually infinitely meaningful, and more meaningful than any life, no matter how long, lived in the here and now. I have included the word ‘actually’ to show that my position is stronger than that of T J Mawson, who holds that our lives will only ever be potentially infinitely meaningful, and never become actually infinitely meaningful (Mawson, 2018, p. 202). So, my particular version of moderate supernaturalism is almost as close to extreme supernaturalism as it is possible for moderate supernaturalism to be.34