What is the meaning of life

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What is the meaning of life?

• Introduction Tolstoys parable

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Meaning of life

• Some people think that different persons have
  different meanings of life.
• So we should not ask the question of what the
  meaning of life is in the first place.
• Granted that this is true, there may still be
  some universal aspect shared by everyones
  meaning of life.

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Meaning of life

• To say that life is meaningful is equivalent to
  say that life is valuable or good.
• Values can be divided into 2 kinds instrumental
  value and intrinsic value.
• Something has instrumental value because of the
  result it can bring.
• E.g., money and power

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2 kinds of value

• So something has instrumental value only if the
  result it can bring has value.
• To say that something has only instrumental value
  is to say that it has no value in itself.
• Something has intrinsic value when it is good in
  itself, not because of the result it will bring.
• Instrumental values must ultimately be derived
  from intrinsic values.

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2 kinds of value

• In asking the meaning of life, we are NOT asking
  the instrumental value of life what result life
  can bring us.
• Rather, we are asking the intrinsic value of
  life what value life has in itself.
• Some philosophers argue that life is valueless.
  Lets see why.

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Life is meaningless
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The fable of Sisyphus

• In a Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished by
  the gods to roll a stone uphill.
• When the stone almost reached the summit, it
  automatically fell back to the foot of the hill.
• This happened forever. So Sisyphus had to do same
  thing again and again eternally, knowing that it
  would never come to anything.
• Sisyphus action is pointless or purposeless.

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Sisyphus and us

• We in fact have the same fate as Sisyphus.
• We work hard everyday in order to make possible
  that we can work the next day.
• A generation, whether human or other living
  things, struggles in order to let the next
  generation does this again.

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Sisyphus and us

• Of course we fill our lives with little goals.
• But they aim only at repetition of themselves,
  either by us or by our children.
• According to a French philosopher, Albert Camus,
  you are facing two choices to continue to live
  or to stop the cycle by committing suicide.

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Sisyphus and us

• On the one hand , you will realize your life is
  meaningless. On the other hand, you cant help
  taking your meaningless life seriously.
• So to live is to live in absurdity.

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Science Meaning of Life

• Before the scientific revolution, people believed
  that Nature assigns every thing an ultimate
  purpose.
• Now sciences tell us that the world runs like a
  mechanical clock there is no purpose or value.
• Values and ultimate purposes are illusions we
  create to deceive ourselves.

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Science Meaning of Life

• Both Sisyphus actions and our actions, like the
  motions of a clock, are completely determined by
  previous causes.
• Therefore, we have neither free will nor the
  meaning of life.

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Can God Give Us Meaning of Life?
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God assigns a purpose to us

• Some theists argue that Sisyphuss life is not
  meaningful because his action does not fulfill
  any purpose.
• If we are created by God, and God has assigned a
  purpose to us, then our lives will be meaningful
  by fulfilling the purpose.

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Objection

• Grant that God made us for a purpose, just as we
  make chairs for a purpose.
• However, A chair fulfilling our purpose is only
  an instrument for us.
• It is meaningful to us, but it itself has no
  meaning.
• Similarly, if we fulfill Gods purpose, we are
  meaningful to God by being His instruments.
• But fulfilling Gods purpose may not be
  meaningful to us.

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Does the meaning of life consist in achieving a
result?
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Back to Sisyphus

• Suppose the gods assigned Sisyphus a task to
  build a temple at the summit of the hill.
• Suppose further that Sisyphus also had a life
  plan to build a temple. Would this make Sisyphus
  life meaningful?
• First, what would happen to Sisyphus after the
  completion of the temple?
• He would suffer eternal boredom and life became
  meaningless.

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Back to Sisyphus

• Would Sisyphus life be meaningful before the
  completion of the temple?
• A life consists in the activities and actions one
  performs.
• If all of Sisyphus actions have no value in
  themselves, so would be his life.

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Back to Sisyphus

• If he has magic power that allows him to create a
  temple without any effort, it will be meaningless
  for him to roll the rocks.
• This is because his stone rolling has only
  instrumental value.
• When he has the magic power, his stone rolling
  loses even the instrumental value.

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Back to Sisyphus

• I.e His life has no intrinsic value or is
  meaningless even before the completion of the
  temple.
• So Sisyphus life was dispensable.

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Summary

• The result of an action can only assign
  instrumental value to the action.
• I.e The actions by themselves will still have no
  value, unless they have already had values by
  themselves.

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Summary

• The meaning of life is like the meaning of
  playing a jig-jaw puzzle.
• The meaning of playing a jig-jaw puzzle consist
  in the playing, but not only in the completion of
  the puzzle (the result of playing).
• Similarly, the meaning of life consist in the
  living, but not only in accomplishing any results.

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The intrinsic value of life
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Happiness

• The meaning of life is the intrinsic value of
  life.
• So it must consist in the way we live.
• Many think that a happy life is a meaningful
  life.
• Happiness usually means either of 2 things
  satisfying desires or having pleasure (a
  subjective feeling).
• I will argue that neither of them constitute the
  meaning of life.

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Desire

• Consider Sisyphus again.
• Suppose the gods inject a chemical into Sisyphus
  body so that he has a strong desire to roll the
  stone.
• Consequently, he would have eternal happiness by
  rolling the rock.
• Would this make his life valuable?
• Richard Taylor, in your reading, says yes. But I
  disagree.

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Desire

• Ask yourself this question
• Are things good because we desire them, or do we
  desire them because they are good?
• It seems that we may desire something bad (e.g.,
  smoking) or there may be something good (e.g.,
  generosity) we do not desire.

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Desire

• So satisfying desire is neither necessary nor
  sufficient for being good or having intrinsic
  value.
• Also, life may become more meaningful by getting
  rid of certain desires, rather than getting what
  we desire.

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Desire

• Finally, our desires are limited by what we know
  or believe.
• There are many things having values we do not
  know.
• If the meaning of life consists only in
  satisfying desires for external things, this will
  limit the possibilities to what is already
  wanted.
• So whether life has meaning cannot be defined in
  terms of whether one gets what she wants.

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Summary

• What is good to us depends on our physical and
  psychological nature.
• Although we usually desire what is good to us and
  shun from what is bad, desires may sometimes
  misleading.
• So desire functions only as a guide to what is
  good, but it does not define it.
• Whether our desire is a good guide for us depend
  on our knowledge and training.

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Pleasure

• Consider 2 examples
• Example 1
• Suppose that a rich drug addict can enjoy taking
  drug all the time.
• Consequently, he is always having the happy
  feeling.
• But is his life meaningful?

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Pleasure

• Example 2
• Consider the movie Matrix again.
• Suppose that someone lives happily in Matrix.
• Does he lose something of intrinsic value by
  plugging into the Matrix?

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Pleasure

• If the answers to both questions are no, it
  means that a meaningful life is more than having
  a subjective feeling.
• Suppose you find staying with friends and family
  meaningful. This account implies that they are
  merely as a means for you to acquire pleasure.

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Summary

• A pleasurable life is meaningful only if the
  pleasure is produced in the right way.
• Pleasure may be the result of a meaningful life,
  but it does not constitute a meaningful life.
• In sum, the meaning of life is based on some
  intrinsic values that are independent of
  pleasure.

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Objection

• The drug addict or the one living in the Matrix
  are not really happy.
• So happiness consists in more than a subjective
  feeling.
• Rather, it also involves some other intrinsic
  value.

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Reply to Objection

• If we consider happiness in this sense, to say
  that the meaning of life is happiness is to say
  that the value of life is an intrinsic value.
• We are just going in a circle we interpret the
  intrinsic value of life as happiness and
  interpret happiness as the intrinsic value of
  life.
• So talking about happiness does not help us at
  all to find the meaning of life.

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So What Is the Meaning of Life?
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Intrinsic Values

• There are 3 major types of intrinsic values
• Epistemic values, i.e., knowledge
• Aesthetic values, i.e., beauty
• Moral values, i.e., virtues
• The first kind of values can be found in our
  daily activities, e.g,,

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Knowledge

• Knowledge (or truth) has value by its own.
• Although knowledge usually provide us with
  happiness, we may still pursue knowledge even if
  knowledge may bring us suffering.

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Beauty

• Not only is artwork beautiful, many other things
  also has aesthetic values, e.g., natural
  sceneries, people, flowers, mathematical proof.
• Beauty is for us to appreciate and to create.

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Beauty

• In order to appreciate beauty, we need to sharpen
  our perception, i.e. to tune up our sensibility.
• In order to create beauty, we need to learn
  skills in order to express our beautiful ideas.

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Virtues

• Virtues are for us to develop.
• We will also appreciate others virtues when we
  have developed virtues.
• According to Aristotle, virtues are our
  potentials.
• To develop virtues is to actualize our potentials.

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Virtues

• To have a virtue is to have a suitable amount of
  emotion or action.
• E.g., to be courageous is to have a suitable
  amount of fear.
• A virtue is a gold mean between vices.
• E.g., courage is mean between foolhardy and
  cowardice.

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Virtues

• It is very difficult to hit the golden mean
  because a little of deficiency or a little of
  excess is vice.
• In order to develop virtues (to hit the golden
  mean), we need to practice.
• To learn a virtue is like learning a skill or an
  art, such as swimming or playing piano.

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Virtues

• During the learning stage, you may not enjoy
  doing virtuous acts.
• But after you become a good person, you will
  enjoy performing virtuous acts.
• Moreover, you would appreciate the virtuous acts
  of other good people so that the people you like
  to stay with are also good people.