The Meaning and Purpose of Life

The Question and Possible Answers

The question of the meaning of life is the most fundamental question of human existence. It asks “what is the meaning, significance, point, or purpose of an individual life in the context of all that was, is, or could be?” Answers to this huge question come in many varieties: supernaturalists argue that meaning derives from a god or gods; skeptics doubt that an answer to the question exists, or that we could know the answer even if it did exist; nihilists claim that life has no meaning; while naturalists claim either that we create our own meaning (if they’re subjectivists), or that we find meaning in the good things in the world (if they’re objectivists). Yet none of these answers is entirely satisfactory.

Religious Answers

Religious (supernaturalist) answers are the most popular, but they depend on problematic philosophical assumptions about the nature and existence of a supernatural realm. Yet religious claims may simply be false. Only about 15% of professional philosophers and 7% of the National Academy of Sciences members are theists.1 2 The burden of proof clearly lies with those making such extraordinary claims about an unseen supernatural realm.

Moreover, even if religious claims are true, it is not clear how gods grounds meaning. For instance, if you are told that you are a part of a god’s plan you might reasonably ask, how does being a part of a god’s plan give my life meaning? Being a part of your parent’s or your country’s plan does not necessarily do so. Or if you are told that the gods just radiate meaning, you might reasonably ask, how do they do that? If you cannot be the source of your own meaning, how can something else be? Or if you are told that the gods’ love gives your life meaning, you might reasonably wonder why the love of people around you cannot do that. Or if you are told that life is meaningful because you will live forever with the gods after death, you might reasonably wonder how eternity makes life meaningful. You might also question why you would want to live forever with beings apparently responsible for so much evil. Thus even if there are gods life may still be meaningless.

Philosophical Answers

Turning to philosophical replies to our question, we cannot straightforwardly accept skepticism, since we are forced by constraints of consistency to be skeptical of skepticism. As for nihilism, it haunts us, and no amount of philosophizing is palliative in its wake. Yet we reject it too, for why accept such a depressing conclusion when we cannot be any more sure of its truth than of the truth of Pollyannaish religious assertions? Subjectivism provides a more promising philosophical response—we create limited meaning without accepting religious, agnostic, or nihilistic provisos. The main problem here is the meaning created does not seem to be enough; we want more than just subjective meaning, and the task of creating our own meaning is enormous. This leads us to consider objective values and meanings found in the natural world—the good things of life like knowledge, love, work, friendship, and beauty. In the meeting of subjective desires and objectively good things, we may have found the most meaning available to us in this life. For now we derive the limited meaning life offers by attraction to, and engagement in, the really good things of life.

Death

Yet this is not enough—because we die. Lives can be meaningful without the proviso of immortality, but they cannot be completely or fully meaningful if they are finite. And the reason is that completely meaningful lives must contain both an infinite quality and infinite quantity of meaning. Both are necessary though not sufficient conditions for meaning.

It is true that longer lives do not guarantee meaningful ones, but all other things being equal, longer lives contain the possibility of more meaning than shorter ones.  An infinite life can be meaningless, but a life of no duration, a non-existent life, is by definition meaningless. A happy, well-lived finite life of twenty years may contain a lot of meaning, but an identically well-lived life would be more meaningful if it were longer–it would contain more total meaning. Thus the possibility of more meaning increases proportionately with the length of a lifetime. Death is bad for many reasons (see”Is Death Bad?” Feb. 16, 2014) but it is bad mostly because death renders completely meaningful lives impossible. 

(This section was updated in response to the perceptive comments of Austin Stiller. A more detailed argument in support of the claims in this paragraph is in Chapter 8 of my book: The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific and Transhumanist Perspectives.)

Science and Technology

Fortunately science and technology may provide our salvation. Science might overcome death in the near future through some combination of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and robotics. But even this is not enough, for immortality is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for full meaning; full meaning requires infinite qualitative goodness and joy as well as an infinite quantity of time. Yet science and technology potentially solve this problem too. If science overcomes death, why can’t it infinitely enlarged consciousness as well? With oceans of time for future innovation, it is plausible to think that science and technology could make fully meaningful lives possible; they could make heaven on earth a reality. Still we have no guarantees. We don’t know if science and technology will bring about a utopia or its opposite, or hasten our destruction. And even if a glorious future awaits our descendants, we don’t know if we’ll be part of it.

Evolution

Cosmic evolution reveals the emergence of consciousness, beauty, and meaning, as well as the possibility of their exponential increase, but it does not imply that a more meaningful reality will necessarily unfold or that a state of perfect meaning will inevitably ensue.

Hope

Uncertain that life will ever be completely meaningful, or that we will participate in such meaning even if it does come to pass, we can still hope that our lives are significant, that our descendants will live more meaningful lives than we do, that our science and technology will save us, and that life will culminate in, or at least approach, complete meaning. These hopes help us to brave the struggle of life, keeping alive the possibility that we will create a better and more meaningful reality. Hope is useful.

The Purpose of Life

The very possibility of infinitely long, good, and meaningful lives–along with the hope that this possibility can be realized–brings the purpose of our lives into focus. The purpose of life is to diminish and, if possible, ultimately abolish all constraints on our being—intellectual, psychological, physical, and moral—and to remake the external world in ways conducive to the emergence of meaning. This implies embracing our role as protagonists of the cosmic evolutionary epic, working to increase the quantity and quality of knowledge, love, joy, beauty, goodness and meaning in the world, while diminishing their opposites. This is the ultimate purpose of our lives; this is what we should do. In a concrete way this implies being better thinkers, friends, lovers, artists, and parents. It means acting in ways that promote human flourishing, and ultimately the flourishing of all being. Naturally there are disagreements about exactly what this entails, but the way forward should become increasing clear as we achieve higher levels of being and consciousness.

Is Life Meaningful?

Nonetheless knowing the purpose of our lives does not ensure that they are fully meaningful, for we may collectively fail in our mission to give life more meaning; we may not achieve our purpose. And if we do not fulfill our purpose, then life was not fully meaningful. Thus the tentative answer to our question—is life ultimately meaningful—is that we know how life could be ultimately meaningful, but we do not know if it is or will be ultimately meaningful. Life can be judged fully meaningful from an eternal perspective only if we fulfill our purpose by making it better and more meaningful. Meaning then, like the consciousness and freedom from which it derives, is an emergent property of cosmic evolution; and we find our purpose by playing our small part in aiding its emergence. If we are successful our efforts will culminate in the overcoming of all human limitations, and our (post-human) descendants will live fully meaningful lives. If we do achieve our purpose in the far distant future, if a fully meaningful reality comes to fruition, and if somehow we are a part of that meaningful reality, then we could say that our life and all life was, and is, deeply meaningful.

Hope Revisited

For now, forced to live with uncertainty about the future, we should have hope that life can be made ever more meaningful. Hope provides the impetus for our efforts, and makes the continued emergence of meaning possible. Our hope is no small thing.

But is hope justified? Can we live without it? Is it enough? Is it justified emotionally but not intellectually? Is a pragmatic justification of it sufficient? Or is hope the last temptation as Kazantzakis thought? We will turn to such questions in our next post.

1. http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/wh...

2. http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_rel...