The meaning of meaning

Well, there's a fun question : what does meaning mean ? (Here in the moral sense, not the understanding sort) This article is definitely far more interesting for the questions it provokes than the answers it provides.

When Bob sits down to polish the steel junk he’s about to haul to the scrap heap, we can say his activity is meaningless: there’s no point to it. Similarly, when my students sit down to prepare for an exam that I have decided to cancel, their work is pointless and meaningless. Meaningless things have no point to them – nothing is achieved, no purpose can be fathomed, and the work we dedicate to them is entirely wasted. Meaningful things, let’s presume, are just the opposite.

Right, so for a thing to be meaningful it has to have a connection to something else. The more or stronger the connections, the more meaningful it is, and vice-versa. An utterly meaningless activity would be something that doesn't affect anything else entirely in any way whatsoever, like a subatomic particle which emerges from the quantum foam for a picosecond and then goes away again (or one of Ricky Gervais' Flanimals, which "does absolutely nothing and dies"). Bob's polishing his junk ?* Could be utterly meaningless, if Bob doesn't see the point in it. But if he does - if, for some strange reason, he achieves some mental well-being as a result of his pointless polishing, then it's not really pointless or meaningless at all. It's not necessarily deeply meaningful, but it has some meaning**.

* Pun intended.
** Practically nothing is really totally meaningless. But for the sake of easy language, we can simplify "almost totally pointless" as "meaningless".

Meaning is at least partially subjective, since only we can be the judge of whether some things affect us or not. It's also not the same as pleasure. Death can be incredibly meaningful but also incredibly horrible. On the other hand, learning something that changes our outlook can be deeply meaningful but could equally be horrific or joyful.

So, how about life as a whole – your whole life, and the lives of everyone? If we believe in a Grand Scheme of Things, some cosmic contest with an unambiguous finish line, then we might then see lives as meaningful. This is one thrillingly grand notion of cosmic meaningfulness – but hardly anyone now believes it. Most of us accept that the universe has not come about for the purpose of achieving anything.

Wait, who said anything about "purpose" ? If Bob genuinely feels better for his junk-polishing, despite having to throw it all away at the end, then the purpose was entirely internal : it made Bob feel better. That was the goal in itself (as in the case of dwarves on the Discworld, for whom having a big pile of gold is its own reward - spending it on things will only decrease the available gold). Bob can then go on with his day feeling much relieved and more productive, but even if he didn't, his activity would still have had meaning to him.

The Universe doesn't need to have a purpose for us to live meaningful lives. Good lord, if we all had to have goals in order to have meaning, we'd be in a sorry state indeed ! Since our objectives change constantly, I don't see "purpose" as being a useful definition of meaning.

Does the Universe itself have meaning ? Of course not, any more than a dishwasher has meaning - unless it's conscious or under the influence of something conscious. It can convey meaning; it doesn't have meaning in itself. We have meanings to ourselves and to each other, perhaps extending very far indeed into the future through people affected by our actions. That meaning is internal within the chain of connections. That the chain eventually ends has no bearing on each link finding meaning of different sorts.

The author however disagrees :

While this is a cheery idea, I think it is completely false, even obviously false. I’ll grant, of course, that we can pretend that our lives are meaningful, and we can ginny up some enthusiasm for the purposes we imagine for our lives. But when we do this, we have to forget for the time being that (to repeat) all of existence is completely meaningless. We have to think that, somehow, that fact that we happen to value something is itself a meaningful fact – when it isn’t.

What ? That's like saying that we have to "pretend" we can see the colour yellow. I suppose if you insist that meaning is purpose then this makes more sense, but I identify it far more with value. Again, valuing something, benefiting from it, is not at all the same as enjoying it.

This emphasises that the meaning of meaning is surely subtler than "connections which affect things" and definitely subtler than "liking things". Suppose someone is wrongfully imprisoned and never released, causing them to go insane. Their life then becomes utterly meaningless to themselves and others. But if instead they're released after a year, they can learn from this experience even if the experience itself is not at all beneficial. It could be said to be a meaningful experience even if they'd have been better off without it.

If anything can be made meaningful by an individual’s choice – then nothing really is meaningful. It is only a matter of individuals acting as if or pretending that their pursuits are meaningful.

(See obligatory Existential Comics link) But it isn't a matter of choice, at least not entirely or directly. Do you "choose" to find value in fine art or watching Celebrity Love Island On Ice or whatever the latest craze is ? No - you simply do or don't. At best you have indirect influence over this by choosing what to experience, but you have far less control over how those experiences affect you. So you can't just "make" things become meaningful.

“But, in fact, some pursuits are better than others. Obviously, it is more meaningful to save lives, create art, and extend knowledge than it is to count blades of grass!” But this is not at all obvious. It may seem obvious – but only if we forget about the larger frame of futility that encompasses all human endeavors.

But something that affects more people is very clearly more meaningful than something which affects hardly anyone. Meaning has both breadth and depth to it, as well as both objective and subjective elements. The vikings discovering America, for instance, was not as meaningful as that time Christopher Columbus stumbled upon it, because the viking discovery was far, far less consequential. The same art can be intensely meaningful to some and utterly useless to others. Saving a life is of such an extreme consequence that by and large it is obviously more meaningful than counting blades of grass. If it isn't obvious to you, then you should seek help immediately : you're a danger to yourself and others. Especially gardeners.

Consider the question that gets raised from time to time over a glass of wine: “What would you do today if you knew the world was going to end tomorrow?” Most people would toss aside everything they have been doing because the very pointlessness of it all becomes starkly evident.

Obviously the only sensible answer is "a massive orgy"... but that doesn't mean I'd like to spend the rest of my (hopefully much longer than one day) life in said orgy. See, the question is false. Anyone else remember the excellent god game "Black & White" ? Part of the marketing was that you could find out who you really were since your decisions had no consequences, but that's exactly wrong. A fantasy is often fun precisely because it's a fantasy. It's fun to go on a killing spree in a computer game precisely because it isn't real. If the world were to end tomorrow, that wouldn't mean that we might as well start torturing each other in imaginative ways. Why would it ? We'd only be increasing the amount of pain experienced.

Similarly, our normal daily activities have meaning because they have connections to the future. Of course we'd stop doing them if there was no future, but that wouldn't made them pointless or meaningless for us to do them before. That's just silly. The meaning of activities depends on context.

Well, here’s a newsflash: the world will end, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. With what reason should the distance between “tomorrow” and “someday” magically bestow meaningfulness upon the things we do?

A whopping big one, idiot ! Good grief. For starters, if I'm going to die tomorrow then sure, I'm going to stop writing the code I'm currently working on, because there's no way I can finish it in 24 hours. But if I'm going to die 50 years from now, then I'll carry on coding, because I'll get many years of benefit from completing it.

Short-term futility, we all agree, is bad, meaningless, absurd: there’s no point in rushing to paint the house when the tornado is on its way. We try to avoid putting time or effort into projects that are evidently and immediately futile. But then we go on to think that it is meaningful to save the rainforest since the extinction of life on earth will not happen any time soon – its futility is long-term. But long-term futility is every bit as futile as short-term futility.

You're an idiot, sir.

But let me hasten to add that, at the same time, I’m a huge fan of existing. (Woody Allen: “Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.”) I think there’s plenty of fun to be had – at least for those of us not in tragically dire circumstances. Moreover, siding with thinkers like Hume, I think there’s a great contentment in seeing other people being helped, and great joy in behaving like a decent human being.... Each one of our examples of meaningless activities can all be thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.

Then I will smugly declare that you're just used a really, really stupid definition of "meaning". I think you've got hung up on the idea of meaning as having to relate to some absolute, external deity or something, that everything must be part of some Big Plan and is meaningful only because the deity says so :

A pursuit is made meaningful in virtue of being part of some larger purpose or end that exists apart from us. But a pursuit or activity or achievement can be pleasurable or valuable by meeting some condition set by us – either deliberately (as in staged contests), or simply by us being the sort of beings we are.

It seems to me that this just shifts the problem - apparently, if the deity finds something valuable, then it can be said to be meaningful, but us mortals don't get to decide this. I think that's pointless. If I value something, then I find it meaningful, end of. There's no "pretending" involved, I just do.

Bob might take great pleasure in revealing the beauty hidden within scraps of metal. My students might enjoy being together and arguing and exploring their knowledge together, even if the exam has been canceled. Sally may be in the highest throes of amusement as she drafts her anti-memo memo, intending to delete it as soon as she finishes. Recognizing these clearly pointless activities as meaningless need not make them any less enjoyable or rewarding. The great experiment of our age – living without Grand Schemes – consists in recognizing that we don’t need meaning in order to find value.

You're mad. Bob can find value in a pointless activity ? That's daft. If Bob did something he appreciated, then that appreciation was the point, and the same for Sally and the rest. If I go out to buy food, then clearly my activity has a purpose. If you want to say, "but you'll eventually die, so it's pointless, however your activity does have value since it will stave off your untimely demise for a while" then your definition of "meaning" is self-evidently insane.




Everything is meaningless but that's okay What would it be for life to have a “meaning”? What does it mean when people say life is meaningful? I’m not sure, so let’s start with smaller, more obviously meaningful things. Better yet, let’s start with some meaningless things.