What is the meaning of "What is the meaning of life?"

This is a course description that I recently wrote for a class that I'll be teaching this fall called "Human Nature."

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“What is the meaning of life?”

This is probably the most famous question you’ll hear that’s associated with philosophy.  It’d be nice if there was a definitive answer to this question, but unfortunately there isn’t (Or at least none that I’m aware of).  Instead, there are a variety of answers, some more established than others.

But, before we get to the answers, we need to be clear on what the question means.  This is what philosophers are really good, clarifying exactly what questions are supposed to be asking.  This is important.  If we don’t know exactly what the question is asking, then how can we be sure which answers are even relevant?

So what does the question mean?  In order to answer this question, we’ll need to make a distinction between two types of facts: positive facts and normative facts.  Positive facts are facts that describe things the way they are.  For example, “Obama is the president of the United States.” is a positive fact.  Normative facts are facts that describe things that way they ought to be.  For example, “People shouldn’t steal from others.” is a normative fact.

So, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is combination of two more specific questions.  The first is, “What is life about?”  This is a question with a positive answer.  The second is, “How should people live their lives?”  This is a question with a normative answer.

It’s important to see how the two answers work together.  In order to know how you should live your life, you’ll need to know what life is like.  For example, let’s say that the right way to live life includes acts of prayer and worship to God.  This is a normative claim.  But, this wouldn’t make much sense if you didn’t believe that God exists.  The claim that God exists (or does not exist) is a positive claim.  So, in order for normative claims to make sense, it has to come with a set of positive claims that describe the reality in which we live our lives.

Every theory about the meaning of life will have a set of positive and normative claims.  The positive claims fall into two categories:

Metaphysics:  This first category has to do with what reality is like.  Does God exist?  Is there such a thing as fate?  Does everything obey the laws of science?

Human nature:  This second category has to do with what human beings are like.  Humans, of course, are part of reality.  But, are the a special part of reality?  Do they have souls?  Do they have free will?  Or, are they just like everything else in reality?  Is their behavior determined by laws of nature?  

The normative claims are also split into two sub categories:

Diagnosis:  We wouldn’t be asking “What is the meaning of life?” if life were peachy.  We experience all kinds of problems, conflict and suffering.  Where does all this negativity come from?  Each theory about the meaning of life gives us a diagnosis.  It tells us why things aren’t as they should be.

Prescription:  After a diagnosis, we need plan to make things better.  This is where we learn about how we should live so as to flourish and to live the best kind of life.  

Any theory that gives tells us about metaphysics, human nature, diagnoses the human condition, and prescribes a way to live a flourishing life is a theory that answers the question, “What is the meaning of life?”  In this class, we’re going to examine twelve such theories.  These theories include both religious traditions, as well as the thoughts of major philosophers.  From this survey, you’ll see just how diverse opinions are about what the meaning of life really is.  Hopefully the class will give you the tools you need to decide for yourself what the answer to the question is.

An argument for the moral permissibility of psychoactive drugs (The medical type)

There seems to be a weird stigma about using prescribed psychoactive drugs.  These sorts of drugs include antidepressants, like Prozac, stimulants, like Ephedrine, mood stabilizers, such as Lithium, or sedatives, like Klonopin.  Some people hold the belief that it is somehow immoral or unnatural to take these kinds of drugs.  Here's an argument that shows that if you're okay with other sorts of pain-relieving medicine, you should be okay with psychoactive drugs as medicine.

1.  Prescribed psychoactive drugs are relevantly similar to (physical) pain-relieving drugs.
2. It is not a big deal (i.e. morally permissible) to use (physical) pain-relieving drugs in a responsible manner.
3. Therefore, it is not a big deal to use prescribed psychoactive drugs in a responsible manner.

I'm going to expand on the first premise, but let me say something quick about the second premise.  Obviously psychoactive drugs can be abused.  But this is true for any drug out there.  The potential for abuse is not something unique to psychoactive drugs, and is therefore not a good reason to think that it is morally questionable to use them.  The same can be said of potential side effects and possible addiction.

Okay, now on to the first premise.  We're all okay with using pain relievers like Ibuprofen, Tylenol, and Aspirin.  We're also okay with lots of other symptom repressing drugs like antihistamines, antacids, or various cold/flu medicines.  We are we okay with using these kinds of drugs?  Here's my guess.  Pain is a mental state.  It exists to alert the body that it is somehow in harm's way.  Once an individual has placed her body out of the potential source of danger, then the pain has served its purpose.  It is no longer useful at that point.  Many times, however, the pain still lingers even though we've taken the corrective measures.  This pain is not only superfluous, but can act as a detriment to our living our lives.  As a result, we take the sorts of pain relieving drugs mentioned above.

Emotions are also mental states.  They also serve as alerts to the individual.  They respond to stimuli in a similar way as pain does.  Negative emotions indicate external stimuli that may be psychologically harmful to the individual.  Once an individual has acknowledged such emotions and has taken the necessary steps to address the stimuli and has taken corrective measures, the emotion has served its purpose.  Like pain, however, negative emotions can also linger.  And, like pain, such emotions can be not only superfluous, but also harmful.  Psychoactive drugs repress negative emotions, like pain-relieving drugs repress the sensation of pain.

If you agree that this is a reasonable assessment of emotions, and if you are okay with taking pain-relieving drugs, then you should be okay with taking psychoactive drugs if you need them.  Now, it is important to note that it is only permissible to take such drugs to deal with superfluous negative emotions.  It is not okay to take such drugs in lieu of addressing the stimuli that is causally connected to the pain.  But this is also true of pain-relieving drugs.  It is obviously not okay to take pain-relieving drugs in lieu of actually dealing with the source of the pain.

Perhaps this is why the stigma exists.  It may not be clear if an individual has really dealt with the source of negative emotions, whereas it's usually pretty clear when an individual has dealt with the source of physical pain.

Physical versus Psychological Harm

The concept of harm plays a central role in moral and political theorizing.  We generally tend to believe that every person has the right to be free from harm inflicted by other.  But exactly counts as harm?  This is a tough concept to analyze.  I'm not going to pretend to give anything close to a complete analysis here.  I just want to think about it a little bit and maybe make a few sketches.

Okay, so let's think of life as dynamic.  Either things are moving forward, or things move in circles.  Life moves forward by growing, learning, adapting, achieving goals, etc.  Things move in circles via some kind of maintenance, like the nitrogen cycle, homeostasis, etc.  The idea is that there is some kind of action or movement, and the right kinds of movement are considered good.

So with that metaphor, we might consider harm to be either an impediment to this kind of movement, or movement in the wrong direction.  For example, oxygen deprivation is considered harmful because it impedes the respiratory and circulatory process in the body.  Degenerative diseases are harmful because it reverses the growth process.

So if we have the notion of harm as either impediment or regression, then we can make a further distinction.  For persons, harm can be either physical or psychological.  This distinction is pretty self-explanatory.  Physical harm is harm done to the body.  Psychological harm is harm done to the mind.

In most societies, we try to legislate against harm.  For instance, aggravated assault is a kind of physical harm, and it is illegal in most societies.  In general, we think that harm is morally bad.

What I want to note here is that psychological harm is worse than physical harm.  In fact it seems true that a lot of physical harm is bad only because it also inflicts psychological harm.  This seems particularly true when it comes to harm inflicted by another person.  For instance, two guys fighting in a boxing ring inflict harm on each other.  But we don't think that this kind of physical harm is morally bad.  However, two guys fighting in a parking lot is considered bad.  Why?  Because we think that there is also some psychological harm involved.  In this case it the exertion of dominance by one over the other.

So it seems that much physical harm, at least the physical harm inflicted by persons, reduces to psychological harm.  If we want to legislate against harm, then we should be legislating against psychological harm.  But note that there is not much in terms of laws against pure psychological harm, i.e. psychological harm without physical harm.  For instance, there are laws against child abuse, but this is child abuse primarily understood as physical abuse.  I'm not aware of very many cases where a child was taken from his/her parents solely because of what the parents said to the child, even though such words can deal irreparable psychological harm to the child.  Likewise, there are no criminal laws against adultery.  Adultery is another example of psychological harm that is not physical harm.

Why is this?  Well the easiest and most obvious answer is that it is difficult to enforce laws against pure psychological harm, especially when such harm is inflicted through speech.  If a child accuses her parents of psychological harm through emotionally damaging criticism, what evidences can she provide?

To further corroborate this point, we already do have some laws against pure psychological harm.  These are laws related to libel and slander.  More recently, states have passed laws against bullying and cyber-bullying in particular.  Libel, slander, and cyber-bullying are all instances of pure psychological harm.  These laws are considered enforceable because evidence can be mustered for this kind of harm.  This is the interesting about technology and psychological harm.  As technology advances more and more communication becomes of the type that can be preserved and documented.  We communicate via text, video chat, social media, email, etc.  All of these can be recorded and saved.  Thus evidence of psychological harm can be preserved, and laws prohibiting forms of psychological harm can be enforced.

So it'll be interesting to see how technology affects our legislation regarding psychological harm.  What will also be interesting to see is how this interacts with our concern for privacy.  Being able to access these forms of communication is often seen as an invasion of privacy, but it also enables society to control instances of psychological harm.

Voluntary bodily control vs involuntary functions

When I was in grade school, I learned that there were two types of actions with respect to my body.  There were voluntary actions, like using my muscles to type, walk around, and speak.  There were also involuntary actions, like my heart rate, digestive process, and metabolism.

I was taught that some actions in my body had to be involuntary, because if they were all voluntary, I'd have to concentrate on all of these functions in my body.  A lapse in concentration could lead to my death.

This is all well and good.  However, there are certain bodily functions that are both voluntary and involuntary.  Two examples include blinking and breathing.  When we don't pay attention, our body automatically breathes and blinks.  It is normally an involuntary action.  However, we can direct our attention to these actions and voluntarily control our rate of breath or the rate at which we blink.  Thus, these sorts of actions can be at times involuntary, and at other times voluntary.

What I always wondered about was why some actions had this property of being both voluntary and involuntary, while lots of other actions do not.  I can control the rate at which I breathe, but why can't I directly control my metabolism?

There are lots of things in my body that I have no direct control over.  I have no control over lots of sensations.  For instance, if I feel pain, I can't, without medication, decide to just not feel pain.  The same goes for emotions.  If I am sad, I can't just directly turn off this sensation.  Similarly I can't just decide to fall asleep.  If I am tired, I can close my eyes and drift off to sleep.  But there are plenty of times where I close my eyes, wanting to sleep, but don't fall asleep.  I have absolutely no direct control over my digestive and metabolic processes.  I can't directly command my body to convert the food I eat directly into energy, rather than storing it as fat.  The same goes for healing processes.

This makes me wonder about the relationship between me and my body.  It seems like I have very little direct control over a lot of things that go on in my body.  Can we conclude anything from this?    What's interesting is the fact that I have any direct control at all.  Why aren't all of my actions involuntary?  Why is it that have I some direct control rather than no direct control?  It's this mix of voluntary and involuntary actions that go on in my body that leaves me scratching my head.

This is an example of a curious feature of human beings (and maybe some other mammals as well).  We are self aware creatures.  We are not completely responsive to the environment around us.  Some parts of us are totally responsive to external stimuli.  Perhaps our metabolism, heart rate, etc. are examples.  But some of our actions aren't completely dictated by external stimuli.  Why is that?

This aspect of human beings, this sort of dual, two-tiered nature, is something I find highly fascinating.  I'll be writing about this more in later posts.

Who cares?

When you read philosophy articles, you'll often come across the "motivation" part of the article early on.  This is where the author tries to convince you that what he or she is writing about is worth your time and attention.  It's pretty clear that the truth of the article is not sufficient for it to be of value.  People also have to care about what the author has to say.

Unfortunately, there are lots of areas in philosophy that no one really cares about.  Here's one example.  In one of the intro classes that I teach, I cover six topics: knowledge/skepticism, the existence of God, the possibility of time travel, the relationship between mind and brain, personal identity over time, and free will.  Of these topics, I have the hardest time getting students to care about skepticism.  Do we really have access to the external world, or are we dreaming?  Or in a computer simulation?  Who cares?

If nobody cares about a particular issue or problem, then no one will work to solve it.  But how exactly do we understand this notion of caring?  Why do people care about the things they do, and how do the come to care about things that they didn't care about before?

Part of this is easy to explain.  People care about Maslow's hierarchy stuff like getting food, water, shelter, social interaction, etc.  This is explainable in terms of evolutionary concepts like survival or reproduction.

Other things that we care about might be explained as extensions of things that we care about for Darwinian reasons.  For instance, we often care about money because it serves as the means to stuff that ensures our survival or ability to reproduce.  Lots of things that we care about on a daily basis might fall into this category.

There are, however, things that we might care about that are don't directly serve our interests in surviving and reproducing, nor are they straightforwardly extensions of the aforementioned interests.  I'm thinking of things like art, music, literature, and philosophy.

Why do we care about these things?  There are lots of answers floating around that appeal to cultural, religious, or biological mechanisms.  I'm interested in a pedagogical standpoint.  If a student doesn't get them to care about philosophy, how do you get them to care?  Likewise for politics, art, etc.  Is concern for these things simply a function of how an individual was raised?  This doesn't seem quite right.  There are plenty of adults who come to care about these things when they had no prior interest.  What happened?  How do people come to care about something they didn't care about before?