Meaning in life comes from making a contribution
In my article Meaning in Life: The Fitting Fulfillment View, I tentatively endorsed the Fitting Fulfillment (FF) theory of meaning in life. On this view, “meaning in life arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” I now think, despite my initial attraction to it, that the FF view is mistaken.
Most people, on hearing the FF view for the first time, question the objective component. It may be a surprise, then, to hear that what I think is mistaken in the FF view is not the objective component, but the subjective one. I don’t think that whether a person’s life or activities are meaningful depends on whether she is in any particular mental state.
The fitting fulfillment view
To refresh, the FF view claims that one’s life is meaningful to the extent that one finds fulfillment in projects that are worthy of one’s attention. This is an attempt to combine the appeal of two intuitive ideas that one finds in popular culture.
The first intuitive idea is that people should find their passion and pursue it. The idea here is that a good life is one in which a person pursues projects or activities that she finds gripping or engaging. This subjective experience is “fulfillment”.
The second intuitive idea is that people should contribute to something larger than themselves. This advice is metaphorical. To contribute to something “larger than oneself” is to do something which has value independently of one’s own interests and desires. Wolf describes this kind of value as existing, metaphorically, in a public space. It’s objective in the sense that it’s not just something that a single person cares about; it’s something others can appreciate too. According to the second intuitive idea, a life spent pursuing one’s own personal ambitions — no matter how passionate one is — is importantly shallow if those activities aren’t objectively valuable. A meaningful life is not a self-absorbed one. It is one in which a person makes a real contribution to the world. I think this idea is right.
Whether a life is meaningful does not depend on the mental states of the person living the life. It depends, instead, on what one does with one’s life.
Why mental states don’t matter
The basic point is really quite simple. Meaning is something we can be wrong about. We are not infallible judges of whether our lives and activities are meaningful. If Nelson Mandela were to lie on his deathbed and think “What a pointless waste my life was”, he would be wrong! Another example is George Bailey, from It’s a Wonderful Life. He thought his life was a waste. But, the point of the movie is that this was a mistake.
Of course, our beliefs about how meaningful our lives are make a big difference to our overall well-being. Some people have been given the will and courage to endure the most unimaginable challenges by the conviction that what they’re doing is meaningful. On the other hand, some people with all the privilege and comfort in the world have been unable to appreciate it because of the looming feeling that their lives were pointless.
For this reason, psychologists have been developing ways of measuring “perceived meaning” (see here and here). But one’s perception of meaning is just that — a perception. Unless we are experiencing an illusion, when we perceive something, that something was there before we became aware of it. Our perceptions involve attempts to represent things in our minds. But the representation is not the thing itself. The perception of meaning is therefore not itself the meaning. Whatever meaning there is in our lives is there regardless of whether we are aware of it.
“So it’s not about belief,” some will say, “but you still need to be engaged by what you’re doing in order for it to be meaningful.” I think the following thought experiment shows otherwise.
Consider the case of Mary. Mary spends her life researching colon cancer. She finds the work insipid and sometimes even unpleasant. (It requires looking at lots of diseased intestines.) Mary didn’t choose this career for love of the subject. Her parents pressured her into science, and a sense of moral obligation led her to cancer research. All she’s ever really wanted to do is be a singer. Though she is not fulfilled by her work, it is very important work. In fact, her discoveries prove pivotal in the development of a new treatment that will save thousands of lives.
Now ask yourself: Is Mary’s work meaningful? Does it give meaning to her life? As far as I’m concerned, the answer is an unequivocal and resounding: Yes! What makes her life meaningful is not how she feels about it. It’s what she’s doing.
When we aspire to live more meaningful lives, we aren’t aspiring to take a more positive attitude towards what we’re doing. We are aspiring to do something more important, valuable, or significant.
The many meanings of “meaning”
The idea that meaning is objective should not be surprising. The word “meaning”, ironically, has many meanings. But, in other contexts, meaning is a subject-independent matter. The meanings of words, for instance, don’t matter what one thinks they mean. Remember Inigo Montoya’s line from The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Similarly, the fact that there are 10 rings in a tree trunk means that the tree lived for 10 years. Again, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, or feels about the matter. As some philosophers of language like to say, “meaning ain’t in the head”.
Now, you might be inclined to dismiss this point, claiming that the use of “meaning” in “meaning in life” is unrelated to these other senses of the term. Of course, it’s true that the way in which, say, words and lives are meaningful is very different. But this doesn’t entail that these notions have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, I think there is an underlying unity.
Across all these uses of “meaning”, meanings are products of interpretation. Sentences of the form “X means Y” claim that X indicates, or conveys the information, that Y. Ascertaining meaning requires correctly interpreting the meaning-bearer — applying the appropriate interpretive standard. If one knows that the number of rings in a tree trunk equals the years that the tree lived, then one can interpret the rings and ascertain their meaning. The same goes for linguistic meanings, whose interpretive standards are given by a language. Lives (and their parts) can also be meaningful because they too are objects of interpretation. Particular events or activities can be interpreted in the context of the life in which they appear. This is meaning in life. And a life can be interpreted in a larger context (e.g., a community, or history). This is the meaning of a life.
Just as fruit can be nutritious even if it rots on the tree, something can be meaningful without actually being interpreted (much less interpreted correctly). Fruit is nutritious because — if it’s eaten — it provides nutritional value. Lives are meaningful because — if they’re interpreted — they reveal their meaning.
I’m afraid I don’t know the correct interpretive standards for lives. (Were that I did!) But, seeing how meaning arises helps us to see why we are fallible judges of the meaning in/of our lives. Not all interpretations are made equal; some are misinterpretations. The interpretive standards for natural signs (e.g., tree rings) are entirely independent of human activity. Nothing that we say, do, or think will change what the tree trunk’s rings mean. In the linguistic case, meaning depends on convention. I’m unsure whether the interpretive standard for lives is more like natural signs or language. But, either way, no individual dictates the standard. The upshot is that the meaning in/of one’s life does not depend on what one thinks, or how one feels.
Why is the subjective view so attractive?
If meaning doesn’t depend on one’s mental states, then why do so many people think that it does?
Well, notice that the two intuitive ideas that Wolf starts with (pursue your passion and get involved with something bigger than yourself) are recommendations for how to live your life. They each tell us something about what it means to live well. The best lived life is, no doubt, a meaningful one. But there’s no reason to think that both intuitive ideas tell us about the same aspect or dimension of well-being.
A natural way of extending the “pursue your passion” advice is with “…or risk apathy and disengagement”. The natural extension of “get involved with something larger than yourself” is “…or risk a shallow, insignificant life”. So, the former seems to be about happiness, while the latter is about meaning.
I think people (my former self included) assume that meaning has a subjective component because they, rightly, recognize that a life without positive subjective experience—that is, happiness—would leave much to be desired. Think of Mary. She is doing something very valuable. But she is miserable! The point of the example is not that her life is perfect, or that she ought to have lived it the way she did. The point is that her lack of engagement doesn’t make her work meaningless.
Meaning isn’t all there is to living well. It’s only one dimension of the good life.
Fortunately, meaningful activities are usually engaging, and vice versa. So meaningful lives are often happy ones. But, sometimes meaning and happiness can come apart. And, when this happens, we face tough choices. Which matters more to you: being happy, or doing something meaningful?
Now, I have a lot more to say about happiness, as well as how happiness and (perceived) meaning interact with each other. But I’ll have to save that for another time. For now, rest easy in the knowledge that, if you’re creating value for others, your life is meaningful—no matter how you feel about it.
