The Meaning Of Life?
It has traditionally been thought that should human beings discover that they are part of a grand scheme, either collectively or singly, that this discovery would yield an absolute morality and provide set of guidelines as to how to conduct one's life. It has been fancied that we are heading to a purposeful end either at the conscious willing of some supreme deity or a natural, yet purposeful, universal evolution into something greater. Which ever way this alleged universal purpose is stated it will inevitably fail to perform its function. The reason for this is not that there is no good reason to believe in such a universal meaning or purpose, but rather that even if the universe was designed to some end it would have absolutely no bearing upon how we live our lives.
Let us suppose that it has been demonstrated that the universe was either designed or is naturally working its way to some ordained end. The first and most obvious point to be made is that this end is not our end even though we may have no choice in the matter. The question of "What is the meaning of life?" is intending to ascertain a justification for life and the way things are. It is not a question as to how things came about and how they will be. Even should we find the teleological end to the universe it would not satisfy the person asking the question for the actual intended purpose would still be a mystery. We may indeed have found a theory which leads us to believe that the universe is heading in one direction but this would add no more justification for the facts than would a simply mechanical and endless explanation.
What if we found out these purposeful intentions of a supreme creator? Would this lend to the justification of facts? No, and for similar reasons as above. It would be the deity's purpose and not ours. We may have a more exhaustive explanation for the way things are and are going to be but from our point of view his purpose is entirely as arbitrary as the physical facts that go in accordance with it. It will be objected that we can assign meaning and judge these cold descriptive facts. We can, it is said, create our own purpose. My point exactly.
This leads directly to my main contention. If we had apprehended the true destiny of the universe and humanity, it will not follow simply from this discovery that the destiny is good. We would have to judge independently whether or not this universal end is worthy of our sympathies. Moreover, this would be a judgment for every single individual. One person may approve of the designed end, whereas I may find it ugly and abhorrent. It would be a purely descriptive fact that the universe had a certain telos and from this there can be no normative entailment. I shall illustrate:
Faulty logic:
(I) The universe is designed to pursue the end x.
(II) Therefore x is good.
Good logic:
(I) The universe is designed to pursue the end x.
(II) x is of type t.
(III) All members of type t are good.
(IV) Therefore x is good.
The difference lies in the fact that in the second case x's goodness is dependent upon an external criterion independent of the mere fact that x is the telos of the universe. Our moral standards will never logically follow from any descriptive fact. Descriptive facts will, of course, be able to account for the origin of moral sentiments and normative statements, for example, "P believes 'x is good' because P desires x", but they can never prove a normative proposition to be true or factually correct. That is the crux of the argument - the philosopher who seeks to answer the question of the meaning of life is asking for the logically impossible. The question simply cannot be answered with any appeal to any fact. Furthermore, there are no normative facts. Anyone who attempts to ask what the meaning of life is, objectively speaking, is going to have no more luck than the poor soul who vainly tries to draw a square-circle.