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In the search for the meaning of life, the subject of objectivity is one that comes into question. As Wolf states, “Meaning arises when subjective attractiveness meets objective attractiveness.” We as humans, when questioning on what exactly can be defined as a meaningful life, such as how May, Wolf, Taylor, and Keke, strive for a direct meaning, but I believe that a meaning in life is a very subjective matter. I conducted a half-survey, half-interview with a group of five peers who have different backgrounds. The study included people of differing genders, year in college, majors, family lives, and social economic statuses. The answers to the exact questions asked are as long as the participant wanted and went in any direction they wanted it to go in. Here they are listed.

May’s definition follows that people are engaged in a project, no matter the success or morality of it, unless that person lives an overall immoral lifestyle. This can detract from one’s meaning. May also believes in the use of narrative values, or values that describe one’s life in one word as if it were a story, such as courageous, generous, spontaneous, or intellectual. While Wolf has a very objective method of what meaning should be, May’s stand takes a very subjective route, as do many of the participants.

Looking at the data for the question of what a happy life was, three participants claimed that a happy life still required active engagement in some way shape or form, one participant stated their exact answer for the definition of a meaningful life, and two suggested that a happy life was exclusively due to how they felt about their life. May states “we feel the need to have our lives ratified from some perspective that isn’t just that of our own happiness. … It is something outside of me that lends my life significance,” which aligns with the participants’ answers. All answers given from had at least at one point suggested that something outside of them, such as helping others or feeling accomplished (about some goal) or having a “purpose” is what created meaning for them.

As our studies throughout the semester continued, we began to shift our focus from thinking about immortality and trying to prolong our physical lives as long as possible, to what people accomplish each and every day to give them meaning during the time they have on earth. I decided to ask a variety of different people about how they find meaning in day to day activities and what it means to them. These people ranged from my current roommates to my parents to coworkers, and have synthesized my findings here for others to think about.

In general, people felt meaningful when they used what they described as their “natural gifts” to make other’s lives better as a result. Those with a natural humor and wit loved to make other people laugh, those with a high work drive made the world better through their careers, and those who had a high affinity for face to face work often participated in volunteering and social work. These natural gifts that were described to me seemed to be perfectly in line to what May identified as “narrative value” of sorts for one’s life. That is to say, if one’s life was viewed as a book with a beginning, middle and end, what themes would run throughout? Only by flexing these character traits did people find the greatest amount of happiness and meaning. The common theme was that yes, there were other ways that could make one happy, but it almost felt like they weren’t living up to their full potential. Additionally, when talking to some of the people who were older and had lived longer and therefore seen a lot more of life, they seemed to emphasize that true happiness comes only from interpersonal relationships. Often, they said, that young people tend to overvalue meaning coming from careers or materialistic possessions, and that after time all those things fade away and don’t matter anymore. So maybe, after all this study of philosophy over the semester, I too still had something to learn about what makes me happy. They also emphasized that even as they had grown old, their views of meaning and happiness constantly were shifting based on their current lives. So maybe, happiness isn’t following something “to the T” in one specific way like many of the philosophers we have been studying have said. Maybe meaning in one’s life is an amalgamation of all the different things you can study, and should come as a product of one’s certain situation and the experiences that you have been a part of until this point.

Many different philosophers have very differing opinions on what a meaningful life looks like. Let’s take a look at a couple of them!

Which philosophers do you agree with, and why?

EVEN MORE IDEAS:

Jeremy Bentham proposed the idea that happiness = pleasure. Meaning, that we should strive to maximize our pleasure intake as much as possible; it should be measured quantitatively rather than qualitatively.

John Mill challenged Bentham’s views and posited that there should be a variance for different types of pleasures; pleasure should be measure qualitatively rather than solely quantitatively. Mill “ranked” these pleasures on a three tiered scale from ‘highest’ to ‘lowest’:

1. Intellectual – our happiness and pleasure comes from being able to interpret and contemplate the world and what it has to offer.
2. Aesthetic – our happiness and pleasure comes from enjoying the aesthetic pleasures in life: art, music, poetry, etc.
3. Bodily – our happiness and pleasure comes from bodily pleasures: food, sex, touch, alcohol, drugs, etc.

TWO THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS:

Pleasure Machine:

This machine is based on Bentham’s philosophy. It’s a thought experiment that only lets you feel pleasure. However, there is no explanation as to what type of pleasure you’d feel – just pleasure at its core.

Experience Machine:

The experience machine is an updated version of the pleasure machine. While you still feel pleasure in this machine, the main difference is that you’d be able to experience going through something. Whether that’s the experience of winning a Grammy and the pleasure that comes with it, or experiencing winning a gold medal at the Olympics. The qualm with this machine is that while you are experiencing something, you’re still not actually doing it; it’s merely virtual reality.

What do people think about happiness as it relates to meaning? What follows is the results of the survey that we conducted exploring just that question.

The majority of the people that completed this survey were somewhere between the ages of 21 and 24, so this was primarily a college-aged audience. Additionally, a majority of the respondents were also women.

At first glance, it seems as though the vast majority of people do believe that there is some type of meaning, whatever that may be, to be found in life. We wanted to keep our survey short and simple (so that people would actually, but I definitely would have been interested to find out what people actually thought the meaning of life is.

More people seem to think that meaning is more important than happiness, but it’s a pretty split decision. Maybe this indicates that people have never really thought about the difference between happiness and meaning in life. Maybe this points to that meaning and happiness are intermixed.

These are really interesting questions because it forces people to choose between happiness and meaning; which is truly the most important to them. These are pretty polarizing questions, but the results seem to indicate that while people care about happiness, they care more about living a life that actually has meaning to it.

This data is really telling of where peoples’ priorities lie and what they find the most important in their lives.

Happiness is defined as “a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging form contentment to intense joy.” But what does that really mean? Can happiness actually and accurately  be defined? How can we define something that seems to be different for everyone? These questions, along with others and how happiness is related to meaning, is what we will explore in throughout this website.

We have examined ways that people have fought back against the feeling of death undermining the meaning of life with the solution of immortality in the first installment of our website. However, despite immortality being the possible answer to this monumental question, it is not one that exists in the slightest. So how can we hope to find the meaning of life if our solution to death- life’s end- is not a viable one? Susan Wolf recommends not trying to find this objective meaning that exists outside of life, but rather us trying to find meaning IN life, even in the inevitable face of death.

In this latter half of this semester we explored how to find meaning in life, even in a silent universe or one where god does not define meaning. It became increasingly apparent that meaning is something only we, as human, can give to ourselves. Philosophy searches for not just a wash of answers though, it wants to solidify something objective that can be applied universally, to all people. So how do we find what it means for a life to have “meaning”? How do we go about living a meaningful life? Numerous philosophers have answered this question in a range of ways, but one thing seems for certain: there does seem to be prospect to finding meaning in our activities.

We looked at happiness as a form of meaning. When one thinks of a successful, well-lived life, happiness will most certainly be a synonymous part of it. So we examined what it means to be truly happy, and if living a totally happy life would then equate to living the most meaningful life. As the exploration into total happiness begins, it becomes quickly apparent that this isn’t something desirable. Virtual machines and living in constant pleasure quickly become something unwanted, reality and it’s hardships seem preferable when presented to most people rather than living in an always blissful situation.