Richard Taylor The Meaning of Life - Is Life's Meaning Totally Subjective?

A Thought Experiment

Let's start with a thought experiment. Imagine a nefarious neuroscientist kidnaps you, implants a chip in your brain, and wipes your memory of the event. The chip gives you the persistent desire to throw stones into water.

As luck would have it, a wealthy family member wills you their cabin by the lake. You move into the cabin and spend your days doing what you most desire to do--the pointless activity of throwing rocks into the lake. Do you live a meaningful life?

Keep reading for what Taylor would say about this case, or watch the video below for a video version of this post.

Richard Taylor's Subjectivism

We often take for granted that our lives have meaning. We might assume that being a good person and helping others makes our life meaningful.

Making a positive impact on the world. Isn't that the meaning of life? Not necessarily.

The ripple effects of our positive acts over time will fade. Most of our accomplishments won't last. The reality is we do a bunch of stuff in life and die. We leave our possessions and projects to the next generation. They pick them up and repeat life's cycle.

It's easy to begin thinking life's without meaning. In fact, Richard Taylor thinks looking at a meaningless life can shed light on what gives life meaning. You'll see how he does this in just a minute.

In doing this he arrives at the thesis that the meaning of life is purely subjective.

Life has meaning based on the perspective of the subject of the life. If the subject has rightly-oriented desires, which for Taylor focus on the process of doing things, not the products or achievements of doing things, then life has meaning for that person. And that's all the meaning there is to life. It comes wholly from within us.

Now let's see how he argues for his thesis.

Meaningless Existence

Taylor thinks the myth of Sisyphus illustrates a meaningless existence. Unlike Albert Camus, Taylor isn't  in the business of reinterpreting the original myth.

If you're interested in a video that breaks down Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" check out the video here.

A meaningless existence involves endless, pointless activity—an existence full of activity that never culminates in anything.

The person’s existence is like a broken record that just keeps repeating the same small phrase over and over.

Sisyphus committed transgressions against the gods. They condemned him to an eternity of difficult and pointless labor. He must repeatedly roll a heavy stone up a hill only to have it never reach the top. It tumbles back down to the bottom. He starts hoisting the heavy stone again.

Perhaps Sisyphus’s life is meaningless because his life is full of physical pain and suffering. This is a natural thought. Taylor thinks this doesn’t work.

He asks us to consider something like a relay race. But, it’s not really a race. There are no rules. There’s no way to win.

Imagine one person carries a tiny rock to a point. Another person picks it up. That person carries it to a different point. The original person returns the pebble to the original point. The cycle starts again and repeats endlessly.

There’s no physical suffering in this endless pebble relay. Yet, for Taylor, if this was the sum of the existence of the two people, their lives would be meaningless.

The key to meaninglessness is the presence of endless cycles that never go anywhere. Each turn feeds back into the cycle renewed labor of the same kind. It’s as if the people are hamsters on a wheel, endlessly spinning but going nowhere.

The original Sisyphus case involves endless activity that just feeds into more of the same activity.

This raises important questions. How might our lives differ from the life of Sisyphus? How might our lives have meaning his lacks? Or are our lives similarly meaningless?

Beautiful Temples and Glow Worms

Our meaning might come from creating beautiful and lasting things. We often do this through art, architecture, and technology. Sisyphus doesn't create anything of lasting beauty. Taylor points out that if…

…Sisyphus hoisted stones to the top of the hill and created a beautiful and lasting temple, then his activity would no longer be pointless. It would amount to something.

Do our lives resemble the original Sisyphus case or the temple building Sisyphus case? Taylor argues that all creaturely life resembles the original Sisyphus case.

Taylor notes that life in general is endlessly cyclical. Its activity feeds a literal lifecycle—a cycle designed to perpetuate life, which ends up in new life that repeats the same old cycle.

Consider bioluminescent cave dwelling worms.

These worms use light to attract insects. They eat the insects. The small worm becomes and adult. The adult cannot eat because it has no parts that allow it to eat. It lays eggs and dies.

As Taylor remarks, “This meaningless cycle has occurred for millions of years, and it only feeds itself--so that it can keep going on for another million years.”

Think about the migration of birds or the arduous journey of the salmon to lay eggs and die shortly thereafter. These literal life-cycles are designed to produce offspring that repeat the same cycle.

As Taylor reflects, "This life of the world thus presents itself to our eyes as a vast machine, feeding on itself, running on and on forever to nothing."

Thus, life in general most closely resembles the original Sisyphus case. The activity just perpetuates more of the same. Living things roll their stone to the top, only to have it fall back down, so the process can begin again. They produce new life that will repeat the same cycle.

Of course, humans are part of creaturely life. But you might think we differ from creatures lower in the pecking order. We have consciousness and the ability to reason. We are aware of our goals, and we can freely choose them. Lower living things act primarily from instinct. They're not aware of their goals as goals, and they don't freely choose them.

Yet, despite the cognitive differences, we too resemble other creatures in the repetitive activity designed to perpetuate life. This aligns us with them in resembling the original Sisyphus case.

Think about how repetitive daily life is. As Taylor observes,

“Look at a busy street any day, and observe the throng going hither and thither. To what? Some office or shop, where the same things will be done today as were done yesterday, and are done now so they may be repeated tomorrow.”

That activity is part of raising up the next generation of people that will take over. Whereas Sisyphus must go to the bottom and roll the stone again up the hill, we leave the stone at the bottom of the hill for the next generation.

As he says, "Most such effort is directed only to the establishment and perpetuation of home and family; that is, to the begetting of others who will follow in our steps to do more of the same."

We also resemble original Sisyphus in that [show image], “Our achievements, even though they are often beautiful, are mostly bubbles; and those that do last, like the sand-swept pyramids, soon become mere curiosities while around them the rest of mankind continues its perpetual toting of rooks, only to see them roll down.”

Our achievements come to ruble. They lose their beauty and functionality. Think about a town like Detroit where parts of it are abandoned. Think about ghost towns: places that were once bustling with activity. Now the shell of a town remains.

As Taylor memorably explains,

"On a country road one sometimes comes upon the ruined hulks of a house and once extensive buildings, all in collapse and spread over with weeds. A curious eye can in imagination reconstruct from what is left a once warm and thriving life, filled with purpose.

There was the hearth, where a family once talked, sang, and made plans; there were the rooms, where people loved, and babes were born to a rejoicing mother; there are the musty remains of a sofa, infested with bugs, once bought at a dear price to enhance an ever-growing comfort, beauty, and warmth. Every small piece of junk fills the mind with what once, not long ago, was utterly real, …

…with children’s voices, plans made, and enterprises embarked upon.“

Taylor concludes that humans, "do achieve things—they scale their towers and raise their stones to their hilltops—but every such accomplishment fades, providing only an occasion for renewed labors of the same kind."

So, our lives don’t resemble the temple building version of the case.

The Meaning of Life

Now let’s consider how Taylor thinks life takes on meaning.

Unlike the original Sisyphus case, we often care about the process of creating things. Sisyphus doesn’t care about rolling the stone to the top of the hill.

Yet, Taylor tweaks the case. If we imagine Sisyphus had a substance put in his veins by the gods that makes him most want to roll stones, then his life would take on meaning for him. He’d be doing what he desires most to do. Leaving everything else the same in the case, it wouldn’t matter that his stone rolling ever amounts to anything. The Desire Fulfillment version of the myth makes is such that, "his life is now filled with mission and meaning, and he seems to himself to have been given an entry to heaven." Sisyphus is doing what most aligns with his deepest desire in life. Meaning appears on the scene.

His desire to roll stones is irrational, but for Taylor this doesn’t matter. It was the result of a substance put in his veins by the gods as an act of mercy. His compulsion to roll stones was not the product of reasoning. It was the product of something that side-stepped reason. Taylor thinks this irrationality wouldn’t prevent Sisyphus’s life from having meaning for him. In just a bit we’ll consider an objection involving this part of his view on the Desire Fulfillment case.

Taylor thinks this case is better than the Temple Building case. For Sisyphus it avoids the infinite boredom of him building his template and being  stuck contemplating his achievement for eternity. He avoids this form of hell and instead is granted a form of heaven—a life of desire-fulfillment in the form of stone rolling.

Thus, for Taylor, the meaning of life is to pursue activity that it is your will to pursue and aligns with your nature--regardless of how that will got there (i.e., hard-wired by nature, implanted by the gods, or chosen after careful reflection).

"The point of his living is simply to be living, in the manner that it is his nature to be living." (p. 982)

Back to The Glow Worms, Birds, and Salmon

This is a meaning we share with other creatures. The glow worms, the birds, the salmon they live to perpetuate cycles of life. That activity aligns with their nature. It aligns with their will.

Taylor makes the bold claim that, “Even the glow worms I described, whose cycles of existence over the millions of years seem so pointless when looked at by us, will seem entirely different to us if we can somehow try to view their existence from within. Their endless activity, which gets nowhere, is just what it is their will to pursue. This is its whole justification and meaning. Nor would it be any salvation to the birds who span the globe every year, back and forth, to have a home made for them in a cage with plenty of food and protection, so that they would not have to migrate any more. It would be their condemnation, for it is the doing that counts for them, and not what they hope to win by it. Flying these prodigious distances, never ending, is what it is in their veins to do, exactly as it was in Sisyphus’ veins to roll stones, without end, after the gods had waxed merciful and implanted this in him.”

Thus, the meaning of life is an inside job. It's a matter of how we view things, and it’s a matter of having rightly-oriented desires. Rightly-oriented desires focus on activity and process. They don't focus on accomplishments and end-products. As Taylor memorably concludes, "The meaning of life is from within us, it is not bestowed from without, and it far exceeds in both its beauty and permanence any heaven of which men have ever dreamed or yearned for.”

Objections + Replies

There are three objections to Taylor’s view on life’s meaning that we’ll consider. The first objection is that this view is too subjective. The second objection targets an assumption about the good life underlying his view. The third objection is that living a life of meaning requires free will, and Taylor’s view overgeneralizes in applying to beings that don’t act freely.

Objection 1: The View is Too Subjective

The first objection is what prompts philosophers like Susan Wolf and Christine Vitrano to add an objective element to their view of life’s meaning. Simply changing how a person views pointless activity doesn’t eliminate the fact that the activity is still pointless. It doesn’t culminate in anything, and it doesn’t have value beyond the value assigned to it by the subject.

The whole story on the meaning of life cannot be as Taylor regards it.

To see this, let’s return to the case that kicked off this video. The person who gets kidnapped and implanted with a chip that gives her the desire to throw stones into water is granted, as Taylor might say, entry into heaven. Her life circumstances bestow on her the ability to endlessly fulfill her deepest desire. She can sit by a lake and throw stones into the lake.

Yet, intuitively, a life that involves nothing more than throwing stones into a lake is not a meaningful life. The activity that fulfills her desires doesn’t contribute to her community, family, or society. It’s not objectively meaningful. It doesn’t have value beyond the value the subject gives it.

What do you think? Must the desire being fulfilled involve activity that’s objectively meaningful? Or can even pointless activity that fulfills one’s desire lead to a meaningful life?

Objection 2: The View of The Good Life is Problematic

Underlying Taylor’s view of life’s meaning is a view of the good life. What makes life go well for a person? What contributes to her wellbeing?

For Taylor, it’s a matter of getting what you want. It’s a matter of desire-fulfillment where those desires focus on the doing of things that align with what you’re naturally inclined to do.

What’s nice about the desire fulfillment theory of the good life is that it accounts for many ways of living the good life. I might desire to coach baseball. You might desire to cook desserts. Another person might desire to write novels. As long as our desires are fulfilled, we’re all living the good life—life is going well for us. But, there are many objections to this theory. I’ll mention one.

One objection is that we’re often mistaken regarding what’s good for us. We often have misguided desires.

If I desire to become a famous rock star because I falsely believe they live a life that’s care free, then when I become a rock star and discover all the pressures and stress that comes along with it, has having my desire fulfilled really made my life go well for me? I wanted carefree living. Now I’ve got pressure from my record label, the fans, my manager, and on and on.

How might Taylor reply to this objection? Taylor might require desires to be informed. I had a false belief that glamorized the rock star lifestyle. Were I better informed about what it’s really like being a famous rock star, I would see that what I think is good for me really is bad for me.

If Taylor made this move, he’d be committed to following:

(C) If something fulfills our informed desires (i.e., those not based on false beliefs), then that thing is intrinsically good for us; if it helps us to fulfill our informed desires, then it is instrumentally good for us.

There are problems with this new principle, though. If you want to hear about them, leave “informed desires” in the comments. So, the view of what makes a life go well underlying Taylor’s view of the meaning of life is not without its challenges.

Objection 3: The View Overgeneralizes by Applying to Creatures Lacking Free Will

The final objection we’ll consider is that the view overgeneralizes. It applies to glow worms, birds, salmon, and irrational desire fulfilling Sisyphus. For Taylor, they all live a meaningful life. That his view applies to such creatures should give us pause.

What might explain why his view overgeneralizes? It applies to creatures that don’t act freely. Acting freely requires being able to act for reasons. It requires being able to see something as a reason to do something. It requires being able to decide to do something on the basis of that reason. If a creature lacks the cognitive capacity to appraise reasons as reasons, or the creature is manipulated into acting compulsively in satisfying irrational desires, that creature or person doesn’t act freely.

Worms, birds, and salmon lack the cognitive capacity to act on the basis of reasons in the required sense. And irrational desire fulfilling Sisyphus is acting based on reasons that have circumvented his rational capacity. He does what he does because a substance was put in his veins, not because he sees rock rolling as providing a reason to roll rocks in satisfying his desire to do so.

Why does activity that contributes to life’s meaning require doing that activity freely?

Imagine a robot acting out its programming. Does the robot live a meaningful life because it’s doing what it was programmed to do? What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I think robots don’t live meaningful lives. It’s a category mistake to apply meaning to them. Similarly, I don’t think glow worms, birds, or salmon live meaningful lives. They’re just doing what instinct programmed them to do. It doesn’t make sense to talk about their life being meaningful for them from the inside.

Consider when Taylor says, “Even the glow worms I described, whose cycles of existence over the millions of years seem so pointless when looked at by us, will seem entirely different to us if we can somehow try to view their existence from within.” It’s a category mistake to apply subjective meaning to glow worms. What would it even be like for the glow worm to view its life as going well for it? Setting aside the fact that glow worms are not likely conscious, it’s clear they lack the cognitive capacity to act for reasons. It’s odd to even talk about desires being fulfilled for the glow worm.

Additionally, Taylor thinking that desire fulfillment Sisyphus embodies what’s needed to live a meaningful life should give us pause. Sisyphus endlessly performs an activity he’s been manipulated to compulsively perform. Many philosophers think acting compulsively on the basis of irrational desires is freedom-undermining, and many philosophers think being manipulated to do something by a nefarious agent is freedom-undermining. It can also undermine moral responsibility for our actions, as free will is a requirement for moral responsibility.

Thus, the meaning of life requires the ability to act freely and to be morally responsible for what you do.

Critically Evaluate the Thesis – What Do You Think About the Thesis and Why?

- Do you think the arguments for the thesis are persuasive? Why or why not?

- If the thesis were right, which of your beliefs would have to change?

- Do you find the three objections to Taylor’s view persuasive? Why or why not?

- How might Taylor respond to any of those objections? How would you reply to his response?

Special Bonus: Conduct an Experiment in Living – How Might You Creatively Experience Taylor’s Thesis in Your Life?

Philosopher John Stuart Mill thought we learn about the good by conducing “experiments in living.” As philosopher Elizabeth S. Anderson summarizes about Mill’s stance, “Conceptions of the good must be tested by the experiences we have in living them out, not merely by comparing them with ethical intuitions.” It’s one thing to consult your intuitions about cases when thinking critically about the meaning of life. Yet it’s another thing to test out that theory by living it out.

The special bonus is guidance in testing Taylor’s view. Consider these questions:

- Thinking of Taylor's view as offering an experiment in living, how could you change how you approach your life in a way that applies Taylor's view? Ask yourself what should my life be like for it to possess meaning?

- Assuming Taylor's subjective account of life's meaning were correct, which of your beliefs would have to change?  How might such change impact your actions?

- Given that we can evaluate and deviate from having process-focused desires, we're prone to shift our desires to end-products and chase shiny distractions, "our deep interest in what we find ourselves doing" waxes and wanes. As it does, so too does our meaning in life.

- How might you live a meaningful life that reflects a deep interest in what you find yourself doing? How might this align with your natural inclinations and passions?