This article responds to the two replies, published in this issue, to my article “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad,” published in the first issue of this journal. In the first reply, Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe present an internalist challenge to my account of value, and a relational conception of the self as a challenge to my premise that leading a life includes everything you do and aim at within the project, effort, or enterprise of living and leading a life. I respond to the internalist challenge by showing it does not succeed in inserting values into acts. I respond to the relational conception of the self by noting that, regardless of the nature of the self, the project of leading a life includes all the things you do and aim at within that project, effort, or enterprise. Thus, we can accept a relational account of the self and allow for other-regarding values but that does not change the location of our pursuit of those values: they remain located within the meta-project of leading a life, leaving the meta-project of leading and living a life with nowhere to reach for a point. In the second reply, Cowan argues against feeling sad about life’s pointlessness. In response, I argue that sad facts warrant sadness. I further argue that there are reasons other than happiness to value truth, including the very, very sad truth about the ultimate pointlessness of our lives.
The internalist challenge to my account of values that Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe present claims that when we run joyfully or play intimately, we are doing different things that have particular meanings tied up with the act itself and the attitudes we bring to it. They argue that, “some valued ends, such as these particular joys, [are] inseparable modifications of their activities.” I think this mischaracterizes the relationship between acts and values. Value, however particularized, be it instrumental
My argument against lives having Ultimate Meaning relies on the premise that the effort, enterprise, or project of leading a life includes its entirety.
This argument mistakes the subject that I am talking about. The pointless enterprise I argue we all engage in is the meta-project of running or leading a life. It is that project, effort, or enterprise, and not the nature of the self or a bare biological life, that I argue includes its entirety, including all of its values, and all of its relational and narrative aspects. Thus, Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe’s argument that justice is external to oneself does not entail that, as you lead your life, working toward justice is something you do
Drawing an analogy to arguments for psychological egoism, Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe note that although our desires are internal, the content of our values and reasons for action need not be self-interested. They argue that it is analogously false to claim that “because our valued ends are our own they are therefore included in our lives,” and that this is “structurally similar” to arguing that, “because desires are internal, their valued ends must be one’s own.” I don’t see how that analogy holds, nor do I see it as applicable to what I argue. To put my view in terms most similar to this analogy, we can say that because our valued ends are valuable to us, we include them in the meta-project of running our lives. This does not seem structurally similar to claiming that because our desires are our own, our values are self-interested, nor do I anywhere claim or imply that our values are only self-interested. But it is consistent with my conclusion that because leading a human life includes its entirety—including all the values we may value—it has nowhere to reach for a valued end as a point for leading and living it.
Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe argue:
Weinberg is right that activities in pursuit of justice—organizing protests, sending open letters, giving speeches, etc.—are contained within my life in the sense that they are things that I do. But the end, justice realized in the world, is something external: the point of the political campaign, say, improving the lot of future generations, is something beyond myself, neither coextensive nor coterminous with my life. The same holds true of whole lives as well as their constitutive activities. The main point of a life can be realized externally.
This central argument of Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe’s response misses the mark because nothing in the argument shows, or even tries to show, that we can have a valued end to the meta-project of running or leading a life. And that is a key claim, perhaps
I don’t argue that people are necessarily selfish or that all value is somehow solipsistic. I don’t argue that justice realized is somehow “coextensive” or “coterminous” with one’s life. What I do argue is that justice is a value located within the effort, project, or enterprise of running or leading your life. I argue that the project or enterprise of leading your life includes your relations with the world—that’s why you bother with all those other pesky people—and, in pursuing those relations, you may appeal to or aim at interpersonal values or values that are not self-centered, values that are important in the meta-project of leading your life. But that will not give you an end-regarding reason, a valued end, for the meta-project of running your life, which is a project of its own. That separate project of leading a life, that you put so much effort into, has nowhere to reach for a point. To illustrate:
If you masturbate, you’re doing something alone, probably for the valued end of pleasure. If you have sex with someone else, you are doing something relational, maybe for the valued ends of love, intimacy, and also pleasure (if you’re lucky!). But in both cases you are still doing something well within the confines of living your life and the meta-project, effort, or enterprise of running or leading it. Expanding further out relationally—say, participating in an orgy—will not change this. You could even will your busy penis to science for the enlightenment of future generations and the betterment of posterity, which would be other-regarding, not self-centered, and have effects beyond your lifetime, but it would still be something you did as part of or within the effort, project, or enterprise of running your life. And that is how it all gets sucked in, so to speak. No matter what you do or aim at, it is all internal to the meta-project, effort, or enterprise of running or leading your life, leaving
How bad is this? How sad should you be? Well, that depends in part on how much work, thought, or effort you put into running or leading your life. I think most of us put a lot of work into running or leading our lives and to do otherwise—to just live rather that lead a life—is to live more like an animal than a person. To be less of an agent is probably not the best prescription for meaning. Just as we want the projects within our lives to be pointful rather than pointless, we have the same reasons to want the meta-project, effort, or enterprise of leading our lives to be pointful rather than pointless. To discover that it must be pointless is therefore very, very sad, regardless of which term you use to label this meaning problem.
I am not in the happiness business. Philosophy deals in truths. A truth I think I have illuminated is that the metaphysics of meaning includes something very tragic, which is that we cannot have Ultimate Meaning. That is a sad truth. When something is sad, our sadness is warranted; when feelings match facts, we have a warranted emotional response to the facts. Cowan argues that feelings often come first—“Life is okay. As a result, it is okay for life to be pointless”—and then thoughts need not warrant any change of feeling. But that depends on the nature of the thoughts. If the thoughts reflect the facts, to decide on your feelings first and then argue that, therefore, the facts need not warrant a change in feeling is to deny that facts warrant feelings. That is unreasonable. Would it make sense for me to say, “Life is okay. As a result, it is okay that my child was kidnapped and killed today”? As a result of what? Of the unargued-for premise that life is okay, no matter what? That premise is in need of a defense.
That said, I am not in the sadness business either. The “should” I argue for is a should of warrant (by the facts), not a moral imperative. (Though, generally, responding to facts with feelings that the facts warrant does seem plausibly part of being moral. E.g., to witness gratuitous cruelty with bored indifference likely indicates some sort of moral failing.) It is not a practical directive intended to govern your feelings all the time either. So, sure, we should be sad to note that Ultimate Meaning is impossible for us—very, very sad, in fact, because that is the feeling warranted by the facts. But that doesn’t mean that instead of engaging with Everyday Meaning or enjoying some bourbon you should spend all your days crying in your soup over the sad impossibility of Ultimate Meaning. (But if you do, I will understand!)
Discovering the tragic truth about Ultimate Meaning can also come as a relief of sorts—like an itch finally scratched—because it makes sense of the niggling sense of pointlessness that many experience even in the face of Everyday Meaning. Understanding and insight are fulfilling aspects of truth, even tragic truth, which is part of why we seek it. To take up Cowan’s plane ride analogy, I don’t think I have opened the hatch to let frigid air into our long and pointless plane ride (though if that was the hatch to the bitter truth, I probably would open it). Instead, I have argued that the frigid air is already seeping into the plane because life is indeed pointless and many of us have a sense of that. As we shiver from the frigid air inside the plane, it can be valuable to know its source, even if we cannot do anything about it and even if acknowledging it warrants sadness.
Truth itself is valuable. Ignorance may be a kind of bliss, but because we are rational beings, agents capable of intellectual achievement, the pursuit of truth, and the courage to face reality, it is a bliss unworthy of us.
Thanks to Yuval Avnur, David Boonin, Zev Gruman, and Saul Smilansky for helpful comments.
Contrary to Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe’s assertion, the fact that values are external to acts does not mean that values are instrumental, nor does it mean that people or acts become mere instruments. When I play with my child, the external value is the child, an end in herself. Nothing instrumental about it. Same goes for art: you paint because you value art, which is the non-instrumental value that grounds the act. No demeaning anything here. Your art is as elevated as it ever was. (Nevertheless, the value of art is within your meta-project of living and leading your life.)
Turp, Hollinshead, and Rowe argue that this way of conceiving of a life or a self is biological. I don’t see how this conclusion follows from anything I say about leading a life.