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Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful?

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Jacksprat

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Hybrid Theory​

The hybrid theory of meaning in life combines insights from subjectivism and objective accounts: a meaningful life provides fulfillment and does so through devotion to objectively valuable projects.

Hybrid theory differs from objective accounts because it insists that a meaningful life must also be fulfilling for the person living it. There are many such projects available to us, since there are many fulfilling ways, given our distinctive personalities and abilities, that we can engage with values like truth, justice, and beauty.

Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

What is a meaningful life? This essay reviews some influential answers to this question.
1000wordphilosophy.com
 
Meaning arises from loving objects worthy of love and engaging with them in a positive way.

Essentially, the idea is that a person’s life can be meaningful only if she cares fairly deeply about some thing or things, only if she is gripped, excited, interested, engaged, or, as I earlier put it, if she loves something—as opposed to being bored by or alienated from most or all that she does.

 
Our lives are meaningless except to ourselves and those who are close to us. To suppose otherwise is to claim an imaginary importance for our species.
 
Sweden said:
Our lives are meaningless except to ourselves and those who are close to us.
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That would seem to justify genocide. One ethnic group deciding another ethnic group is meaningless..
 
Like everything else, what is meaningful is what we find meaningful. Only you can truly assess whether you lived a meaningful life or not.
 
Nomad4Ever said:
Like everything else, what is meaningful is what we find meaningful. Only you can truly assess whether you lived a meaningful life or not.
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If that is so, then no one would agree on what is meaningful. There are commonalities.
 
Jacksprat said:
If that is so, then no one would agree on what is meaningful. There are commonalities.
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No two people have exactly the same idea on what is meaningful to their lives and what is not. Of course most people will agree on some things (family, experiences, helping others, etc) but no two people are going to agree on everything. And that's fine. If someone else finds the most meaning in life raising a family and I find the most meaning from staying single and traveling the world...nobody is wrong. If we both personally find meaning in what we are doing then it is meaningful.
 
Someone likes torturing cats. Or having sex with children. All subjective? I mean, can't someone be wrong about what gives them meaning?
 
Jacksprat said:
Someone likes torturing cats. Or having sex with children. All subjective? I mean, can't someone be wrong about what gives them meaning?
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I mean, they wouldn't be wrong in the sense that it is what they find meaningful. But I would think it would be obviously just because someone wants to do something doesn't make it moral. Not sure why you would assume my position on what people find meaningful would somehow supersede all other moral considerations.
 
When people reduce meaning to subjectivity they don't see the inner contradictions.
 
Jacksprat said:
When people reduce meaning to subjectivity they don't see the inner contradictions.
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There is no contradiction. Just because someone wants to do something or finds meaning in an action doesn't make the action moral. It doesn't seem like that complicated of a concept.
 
Jacksprat said:
Of course. Every single person on the planet has their own meaning....False.
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So explain to me why you should get to decide what I find meaningful and fulfilling in life?
 
Nomad4Ever said:
You said everyone cannot have their own meaning, which implies there is a correct meaning that is decided for me.
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No. I said if literally everyone had their own meaning there would be no commonalities.
 
being alive and sentient is meaningful for animals. My cat takes great joy in lying in the sun and getting petted
some days that's all I need as well.

The sun is up the sky is blue
it's beautiful and so are you
dear Prudence wont you come out to play (Beatles)
 
Ok, if that gives you meaning, have at it.
 
Jacksprat said:
No. I said if literally everyone had their own meaning there would be no commonalities.
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So can I decide what is meaningful in life to me myself?

Yes or no.
 
I think what makes a meaningful life changes during our lifetimes.

Surely family is always most important.

Many sacrifice much during their young adulthood in the quest for career success and wealth to regret it in their later years. They take for granted those who are close to them.

For me life experiences have always been most important next to family and loved ones. I feel I have lived a very fulfilling life. Maybe a little selfish though.
 
In his The First Three Minutes, Weinberg’s attempt to describe the first three minutes of our universe’s existence, he argues that the search for scientific truth can give meaning to life: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.” According to Weinberg, the better we understand nature, the more the scientist’s “sense of wonder” has expanded as he or she grapples with the remaining mysteries.
 
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