I'm really pleased to be able to say that I've signed a contract for my next book, again with Granta, the publishers of The Philosopher and the Wolf. The working title is Running with the Pack. It's about running with dogs and wolves in various parts of the world. It's also about the meaning of life. Which means I won't be writing about the meaning of life any more on this blog: after giving me a not inconsiderable advance, Granta would be very upset with me if I gave it all away for free. For what it's worth, I assure you I am now in possession of the answer, and it's a doozy. But it won't be available until late 2011.

But I will say one final thing about this issue: specifically, about the question. That was the hard part - I was sweating blood trying to work out what the question is. In fact, I actually had to work out the answer before I could work out the question. Sometimes that's how things go.

When someone says: "What is the meaning of life?' What do they mean?

Words and sentences have meaning. Life is not a word or sentence. Therefore, life doesn't have meaning. I learned that growing up in the merry old hey-day of linguistic analysis. This shows that ‘meaning' as deployed in ‘the meaning of life' does not mean the same as ‘meaning' when used for words and sentences. So what does it mean?

It could mean ‘purpose'? Could, but doesn't. Defence of this postponed until late 2011.

It might mean ‘value'. What is the value of life? But, if so, then if a life had no meaning it would have no value. For various obvious reasons, I don't want to say this. If someone's life is meaningless, it does not mean their life has no value.

This gets us a bit closer to what the question is: ‘How should I live?' Or, then same thing: ‘What should I value?'

But ‘should' is a funny word, and has at least three different meaning: logical, prudential and moral. Forgot the logical sense; it's not relevant here. The moral and prudential sense of should are basically, restrictions on how I should act. ‘How should I live?' interpreted morally, means: ‘What moral requirements should I recognize and act upon?' These requirements would be moral exigencies.

The thing about exigencies is that we have to act on them, whether we want to or not. Prudentially, I should work. This is unfortunate. Morally, I should try and alleviate suffering when I can. This is unfortunate in another way. It is unfortunate that there is so much suffering. Exigencies don't reveal the meaning of life, they distract us from it.

Suppose there were no prudential or moral exigencies in your life. You live in a world where you can get whatever you need or want at the push of a button, a world where there was no suffering that you should try to alleviate. Morally and prudentially, you're off the hook. Then ask yourself: in this situation, how should I live? This is another sense of should - neither a moral nor a prudential sense. If we can answer this question, we have answered to the question of the meaning of life.

There: clear as mud. 

A few months ago I spent a very enjoyable hour or so chatting (about The Philosopher and the Wolf) to Paul Kennedy, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio show Ideas. The podcast of our converstion can be found here:

http://castroller.com/podcasts/CbcRadioThe2/1324112

I was delighted to welcome Marc Bekoff to the University of Miami earlier this week. As some of you may know, I've been a big fan of Marc's work for a long time (and, indeed, blogged about his book Wild Justice a few months ago). But every silver cloud has a dark lining. This one was my being forced to acknowledge something that had been hovering nastily in the back of my mind for some time, but I didn't want to think about it because it sickened me.

Imagine being put in a cage no bigger than you are. You can turn your head, in order to access food and water, but that is the limit of your movement. Now imagine being there for fifteen or twenty years. In fact, if you get out after fifteen or twenty years, you're one of the lucky ones - you got out early. Chances are, you'll be there until you die. There is a catheter inserted into your liver, and from it drips the bile that is the reason you find yourself in this cage.

If you find yourself in this position, you are a bear, harvested for your bile, which is highly prized in Chinese medicine.

I know I've been bashing China a lot this week. Just celebrating the Year of the Tiger that starts on Feb 14th. I'm sure I'll find some other country to knock soon.

Dogs - apparently the Chinese are considering not eating them any more:

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/chinese-legal-experts-propose-ban-on-eating-cats-and-dogs/

Although some are tempted by the compromise position of merely not cooking them while still alive:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1246454/Cat-dog-meat-soon-menu-China-animal-abuse-law-edges-closer.html

Following on from the previous post, somewhat, it seems to me that the way we treat megafauna - especially keystone predators - is a reliable indicator of how we will treat the rest of nature. Why? Because they are inconvenient. We think they'll eat our children and/or our pets. Which, of course, they might well do. Here's a heartwarming story of a very brave dog and a narrow escape.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/6933888/Canadian-familys-dog-saves-11-year-old-boy-from-cougar.html

(I should point out however: wolves hardly ever do this sort of thing).

We humans hate to be inconvenienced. Actually doing something to counter global warming, or, in my opinion, the even more worrying (given its irreversibility) acidification of the sea:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6781789/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Britain-will-suffer-as-seas-become-more-acidic.html

Well, that's just a lot of bother really - let's not believe in it instead.

But what we forget in all the inconvenience what these animals, particularly the dangerous ones, add to the world. Because of the rather Draconian leash laws of Miami-Dade County, I go running with my dog Hugo on some waste ground that MDC hasn't got around to properly policing. Neither of us like running with him leashed - it messes up our rhythm. There are lots of snakes. We follow certain protocols - he stays at my heels unless I say its OK, etc. I'm not a big fan of snakes - they make me distinctly twitchy to say the least. The snakes are inconvenient. But at the same time they add something undeniably valuable to the run. I can't quite put my finger on what. But it certainly makes the run a lot more interesting and challenging. It's actually a privilege to be out there with these slithery, fanged little bastards.

I'm sickened to hear that Sweden has followed the USA in once again permitting hunting of wolves:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6960592.ece

I apologize for my silence during the past couple of months. A family medical issue has required my undivided attention. Before resuming regular posts, I just wanted to say 'hello' to Brazil and China - The Philosopher and the Wolf made a first appearance in these countries in the month of November. Readers of previous blogs might possibly remember that I already said hello to China back in April (if you do remember this, you might need to get out more). But, then, I was saying hello to the simple characters translation by the Jinghua publishing house. This new edition is in complex characters, and is published by Rye-Field of Taiwan.

For those of you mystified by the Chinese interest, I suspect it has a lot to do with the couple of gazilliion copies sold of the book Wolf Totem (which, unfortunately, I didn't write).

Tolstoy's account of the meaning of life, related in his essay, ‘My confession', revolves around a story he relates early in the essay about a traveler who jumps into a well to escape an ‘infuriated beast'. But at the bottom of the well is a dragon. The traveler can go neither up nor down, and so clings to a twig growing in a cleft in the well. Two mice, one black one white, appear and start nibbling on the twig:

'Now, at any moment, the bush will break and tear off, and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveler sees that and knows he will inevitably perish; but while he is still clinging, he sees some drops of honey hanging on the leaves of the bush, and so reaches out for them with his tongue and licks the leaves. Just so I hold on to the branch of life, knowing that the dragon of death is waiting inevitably for me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why I have fallen on such suffering. And I try to lick that honey which used to give me pleasure, but now it no longer gives me joy, and the white and black mouse day and night nibble at the branch to which I am holding on. I clearly see the dragon, and the honey is no longer sweet to me. I see only the inevitable dragon and the mice, and am unable to turn my glance away from them. This is not a fable, but a veritable, indisputable, comprehensible truth.' (9)

The ‘drops of honey' that he formerly found sweet were his love of family and writing. But realization of death results in a certain attitude that he can't shake: Why? Well? and Then? (7) Basically - what's the point?

Science, Tolstoy argues, cannot supply us with a point. Science describes life - what it is - but it cannot identify any meaning to this life. Science can describe what things are, and what things are possible. But it can't describe what things mean. It cannot identify the significance of things.

Tolstoy finds the answer in faith.

'No matter what answers faith may give, its every answer gives to the finite existence of man the sense of the infinite - a sense which is not destroyed by suffering, privation and death. Consequently, in faith alone could we find the meaning and possibility of life ... faith was the knowledge of the meaning of life, in consequence of which man did not destroy himself but lived.' (14)

What is faith? Roughly: belief not based on logical or empirical evidence.

I think the question we should ask is: what is the content of the faith of which Tolstoy speaks? There are two ways of thinking about this.

One the one hand, there is a generic form of faith, which seems to amount to the idea that everything is going to be OK. As my grandmother used to say - falsely - everything happens for the best. Here is Tolstoy:

'I looked around at the enormous masses ... I could not recognize them as not understanding the question because they themselves put it and answered it with surprising clearness ... It appeared to me that all humanity was in possession of a knowledge of the meaning of life.' (12)

But is it really true that in adopting the generic version of faith you have put to yourself the question of the meaning of life? Or is it that you have simply refused to think about the question? If you are a hopeless optimist, have you solved the question of the meaning of life? That seems implausible: Hopeless optimism may be the result of refusing to address the issue of life's meaning, but it is doubtful that it results from solving the issue.

In any event, Tolstoy ultimately relies on a more specific form of faith: it's all going to be OK because ... You can, he thinks, fill in the dots in various ways, but all involve, as he puts it, the ‘sense of the infinite'. This can take various forms, and Tolstoy lists a few of them at the top of page 14.

'No matter how I may put the question, "How must I live?" the answer is "According to God's Laws." "What real result will there be from my life?" "Eternal torment or eternal bliss." What is the meaning which is not destroyed by death?" - "The union with infinite God, paradise."' (14)

These are all more specific versions of faith, ways of filling in the dots, and in them we can identify at least two themes:

A. God Laws - God's purpose more generally. The meaning of life is to be found in the fact that God has a purpose for us.
B. Eternal bliss, paradise (or the opposite). The meaning of this life is a matter of its being preparation for the next life.

We can't - at least not effectively - object to Tolstoy on these grounds: ‘How do we know there is a God who has a purpose for us?' ‘How do we know there is an afterlife?' We can't do this, because he would just reply: ‘Well it's faith, innit!. That's the whole point. If we were trying to convince Tolstoy that he was wrong, we can't just object to his faith - because he wouldn't care.

How do we argue with someone who bases their account of the meaning of life on faith? Give them what they want, and show that their view still doesn't work. The strategy is to show that faith, even if true, doesn't establish what it is supposed to establish.

So, consider the afterlife, which, following Tolstoy, we can accept on faith if only to hang him with this faith (i.e. for the purposes of argument). Is the meaning of this life to be found in its being a preparation for the next? Then we simply run into the problem of how the next life can have meaning? We wanted to solve the problem of how one life has meaning, and we now have to solve the problem of how another life has meaning. In other words, we haven't solved the problem of the meaning of life; we have merely pushed it back a step.

How about the other option? Suppose there is a God who has a purpose for us. Our purpose derives from God's purpose. So, the meaning of our life derives from the meaning of God's life. Here's the rub: in virtue of what does God's life have meaning? Is it purpose? Happiness? Something else? What? In other words, precisely the sorts of problems we run into trying to work out how our life has meaning - we are going to find those problems reiterated when we examine God's life. The appeal to God's purpose, like the appeal to an afterlife, doesn't solve the meaning of life for us - it simply pushes that problem back a step.

And while we're on the subject of thanks, I also want to say an absolutely enormous 'Thank you!' to all the readers of Il lupo e il filosofo  - the Italian translation of The Philosopher and the Wolf  (duh!) - who propelled this book to number 6 in the Italian best seller list last week.

Before inflicting Tolstoy's ‘Confession' on you, I just wanted to say I've been blown away by the quality of the responses to the meaning of life blogs. A big ‘Thanks!' to all concerned. Reading through them, and the themes that are starting to emerge, there are two, connected, things that occur to me.

First, if you think there is a real issue about life's meaning, then you are committed to the idea that values are objective. (David Wiggins made this point a long time ago, in a paper called ‘Truth, invention and the meaning of life'). In the first meaning of life post I distinguished between subjective and objective interpretations of the question ‘Does life have meaning?' According to the subjective interpretation, the question means: ‘Does my life seem meaningful to me?' (Or ‘Does your life seem meaningful to you?' etc). But, if that's all the question means, then it can be answered by a simple empirical fact: ‘Yes it does' (or ‘No it doesn't' - delete as appropriate). That's not a philosophical question. It's not even a particularly hard question.

So, if we think there is a genuine question here, one that can't be answered by empirical investigation of my (or your) state of mind, that is because we must be assuming that the subjective interpretation does not do justice to the question. What's the alternative? The objective interpretation: ‘Does my life have meaning independently of how I happen to feel about it?' If it does, then its meaning does not reduce to my feelings, opinions, etc. But then, the question is: what could this meaning possibly be?

This brings me to my second point - and here the connection between the meaning of life and the objectivity of value becomes clear. Here, I think, is the best way of interpreting the question: ‘What is the meaning of life? It means: ‘What sorts of things should I value?' or, alternatively: ‘How should I live?'

Note: the question is not: ‘What do I value?' or ‘How do I live?' These are straightforward empirical questions. The question of the meaning of life is not one of these. It is, ‘What should I value? How should I live?' If you allow there is a distinction between what you do value and what you should value, between how you in fact live and how you should live, then you are committed to the idea that values are objective in the sense, roughly, that they do not reduce to our feelings, opinions, preferences, etc.

So, if you think there is a real issue about the meaning of life, you cannot be a subjectivist about value. Conversely ...

Apologies for my silence over the past week or so - I've been finishing up a book on extended cognition, to be published by MIT Press some time next year.

Anyway, to unfinished business: problems with Richard Taylor's argument concerning the meaning of life (see The Meaning of Life Part 1, for context).

Taylor's argument seems to go like this:

(1) The meaning of life cannot be found in purpose (the dilemma - see The Meaning of Life Part 1)
(2) Therefore, it must be found in something else.
(3) To see what, we should revisit the reworked version of the Sisyphus' myth.

In the reworked version, the gods instill in Sisyphus an irrational desire to roll rocks up hills, so that he is condemned to do just what he wants to do more than anything else.

Taylor concludes:

'A human being no sooner draws his first breath than he responds to the will that is in him to live. He no more asks whether it will be worthwhile, or whether anything of significance will come of it, than the worms and the birds. The point of his living is simply to be living, in the manner that is his nature to be living. He goes through his life building his castles, each of these beginning to fade into time as the next is begun; yet it would be no salvation to rest from all this. It would be a condemnation ... What counts is that one should be able to begin a new task, a new castle ... It counts only because it is there to be done, and he has the will to do it.' (141-2)

I have three worries with this argument:

First, is this argument a form of false dilemma? That is, Taylor sets up the discussion around two possibilities: either meaning a function of purpose, or it is a function of acting according to your will. Since it can't be the former, it must be the latter? Is this is a fair way of representing Taylor's argument? If so, then how can we rule out: (a) the meaning of life is a third, as yet unidentified possibility, or (b) the conclusion that the meaning of life is neither purposes nor acting according to your will because there is no meaning of life?

Second, does Taylor's ‘solution' simply collapse into the subjective interpretation of the meaning of life? That is, does ‘doing what you will' simply amount to ‘doing what you regard as significant'? But it we want to reduce the question of the meaning of life to this, then we already know the answer. Who would want to deny that life has meaning in this obvious sense?

Is it easy to differentiate what counts as acting according to one's nature from what does not? I strongly suspect this is going to rear its ugly head later ...

BTW, in case anyone is interested, page numbers refer to Klemke and Cahn, The Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press)

The second, and heavily revised, edition of my book Animal Rights is published this month by Palgrave-Macmillan (again). The first edition - Animal Rights: A Philosophical Defence came out in '99. And now, a mere ten years later, comes the second. I've dropped the chapter on liberalism, added a chapter on virtue ethics, a new half a chapter on animal minds, and greatly expanded my contractarian defence of animal rights. Also, I've extensively re-written the remaining stuff to avoid needless technicality (of which I used to be quite fond ten years ago). And there's a shiny new subtitle - moral theory and practice.

Most importantly: this time it's in paperback, so people might actually be able to afford it.