The Purpose of Life is Circular; the Meaning of Life is Fractal.
Before we proceed let us look at the following questions:
(i) What is the meaning of ‘life’?
(ii) What is the meaning of life?
(iii) What is the meaning of ‘meaning’?
(iv) What is the meaning of meaning?
What we can see clearly here is that sometimes ‘meaning’ has to have a precise meaning, namely when followed by an expression in quotes, but when the expression has no quotes, it is far less clear. Thus we can ask, what does ‘tax bills’ mean (singular in fact), and some bureaucrat will be able to give you an exact definition, but ask what do tax bills mean (plural), and I might well say they mean a bloody nightmare.
We then come to the question of the meaning of ‘meaning’ is the field of semantics when ‘meaning of’ is followed by something in quotes. It lies more in the field of pragmatics when ‘meaning of’ is not followed by an expression in quotes.
Item (iv) is very questionable outside literature: one could paraphrase it to ask what it is to make a meaningful utterance.
But some might say that the meaning of life is the same idea as the purpose of life. But it is not: I argued in Issue 21 (26/04/2012) that the purpose of life is love and the purpose of love is life – a circularity – but one could say that the meaning of life is not love, but love and hate. And this is not circular: one might say the meaning of love is the desire to protect, whereas the meaning of hate is the desire to destroy. Thus we can compare the following two pictures:
the circularity of life: one could show it over and over again
Picture One shows the circularity I was talking about – and indeed it appeared in the last Issue, no. 28 on War. But Picture Two shows a continual divergence, where nothing completes a full circle: when reading out the caption one should follow a prevailing fashion and twiggle two fingers on each hand for the quoted phrase (which I shall otherwise not discuss here), since an ignorant philosopher might see it as something which creates in its own image, but in fact I doubt whether the above is mathematically possible in Mandelbrot terms.
So what I really want to say is that the meaning of ‘meaning’ when not followed by something in quotes is so vague that one must wonder whether it lies in the realm of philosophy, other than to pass the buck and say that it lies in the realm of pragmatics and sociology.
I prefer to say that if the purpose of life is love, etc. etc. Then
(i) the meaning of life is love and hate,
(ii) (i) the meaning of love is the desire to protect,
(ii) the meaning of the desire to protect is either convenience or possessiveness ...
(iii) (i) the meaning of hate is trying to pin your opponent down with philosophy …
By Martin Prior
The Philosophy Takeaway 'The Meaning of Life' Issue 29
