The Meaning of Life

When people think about philosophy, often what they think about is not the nature of the universe or ethics. Instead, what they think about is existential questions like "What's the meaning of life?" I think that this is rubbish and that philosophy needs an image makeover. There's nothing deep about this question, and people should stop asking it.

I once wrote an op-ed about feminism. In that article, I criticized another person's article. That person, let's call them Jane, said that the majority of us are feminists, we just don't know it. A feminist, Jane said, is anyone who believes in equality for men and women. According to a recent poll, indeed, the majority of people do believe in that. Therefore, most of us are feminists. I gave five arguments why Jane was wrong, but I'll only write about one for now. Basically, my argument was that words have meaning only insofar as people give them meaning. If, for instance, I decide to say "frindle" instead of "pen" when referring to writing utensils that use ink, then there's nothing wrong with that. People may not understand me, but I'm not doing anything logically inconsistent. There's nothing about the phonemes in the word "pen" that make them refer to pens more than the phonemes in the word "frindle." When I say "frindle" I'm talking about "a writing utensil that uses ink." Similarly, when I say "feminism" I'm not obligated to mean "movement for the equality of women." I might instead mean "a writing utensil that uses ink." And if I do use the word "feminism" in that way, I'm not doing anything logically inconsistent. People may not understand me, but if I pick up a pen and say that it's a feminism, then I'm not mistaken. And when people talk about "feminism" to refer to fat transgender progressive lesbians, they're also not mistaken when they don't wish to self-identify as feminists.

All this is to say that when someone says that they know the "meaning of life," they're probably correct. When someone says that the meaning of life is to help others, they're probably correct. When someone says that the meaning of life is to hurt others, they're also probably correct. It's just that the way they define "the meaning of life" is different. That's it. There's no big mystery to it. The whole disagreement is about definitions, nothing of actual substance. It's like people arguing about whether or not Pluto is a planet.

To see why it's a matter of no substance, consider what predictions each statement entails. What if the meaning in life is to help others? What kinds of things would you predict about the world? I contend that the world would be the exact same regardless of the meaning of life. (The world would be a lot different if people *believed* the meaning of life was to help others, but that's a different question entirely.) This is not the case for things of substance. For instance, what if humans had three arms? You can imagine a world that's very different (regardless of people's beliefs). Ultimately, then, the question "What is the meaning of life?" is almost equivalent to asking "What's the meaning of frindle?"

This is not to say that it's impossible to be mistaken about the meaning of life. Someone might say that the meaning of life is to worship God. If there turns out not to be a god, then it's likely that the person is mistaken. This is analogous to me say there's a frindle on my desk. If there happens not to be a frindle/pen on my desk, then I'll be mistaken. When most people talk about the meaning of life, however, I don't think their definition is dependent on the existence of an imaginary being, so for most people, the meaning of life is whatever they think it is. It's not complicated. People should stop asking that question to sound philosophical.

Moral Realism as Moral Motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making

Summary:
Being primed to believe in moral realism leads to more charitable behavior.

A Closer Look at the Research:
Some things are right or wrong regardless of where or when you happen to live.  If you agree with that statement, you might call yourself a moral realist.  Moral realists believe that at least some statements about morality are true.  In contrast, a moral antirealist would disagree.  They would say either (1) that moral statements do not have any propositional content or (2) that all such statements are false or (3) that the truth of all such statements are dependent on the speaker.  For example, the antirealist might say that the statement "Killing is wrong." is more akin to saying "Boo killing!" than to saying "The act of killing has the property of wrongness."  The statement "Boo killing!" is neither true nor false, hence it doesn't have any propositional content.  Alternatively, the antirealist might say that moral statements do have propositional content but are all false.  So the statement "Killing is wrong." does express something about the world in a way that the statement "Boo killing!" doesn't.  However, the expression is nonetheless false in the same way that the statement "The sun is a planet." is false.  Finally, an antirealist may say that moral statements are true but depend on some fact about the speaker (e.g. their cultural upbringing).  For instance, Person A might say eating meat is morally forbidden, while Person B may say the opposite.  An antirealist might say that both statements are true in virtue of the fact that Person A and Person B were raised in different cultures.

Note: These distinctions are not made in this article.  In the present article, the terms "realism" and "antirealism" are sparsely elaborated.

Liane Young and A.J. Durwin wanted to find out whether a person's position on the realism/antirealism debate would translate into real world consequences.  On the one hand, these distinctions may be considered exceedingly abstract and irrelevant to people's everyday lives.  On the other hand, it seems obvious that strongly held moral convictions can lead one to perform extreme acts of violence or generosity.  Additionally, moral laxity can lead one to disregard norms against cheating or other social taboos.  To suss out the answer to their question, Young and Durwin carried out two studies.

In the first study, a street canvasser approached passersby asking them to donate to a charity.  In one condition, prior to asking for a donation, the canvasser would ask the passerby a question: "Do you agree that some things are just morally right or wrong, good or bad, wherever you happen to be from in the world?" Call this the "realist" condition.  In another condition, the canvasser asked, "Do you agree that our morals and values are shaped by our culture and upbringing, so there are no absolute right answers to any moral questions?"  Call this the "antirealist" condition.  In the final condition, the canvasser didn't ask anything at all.  This was the control condition.

Young and Durwin found that participants in the realist condition were twice as likely to donate as people in the control and antirealist conditions.

Fig 1. Proportion of participants who made charitable donations across three conditions in Experiment 1.

The second study used online participants instead of strangers on the street.  Young and Durwin asked participants how much money (out of $20) they would be willing to donate to charity.  Prior to asking participants this question, Young and Durwin asked participants the realist, the antirealist, or a neutral question that had nothing to do with morality.  (The antirealist question in this study was slightly different from the first study.)

Again, Young and Durwin found that participants in the realist condition were more generous than those in the other two conditions.  Participants in the realist condition were willing to part with more of their money than participants in both the antirealist and control conditions.

How do Young and Durwin explain these results?  They suggest two possibilities.  First, moral realists may perceive their moral obligations more saliently.  That is, realists may feel more guilty if they violate these moral rules or more proud if they uphold them.  By highlighting the "truthiness" of morality, moral realists may become more sensitive to the moral worth of their own actions.

Second, (and less plausibly) priming morality may prime empathic or collective attitudes.  Young and Durwin speculate that emphasizing moral facts that apply to all people may cause people to consider themselves as a part of a collective group.  Consequently, this fellow-feeling could lead people to act more generously.

Limitations

1. I'm very skeptical of the antirealist prime for the first study.  I see it as a nonsequitur. Disagreements between cultures about moral values does not entail that there are no right answers to any moral questions.  Further, only a portion of antirealists would say that there are no right answers to any moral questions.  As stated above, some antirealists happily bite the bullet and say that there are right answers, but that these answers are dependent on the cultural upbringing of the individual.
2. The antirealist prime for the second study was similarly problematic.  Young and Durwin asked participants, "Do you agree that our morals and values are shaped by our culture and upbringing, so it is up to each person to discover his or her own moral truths?"  This question presupposes that there such things as moral truths to be discovered.  This prime for antirealism ignores both the antirealists who would deny the propositional content of moral statements and those who accept moral statements' propositional content but deny their truth.
3. The problem with these primes is brought out by the fact that in the second experiment, the vast majority of participants agreed to the primes regardless of what condition they were in.  In other words, if a participant was in the realist condition, they agreed with the realist prime; if they were in the antirealist condition, they agreed with the antirealist prime.  Given that realism and antirealism are mutually incompatible, you would think that participants' attitudes would be zero sum.  That is, if 60% of participants agreed with realism, then only 40% would agree with antirealism.  What we find instead is that close to 100% of participants agree with both the realism and antirealism primes.  This suggests at least two possibilities.  Either, these primes didn't really tap into the essence of these two concepts.  Or people can hold contradictory beliefs depending on the context.  Young and Durwin support the latter hypothesis.  For my part, I would say that both are true.
4. In Figure 1 above, the proportion of charitable participants seems ridiculously high.  Really?  50% of participants agreed to donate to charity?  I'm skeptical.  If anyone reading this has been a canvasser in the past, please post your experience in the comments.
5. (Disclaimer: I haven't read the supplementary materials.  The details might be in there.)  In the first study, Young and Durwin relied on only one canvasser to carry out the experiment.  The beliefs of the canvasser are not reported in the article.   If the canvasser believes in moral realism, this may lead to an expectancy bias.  That is, the canvasser may try harder in the realism condition than in other conditions because they believe that is the condition most likely to elicit donations from participants.
6. This article didn't study the effect of meta-ethical attitudes on charitable donations but rather the effect of a meta-ethical prime on donations.  It's unclear if these primes actually did cause people to shift their philosophical views, if even for a little bit.  Consequently, it's unclear how this research may become generally applicable in real life in the future.  If the donation rates in study 1 are correct, then this could be a huge leap for charities using street canvassers, but otherwise, this research seems useless to me.

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Young, L., & Durwin, A. J. (2013). Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 302-306.