I'd say that people often mean things like the following when they're asking for the meaning of life.
Most of the things we must do, or most of the things we choose to do, we do in order to achieve some other end: we buy soup to eat soup, we work to earn money, we exercise to remain healthy, and so on, they are means to ends. I think that people are asking "what are the ends", what are the things we do not in order to do anything, in essence what are the fundamental particles of motivation. It's become a sore question because the way things are structured in the modern world has little to say on the matter, on these "unhypothetical ends", but places great weight in them, as they determine the choices (the hypothetical ends). In fact it raises these motivations a stupendous height by almost everything we do being oriented around hypothetical imperatives (aka choices), and steadfastly refuses to give them foundation (by keeping us 'free' from such things). It's a bit like an absurd religion founded around a god about which it says nothing at all. I don't mean this as a criticism.
To mainstream religious people it's easy because religions usually have some kind of fundemental particle of tuit, the glory of god, or whatever. For the rest of us, the atheists and borderline nutcases, it's more complex. Just like the dividing of matter, and the tracing of pointers through a data structure, there are three plausible bottoms. First, perhaps there is such a unitary nanotuit (either objective or subjecitve). Second, perhaps it's circular, or otherwise self-referential. An A is made of a B and a C; a B of an A and a B; a C of an A and a B. Or the parent of the top of a tree is itself. Third, perhaps it just goes on forever in infinite regress.
what are the things we do not in order to do anything
I think, after some thought, that I have to respond to this in a "mu"-like fashion, by rejecting the presumed dichotomy between things done in order to do other things and things done for their own sake.
Consider the well known cycle of working in order to eat in order to live in order to work. It seems plausible to me that all of these things will contribute to any given person's feelings of happiness and worthwhileness (in varying proportions). So they are all things done in order to do the next thing, but also worthwhile in and of themselves.
One could argue that in that case the primary goal is "feel happy and worthwhile" and that engaging in the work/eat/live/work cycle in the first place is something one does because it contributes to that primary goal; but that seems to me to sort of miss the point, in that it raises the obvious question "but what sorts of thing make me feel happy and/or worthwhile, and why?", which suddenly seems more interesting.
Which, I suppose, supports my original belief that finding the right question to ask is the hard bit :-)
I don't consider that a mu at all: to me you've provided a good deal of information about how you feel about motivation! For example, we could go on and talk about the utility monster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster), or the mere addition paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox), or what your feelings were on the origin of "value", on spending a life in drug-induced ecstasy, etc.
I guess I see where you're coming from if you're saying that the "meaning of life" is more of an essay question than a mutliple choice or short answer one, :). But there are a lot of questions like that. Most famously "The Irish Question". I have no idea what that was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the kind of question which had a one line answer, :).
I don't have the book here to check chapter and verse, but I'm pretty sure 1066 and All That mentioned one king trying to answer the Irish Question by pulling the beards of the ancient Irish chiefs, which the book said "was a Bad Thing, and the wrong answer". :-)
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Most of the things we must do, or most of the things we choose to do, we do in order to achieve some other end: we buy soup to eat soup, we work to earn money, we exercise to remain healthy, and so on, they are means to ends. I think that people are asking "what are the ends", what are the things we do not in order to do anything, in essence what are the fundamental particles of motivation. It's become a sore question because the way things are structured in the modern world has little to say on the matter, on these "unhypothetical ends", but places great weight in them, as they determine the choices (the hypothetical ends). In fact it raises these motivations a stupendous height by almost everything we do being oriented around hypothetical imperatives (aka choices), and steadfastly refuses to give them foundation (by keeping us 'free' from such things). It's a bit like an absurd religion founded around a god about which it says nothing at all. I don't mean this as a criticism.
To mainstream religious people it's easy because religions usually have some kind of fundemental particle of tuit, the glory of god, or whatever. For the rest of us, the atheists and borderline nutcases, it's more complex. Just like the dividing of matter, and the tracing of pointers through a data structure, there are three plausible bottoms. First, perhaps there is such a unitary nanotuit (either objective or subjecitve). Second, perhaps it's circular, or otherwise self-referential. An A is made of a B and a C; a B of an A and a B; a C of an A and a B. Or the parent of the top of a tree is itself. Third, perhaps it just goes on forever in infinite regress.
I think, after some thought, that I have to respond to this in a "mu"-like fashion, by rejecting the presumed dichotomy between things done in order to do other things and things done for their own sake.
Consider the well known cycle of working in order to eat in order to live in order to work. It seems plausible to me that all of these things will contribute to any given person's feelings of happiness and worthwhileness (in varying proportions). So they are all things done in order to do the next thing, but also worthwhile in and of themselves.
One could argue that in that case the primary goal is "feel happy and worthwhile" and that engaging in the work/eat/live/work cycle in the first place is something one does because it contributes to that primary goal; but that seems to me to sort of miss the point, in that it raises the obvious question "but what sorts of thing make me feel happy and/or worthwhile, and why?", which suddenly seems more interesting.
Which, I suppose, supports my original belief that finding the right question to ask is the hard bit :-)
I guess I see where you're coming from if you're saying that the "meaning of life" is more of an essay question than a mutliple choice or short answer one, :). But there are a lot of questions like that. Most famously "The Irish Question". I have no idea what that was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the kind of question which had a one line answer, :).