Anything Can Be Meaningful

Abstract

It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life.

Philosophical interest in the meaning of life has seen renewed and growing interest, with the bulk of investigation addressing the question, ‘What, if anything, makes a life meaningful?’. But another question which has been accruing attention is ‘What types of entities, if any, have the capacity for meaning?’. Answers to the latter question are thought to be informative about answers to the former. If a theory about meaning excludes entities which we believe have the capacity for meaning, or includes entities which we intuitively hold do not have such a capacity, then it is taken as a strike against said theory. What we want from a theory is not just an identification of what makes a life meaningful, but also a vindication of our intuitions about the scope of which entities can and cannot have a meaningful life or existence. To bring the problem into focus, consider the following:

Inanimate Carbon Rod: Suppose that while in orbit the door handle of a space shuttle breaks, thus making re-entry deadly. During a heated argument about their situation, one astronaut grabs an inanimate carbon rod to use as weapon against his compatriots. His first swing goes awry and he accidentally jams the rod into the broken door latch, making re-entry possible again. The astronauts successfully land back on earth and are reunited back with their loving families.

Did the inanimate carbon rod have a meaningful existence? Could the inanimate carbon rod have a meaningful existence? The answer to these two questions, when reflecting upon the philosophical literature would be, ‘no; obviously not’.

Indeed, the orthodox position found throughout the literature is that only humans have a capacity for meaning (Fischer, 1993, p. 69; Luper, 2014, p. 198; Metz, 2013, pp. 29–30; Wiggins, 2002, p. 100).¹ This position is taken for granted and thought to be a widespread pre-theoretical intuition amongst the general populace and is treated as an informative starting point for developing a theory. For example, Luper (2014) takes it as a strength if a theory about meaning in life excludes animals. Metz (2013, p. 37) begins his own investigation by making clear he believes the distinction between humans and animals provides deep philosophical insight, while Fischer (1993, p. 69) takes the division to explain why we think human death a tragedy while animal death is not. Finally, Smuts (2013, p. 558) recognizes the orthodox position serves as prima facie evidence against any theory which would allow a non-human animal to live a meaningful life.²

One lesson that could be drawn from orthodoxy is that some form of agency is required to have a capacity for meaning; a type of agency only available to humans. Such an observation motivates the adoption of an agency requirement; that for some state-of-affairs to confer meaning upon life, the appropriate type of agency A, or product thereof, is needed. Of course, what constitutes agency is a controversial matter. For example, one might suggest that the product of agency is overcoming one’s animal self (Metz, 2013), achievements (Luper, 2014), or love or endorsement (Frankfurt, 1982). Nevertheless, the point here is that there is some type of agency which we as humans have that animals lack.

However, in recent years there has been a small but growing chorus questioning orthodoxy, arguing that (at least some species of) animals have the capacity for meaning (Hauskeller, 2020; Purves & Delon, 2018; Thomas, 2018). Yet even so, an agency requirement still plays a role. The general contours of their arguments have run thus. When we think of paradigm cases of meaningful human lives, we can find animals which have, by and large, the same sorts of life features as their human counterparts. So a theory about meaning in life should have an agency requirement which vindicates our intuitions about both such human and animal cases.

In this article I argue that, quite literally, anything can have a meaningful existence. I do so in two ways. First, I extend one argument made in favour of including animals to objects, i.e., that objects can be paradigm cases of meaningful existences. Second, I show how the agency requirement generates the highly counterintuitive implication that anything which lacks such agency has, by definition, a meaningless life or existence. The former argument casts doubts on the motivations for adopting an agency requirement by highlighting that our widespread pre-theoretical intuition is that animals and objects too can be meaningful, while the latter argument gives us a compelling reason to reject the agency requirement completely when conceptualizing theories about meaning. I conclude that, while it still might be true that only entities with agency, such as humans, have a capacity for meaning, it cannot be taken as a given or as a starting point; there needs to be a substantive argument in favour of such a position.

This article proceeds as follows. In §1, I explain the orthodox position and how it leads to the agency requirement. Next, in §2, I outline one popular way of broaching the subject matter of meaning in life—paradigm cases—and how they have been used against orthodoxy to argue that animals, too, can live meaningful lives. In §3, I extend the previous position, arguing that contra orthodoxy, there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that non-living entities, such as objects, can have meaningful existences. Then in §4 I bring attention to an unrecognized implication of the agency requirement: that all entities without agency have, by definition, meaningless lives or existences. Such an implication, I argue, is highly counterintuitive; certainly, more so than the pre-theoretical intuition that only humans have a capacity for meaning.

1. Humans, Animals, and the Agency Requirement

As mentioned above, answering the question ‘What types of entities, if any, have the capacity for meaning?’ is thought to be both an informative and important starting point when building and testing a theory about meaning. By parallel, within the domain of ethics we expect moral theories to adequately capture the correct or appropriate range of entities which have moral status or moral agency. For example, kicking a person for fun is intuitively a morally wrong act, while kicking a rock for fun is not (P. Singer, 2009, p. 37). If an ethical theory resulted in either (a) kicking a person for fun as being a morally neutral act, or (b) kicking a stone as being a morally wrong act, we would think the theory mistaken. So, too, for theories about meaning in life; we also desire such a theory to adequately capture the correct or appropriate range of entities which have the capacity for meaning.

Examining our pre-theoretical intuitions about which entities (if any) can be the bearers of meaning is often thought to be a good starting point for producing a theory about meaning in life. The orthodox position within the philosophical literature is that the only entities with such a capacity are humans. The upshot from such a position is that neither animals, non-persons, nor objects have the ability to live a meaningful life or have a meaningful existence. Such an upshot is taken as a welcome result across philosophers with varying philosophical commitments.

For example, when reflecting upon why it is a tragedy when a human being dies compared to an ant or rodent, Fischer thinks it is because the former has the capacity to lead a meaningful life while the latter does not:

The point is that only a proper subclass of sentient creatures have certain (notoriously difficult to specify) properties in virtue of which they have the capacity to lead a meaningful life; when such a creature dies, this blocks the possibility that it will lead a meaningful life, and thus the death of this sort of creature is especially bad.  …  It is not required that the creature be exercising its capacity to lead a meaningful life, in order for its death to be a tragedy; rather, what is necessary is that it have the properties which ground a capacity to lead such a life. (Fischer, 1993, p. 69)

Luper (2014, p. 198), likewise, writes at the very onset of his own position, ‘ …  that the lives of nonhuman animals (with some possible exceptions) lack meaning  …  Animals may live well; however, animals cannot survey and take a stance on their lives as wholes, which is requisite for turning them to various ends’. Metz, in his meticulous and compelling book, Meaning in Life, writes throughout that meaning is tied to ‘transcending one’s animal nature or self’ (2013, pp. 35, 37, 53). Given animals do not have the capacity to transcend their own nature, they would lack the capacity for meaning, too. And when reflecting upon the relationship between God and meaning in life, Craig (2008, pp. 72–76) comments that, ‘if there is no God, then  …  Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitos or a barnyard of pigs  …  our life is not qualitatively different from that of a dog’. Regardless of whether Craig is right or not, the point rather, as Hauskeller (2020, p. 2) also notes, is that Craig presupposes that animal life is already meaningless.

Given the above, the philosophical literature maintains there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that only human lives can be meaningful. And a lesson which has been drawn from such an observation is that humans have a kind of agency which non-human animals do not.³ In other words, what provides us with the capacity for meaning is agency; something which non-human animals lack. So a theory about meaning must provide some condition which properly addresses agency. Let us call this the agency requirement.

Of course, how one cashes out the agency requirement is a controversial matter with a host of dividing issues (Metz, 2013, pp. 163–179). There is first a matter of whether the agency requirement is solely sufficient for meaning in life. While hybrid views such as Wolf’s fitting fulfilment theory (2010) have proven popular, there are still influential theories which maintain meeting the agency requirement to be the only component of a meaningful life (e.g., Calhoun, 2014; Camus, 1955; Frankfurt, 1982; Sartre, 1946). Second, there is the question as to the nature of agency; one might argue that meaning is conferred by the deliberate choices we make (Camus, 1955; Sartre, 1946), or bringing about some purpose, whether our own (Ayer, 2000; Nielsen, 1981; Smart, 1999, p. 16), divine (Aquinas, 1975; Cottingham, 2003; Craig, 1994/2013; Poettcker, 2015), or a social or metaphysical one (Aristotle, 2000; Confucius, 2007). Others might suggest an emotion, such as satisfaction (Martin, 1993), taking joy in what matters (Klemke, 2000), or caring or loving something (Frankfurt, 1982), or that meaning is itself an emotion (Starkey, 2006).

Third, one might argue for a pluralist account, maintaining that there is more than one condition which, when satisfied, become jointly sufficient for meeting the agency requirement. James (1899), for example, thought meaning in life requires a passionate pursuit of an ideal (which would require satisfying (a) a passion condition and (b) an active pursuit condition), whereas Markus (2003) and Boylan (2008) both appeal to cognition and volition. Fourth, one might think the agency requirement is best met by way of an inter-subjective approach, claiming it is a group or community whose attitudes are relevant in deciding the meaningfulness of a life (Brogaard & Smith, 2005; Darwall, 1983, pp. 164–166; Wong, 2008). And fifth, the conditions meeting the agency requirement may be hypothetical, rather than actual, for example, that states-of-affairs which confer meaning are those which all human agents would prefer obtain (Darwall, 1983), or what confers meaning upon a life is whatever they would desire if they were fully informed about the options available (Griffin, 1981, pp. 54–58).

As should be clear, the agency requirement and the attempts to specify what would meet it are pervasive. And it can be motivated by the assumption that we share a pre-theoretical intuition that only humans, due to their agency, have the capacity for meaning, whereas non-human animals and objects do not. Note here, however, that this supposed shared pre-theoretical intuition, as I understand it, is deployed to provide motivation for the agency requirement. That is, we do not start with thinking agency is necessary but, rather, by reflecting upon (i) the concept of meaning, (ii) the types of entities which exist, and (iii) our pre-theoretical judgements about how meaning relates to entities, we draw the conclusion that agency must be necessary for meaning. In this way, those who support the agency requirement try to do so by starting from a theory-neutral position.

What seems to then make or break the agency requirement is whether there really is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition amongst us that animals and objects cannot have meaningful existences. Since so much hangs upon whether there is such agreement, if it were to turn out otherwise then orthodoxy would lose much of its force and the agency requirement would be unmotivated. I am not convinced there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that only humans have the capacity for meaning. Rather, I argue that our widespread pre-theoretical intuitions run counter to orthodoxy; our widespread pre-theoretical intuition is that not just animals, but also objects, have the capacity for meaning.

Before continuing, let me be clear about what I am arguing for here. I am not rejecting the criterion that a theory should provide an adequate account of what entities can, or cannot, have a capacity for meaning. What I am arguing for, however, is that the scope of such entities, as presumed by orthodoxy, is mistaken because it is too narrow; other things besides humans have a capacity for meaning.

2. Paradigm Cases and Animals

‘Can animals have meaningful lives?’(Purves & Delon, 2018, p. 318). A small but growing chorus has recently argued, to varying degrees, ‘yes, it’s possible’ (Hauskeller, 2020; Purves & Delon, 2018; Thomas, 2018). One way in which they have made this argument is through closer inspection of paradigm cases and animals.

Paradigm cases are those cases which we, pre-theoretically speaking, find the best examples of the subject matter we aim to investigate. With regards to meaning in life, paradigm cases are those lives which we think are the most meaningful (if any lives can be). By providing a list of paradigm cases we can, as Kauppinen (2016, p. 283) puts it, use a ‘bottom-up method’: find the common denominator/s between paradigm cases which vindicate our intuitions about them. There are two ways in which one might vindicate intuitions about such cases. First, a theory should explain what makes meaningful lives meaningful, and second, that explanation should be precisely what is lacking in lives which are meaningless.

The literature is rife with examples of paradigm cases of both the most meaningful and meaningless of lives (Bramble, 2015, p. 445; Purves & Delon, 2018; Smith, 1997, p. 212; Smuts, 2013, p. 536; Svensson, 2017, p. 48; Temkin, 2017, p. 23; Thomas, 2018, p. 265; Wolf, 2016, p. 256). Those identified as leading pre-theoretically the most meaningful lives include individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Marie Curie, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh, Ludwig van Beethoven, or Nelson Mandela, to name but a few. We should hope a theory about meaning vindicates our intuitions about why these lives are the most meaningful; what features of their lives render them as exemplars. Conversely, lives considered paradigm cases of the most meaningless include the mythical Sisyphus (forever doomed to push the same boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down), the person who meticulously counts the same blades of grass on the same field every day (Rawls, 1971, pp. 379–380), a person who enjoys consuming excrement (Smuts, 2018, p. 79), a couch potato who watches nothing but reruns of the same sitcom (Wolf, 2010, p. 9), or a person in an experience machine (Nozick, 1974, pp. 42–45). Historical figures who also might be thought to be paradigm cases of meaningless lives include serial killers Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez, or political tyrants such as Pol Pot, Caligula, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin.

Whether there is absolute consensus on the names given above, we should observe the potential candidates fit neatly with orthodoxy. After all, when reflecting upon the most meaningful lives it is not just any life, but human life which we entertain. This can be taken as reinforcing the orthodox position that we widely agree that only humans have the potential to live meaningful lives because it is only human lives we think of.

There are two problems here. First, there is a logical gap; just because we do not think of animal lives when reflecting upon paradigm cases, it does not follow that they lack the capacity for meaning. After all, their lives could be barely or somewhat meaningful even if they lack the capacity for their lives to be maximally meaningful. But even then, as Thomas (2018) rightly notes, it seems that at least some animal lives do occupy the same conceptual space as human paradigm cases and in the relevant types of ways. Consider the following:

What would we say about the life of Smoky the dog, who was found abandoned in a foxhole in the New Guinea jungle during World War II, and accompanied Corporal William Wynne through 12 combat missions over two years, earning eight battle stars and surviving 150 air raids and even a typhoon. Smoky slept in Wynne’s tent, shared his rations, and served as a therapy animal of sorts, but her greatest achievement came when she helped in the construction of a crucial airfield for allied forces by running a telegraph wire through a 70-foot-long pipe, solving a problem that would have otherwise required a three-day dig that would have put hundreds of men in danger of enemy bombings. (Thomas, 2018, pp. 265–266)

There are two points to be made when considering Smoky. First, even though one might be tempted to reject Smoky’s life as being meaningful, it is doubtful such a judgement is particularly widespread; a non-trivial percent of people would be willing to grant that Smoky’s life was, at the very least, somewhat meaningful. Second, suppose we were never told of Smoky’s species but only after we rendered judgement; would our judgement change? I imagine there would be considerable agreement as to the prima facie meaningfulness of her life, but that we would not withdraw our judgement simply by virtue of learning that she was a dog. That Smoky turned out to be a dog would simply be a surprising fact that this meaningful life belonged to a non-human animal. In this way, the Smoky case puts pressure on whether it is true that only humans can live meaningful lives by way of counterexample.

The Smoky example, however, is still used under the presumption that orthodoxy is correct in assuming that we collectively share a pre-theoretical intuition that only humans live meaningful lives. Yet, in light of Smoky, I think we have good reason to reject orthodoxy altogether because the intuition they claim actually runs in the opposite direction; that is, we collectively hold the pre-theoretical intuition that animals have a capacity for meaning. We already believed Smoky’s life was meaningful as evidenced by our attitudes and behaviours towards it.

Smoky is not the only animal to have lived such a life. Consider the lives of other war animals, or animals which were involved in sports, art, research, or science. The list of such animals is more extensive than perhaps we realize: Laika (first animal to orbit the earth), Phar Lap (thoroughbred horse who captured the imagination of Australia during the Great Depression), Washoe (first animal to learn American Sign Language), Dolly (first cloned animal), Greyfriar’s Bobby (a symbol of loyalty and companionship), Cher Ami (a messenger pigeon in World War I), Simpson’s Donkey (helped save the lives of soldiers in Gallipoli during World War I), to name but a few. The lives of such animals, like Smoky, share many features similar to human paradigm cases.

But note also how our attitudes, behaviours, and actions towards such animals’ lives are similar to those of human paradigm cases. We create statues, films, and books about these animals and the lives they lived, write them into our history books and teach them in schools. We award these animals medals, accolades, giving them both praise, adoration, and love. In some cases they change our perspective about ourselves as a species and our place within the universe. They sometimes take on quasi-mythical qualities.

In light of these observations, what we have is strong evidence for an opposite assumption to the one that orthodoxy makes: many of us think animals can, and in some cases do, live meaningful lives; animals have a capacity for and can bear, meaning. What I have shown above is there are some animal lives which we judge as being meaningful. Or, at the very least, we should not judge their lives as meaningless, i.e., devoid of any and all meaning. These animal lives share similar features with the paradigm cases earlier, and judging these animal lives as meaningful is not idiosyncratic, as is evidenced by our collective behaviour and attitudes towards them (e.g., respect, admiration, erecting statues, etc.) shows.

Even the common house pet or farm animal can have a meaningful life to some degree. And it seems an animal life can be made meaningful in much the same way we think human lives can be: through the types of relationships which might be fostered between other animals and ourselves. Consider the love and companionship the house cat or family dog provides and shares with their owner, the ducks or pigeons the elderly retiree feeds and cares for in the local park, or a family of geese with their goslings, or a group of bonobos. We might agree that such lives are not as meaningful as Laika or Smoky, but they are still meaningful to some degree. Suggesting so does not seem counterintuitive.

We also seem to judge some animal life as meaningless for the same sorts of reasons we might judge a person’s life to be. The life of a battery chicken, for example, does not appear to be just prudentially bad for that chicken, but also meaningless. And the reason it appears meaningless, I suggest, is not because chicken life is meaningless as a rule, but rather because their life lacks, or better yet, is robbed of, meaning. Furthermore, the life of a battery chicken certainly seems more meaningless than the life of the family pet chicken kept in the backyard. That is, it seems we can compare the lives of animals and decide which is more meaningful than the other. If all animal life was meaningless, we simply could not make such comparative judgements.

Yet, for all that, one might still insist we share an intuition that animals cannot, as a rule, live meaningful lives. If so, my last recourse is to point out that such a claim is an empirical one and can therefore be tested. While I provide no empirical data to support my own position, I would ask objectors to visit the local park and ask dog owners whether they think their beloved pet lives a meaningless life or not. While they may not say their dog’s life is as meaningful as their own, they will still admit their dog lives a meaningful life to some extent—even if it is the life of a dog (Hauskeller, 2020).

A reservation about accepting such a position could be that it opens up the possibility that an animal could live as meaningful a life as a person, perhaps even more so. Such an upshot strikes us as counterintuitive, and may be for that reason enough justification for rejecting my proposal. While this possibility is certainly on the table, I do not think that is enough of a reason for rejecting it; indeed, it might be a good reason for accepting it. The reason being because such a position could vindicate our intuitions and judgements across several cases.

First, compare the life of the beloved family pet against the life of a person plugged into an experience machine: whose life is more meaningful?⁴ Note the question here is neither malformed nor incoherent; we can make sense of the question being asked and there seems to be an answer to it. To me at least, it does not seem likely we will answer that both lives are equally meaningful or meaningless. I am inclined to think the beloved family pet lives a more meaningful life than a human being in an experience machine. But even if one were to disagree, the point here is rather that it is not counterintuitive to suggest an animal life (in this case, a family pet) can be more meaningful, even when compared to a human.

Second, that we feel disgust, envy, frustration, or anger towards even the suggestion that an animal could have a more meaningful life than our own does not provide us any insight into whether animals have a capacity for meaning. Though we may feel something unjust has occurred—that an animal should not live a more meaningful life than a person—it is unclear why we should harbour such feelings if we thought animals lacked the capacity for meaning.⁵ This argument runs parallel to how we might feel about the suggestion that immoral or evil lives are more meaningful than our own; though we may feel angry and a sense of injustice about it, it doesn’t rule out, by itself, that such lives are not meaningful.⁶ What we need is an independent argument showing why we should rule out animal lives as having a capacity for meaning—something which we do not currently have.⁷

3. Objects

For all that, one might still maintain the agency requirement without sacrificing it in any important way. One could concede that at least some species aside from humans have a capacity for meaning; but only those with the right sort of agency. Purves and Delon (2018), for example, argue that while intentional action is still necessary for meaning—thus addressing the agency requirement—they maintain particular types of animals are also capable of intentionality and so have the capacity to live a meaningful life. In this way, we can say that dogs or dolphins have the capacity for meaning, while species which lack such a capacity, such as mosquitoes or bees, would not.

But why continue to cling to the agency requirement? Well, without some agency-dependent condition then the scope of entities with the capacity for meaning would be seen as being too broad. One type of entity thought not have the capacity for meaning are objects, such as tin cans, bottles, socks, and other non-living things. If we were to dispense with an agency requirement entirely, then we might end up in the supposedly counterintuitive position that objects have a capacity for meaningful existences.⁸

To clarify the problem, reconsider the inanimate carbon rod example at the start of this article, based upon an episode of The Simpsons entitled, ‘Deep Space Homer’. In that episode, Homer Simpson is launched into space as a publicity stunt by NASA to increase their TV ratings (failure to draw in ratings will result in a dramatic reduction of their funding). While Homer and the crew, including famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin, are in orbit, the door handle of the space ship is torn off due to Homer’s reckless actions, making re-entry deadly. Having been heavily criticized by a fellow (and professional) astronaut for dooming the crew, Homer assaults his critic with an inanimate carbon rod. During the altercation, Homer accidentally jams said rod in the door latch, thus locking the door and making re-entry possible again. Against the odds, the crew survive re-entry and land safely on Earth. As the media circus surrounds the ship, Buzz Aldrin exclaims his thanks to Homer for jury-rigging the door shut with the rod. However, the media circus focuses solely upon the inanimate carbon rod, hailing it as the hero of the incident. The episode concludes with the rod appearing on the cover of TIME magazine (the cover entitled, ‘In Rod We Trust’), while the Simpson family watch a ticker tape parade being thrown for the rod, which rides in the back of a convertible with a medal around it.

The joke, of course, is that placing meaning upon the inanimate carbon rod itself is a serious error; an inanimate object cannot be the bearer of meaning because it falls outside the scope of such value assessments. Saying the rod’s ‘actions’ were meaningful, so much so that it deserved to be heralded a hero, is counterintuitive and seemingly absurd. If this is right, then it appears the reason why objects (like the inanimate carbon rod) cannot have a meaningful existence is because they lack the capacity to have meaning which, so the thought goes, we can draw up to some agent-dependent condition, such as intentionality, or caring, etc.

However compelling this initial position might be, I suggest such appearances are nothing more than a chimera. Non-living entities, like objects, do have a capacity for meaning. The reason being because we can extend the previous observations of paradigm cases and animals to that of paradigm cases and objects. We already recognize that objects can have meaningful existences, and that some indeed do. The meaningfulness of an object’s existence can be, like human or animal life, graded on a scale as being more or less.

Consider, for example, Rosebud, the beloved treasured childhood sled of Charles Foster Kane, the titular character in the film, Citizen Kane. Throughout the film, set at different times in Kane’s life, we see how meaningful and significant the sled was. In his youth and in rebellion to his parent’s decision to give him away to Mr. Thatcher, Kane hits him with Rosebud. Later in life, immediately after his second wife leaves him, Kane destroys her old room, his rage being brought to a sudden standstill when he spots a snow globe with the title ‘Rosebud’ on it, while at the end of his life his final word was ‘Rosebud’. Pre-theoretically, it does not seem counterintuitive or a misuse of the concept to say that Rosebud’s existence was meaningful, especially when taking into account the special standing it had for Kane.

A sled in a fictional film, however, is not needed to make the point here. I do not think I am mistaken in believing that many of us hold some object or other as being meaningful. Consider the childhood teddy bear, the musician’s instrument, a teenager’s first car, a pacemaker, a diabetic’s insulin, or a COVID-19 vaccination. Saying these objects have meaningless existences simply because they lack agency seems obviously mistaken; it seems more intuitive to say their existence is, in fact, meaningful.

One might object by suggesting I have confused meaningfulness with meaningful to, or meaningful for, something. That is, the type of meaning that an object’s existence has is of a different kind than what we are primarily concerned with in regard to meaning in life. The above examples are meaningful only insofar as they stand in a sort of relationship with a person, but meaning in the sense we are talking about in the literature is of a different kind altogether. In other words, I have made a category error.

There are several ways to reply to the considered objection. First, it strikes me as question begging. After all, the point of paradigm cases and investigating our pre-theoretical intuitions about them is to draw together a picture of what it is we are trying to think about. In assuming we mean by ‘meaning’ one particular conception, we have a priori ruled out all contrary evidence and competing conceptions. If we want to start from a theory-neutral position—which was the initial point of considering which types of entities have a capacity for meaning and considering paradigm cases—we must seriously consider all data points.

I should make clear that the type of meaningfulness I am talking about with regards to objects is not their ‘meaning for’ but rather the relevant understanding of ‘meaning’. After all, nobody objects to the idea that objects can have meaningful existences in the ‘meaning for’ sense, it is the latter sense which is at stake.⁹ Even when some object’s existence is not meaningful for someone, we can still recognize that existence as meaningful. We can imagine, for example, a world in which nobody had any personal attachment or sentiment to the Pyramids. Even in such a world where the Pyramids’ existences were not meaningful for anybody, we could still maintain that their existence is meaningful.

Second, I am unsure whether there is an important distinction between ‘meaning for’ and ‘meaning’. First, I am inclined to think that meaning is relational, such that for something, even a life, to be meaningful it must be meaningful for someone, even if it is just for the person whose life it is. For example, it seems intuitive to think that if Johnson’s life is meaningful, it is most likely meaningful for them. Additionally, when we consider something like ‘dangerous’, dangerousness’, ‘dangerous to’, and ‘dangerous for’, these all seem commensurate; I suggest meaning works in a similar fashion.

One might respond to this second point by arguing that these objects’ existences would not be meaningful without us, which suggests they are only meaningful in the ‘meaning for’ sense. But I can concede this point while also denying that this results in them being ‘meaningful for’ us. I struggle to understand how, for example, the existence of Uluru could be ‘used for a certain purpose’; how it could be ‘meaning for’. Artwork strikes me as another case—if I said its existence was meaningful, it is not clear to me how the objection in question could apply because the meaningfulness of an artwork is not derived from its utility.

And third, I am unsure we should want to restrict meaningfulness to simply ‘meaning to’ and exclude ‘meaning for’. There are, after all, several theories about meaning in life which take meaningfulness to be more like meaning for; e.g., teleological theories about meaning in life, such as theistic accounts, Confucianism, Aristotelianism, etc., seem to maintain that the meaning of a life is tied up in how well it fulfils its function or purpose, which could be interpreted as being about how ‘useful’ a life is. If we reject these theories, it isn’t obviously because they focus upon ‘meaning for’ rather than ‘meaning to’. Such theories can still demand the agency requirement too without needing to appeal to ‘meaning to’ as well; either the function is set by an agent (like theism) or can only be brought about by an agent’s activity (like Aristotelianism). We have, so far I can tell, no pre-theoretical reason for ruling out ‘meaning for’.

Perhaps what is motivating resistance against objects having meaningful existences is that allowing them to be candidates for meaningfulness produces, much like before with animals, the unpalatable result in which some objects have a more meaningful existence than people. Indeed, we saw that point made in the joke carried out in The Simpsons example where the inanimate carbon rod was viewed as being more meaningful than Homer. The joke was of course at the expense of Homer and his dignity; he was deemed less meaningful than a mere inanimate carbon rod. And there is something deeply troubling about how dehumanizing that is.

Even so, it is not hard to find examples of such existences which do appear, intuitively, to be more meaningful than the lives of most people. You might say such objects are paradigm cases of meaningful existence. Consider the first flag planted on the moon, the first published Gutenberg Bible, the United States Declaration of Independence, political constitutions, the Pyramids, the moon, Niagara Falls, the Amazon rainforest, or Uluru. The existence of such objects seem to have more meaning than the average person. While that may perhaps be a dehumanizing and uncomfortable result, that fact alone does not make it seem any less true. And their existence appears more meaningful than, say, a sandcastle, a shopping list, or a pebble.

Objects, by definition, do not have agency. That is, after all, why they are objects and not subjects. But, given the above examples, it seems we have good cause to think a theory about meaning should vindicate our intuitions about the meaningful existences of objects. An agency requirement would, by definition, be incapable of providing such vindication because it would automatically rule out objects. The point here, to be clear, is that the orthodox position—that only humans have the capacity for meaning—is dubious. If there is a widely shared pre-theoretical intuition, it is not that only humans have a capacity for meaningful lives. Instead, it appears just the opposite: our widespread pre-theoretical intuition appears to be that animals and objects can, and do, have meaningful lives or existences. And evidence to support this claim can be found in our cross-cultural attitudes towards them; how we venerate, admire, and behave towards them. Given all of the above, we have good reason to be sceptical about the motivation for the agency requirement, and why we should adopt it in the first place.

4. Ipso Facto Meaningless?

Perhaps, even after all that, we might stick fast to the agency requirement. One might provide an alternative reason for adopting the agency requirement, or simply put their foot down on it because they simply find the conclusion counterintuitive. However, in this section, I aim to show that adopting the agency requirement and maintaining that only humans (or even some animals) have a capacity for meaning produces an even greater counterintuitive upshot: that everything which lacks agency has, by definition, a meaningless existence.

This is a fairly straightforward upshot; if one were to hold the view that animals and objects cannot have meaningful existences, then they are all meaningless. That is, if it were true that animals and objects do not have the capacity for meaning, then it is entailed that all animal and object existence is, by definition and without qualification, meaningless. The upshot of orthodoxy cannot be that animal life is less meaningful than human life, for that claim commits to the weaker position that animal life is capable of being meaningful (just that it cannot be as meaningful as a human life). Yet such an upshot, I hope, seems highly counterintuitive, and certainly more so than the position I have been advancing here.

One objection could be that, just because the lives or existences of animals or objects have no meaning, it does not follow they are meaningless.¹⁰ Something can fail to be meaningful without being meaningless, such as the number 4. Take into consideration a rock and whether it can be careful; it seems a rock cannot be careful, but that does not mean the rock is careless; the rock is not the sort of thing which can be either. So, if we hold that animals and objects cannot have meaningful lives or existences, all it means is that they have no meaning and not that they have meaningless lives or existences.

I do not think this objection works because to say a life or existence is meaningless can be to say that it has no meaning, and not just that it lacks meaningfulness. First, consider the following expressions: (a) if a life is not meaningful then that life has no meaning, but (b) just because that life has no meaning, that does not make it a meaningless life. Now (a) seems correct and uncontroversial, but (b) seems obviously mistaken. This is highlighted when considering: (c) if that life has no meaning, then that life is meaningless. To say a life or existence is not meaningful, even slightly, means that life has no meaning, and if a life has no meaning then that is the same as saying it is a meaningless life.

We should also be wary of the ‘care’ counterexample because we can find other parallels which do not fall into this trap, such as colour or taste. For example, take the number 4: the number 4 is not colourful and has no colour, so the number 4 is colourless; the number 4 has no taste, so the number 4 is tasteless. Meaningless, I suggest, works more like ‘colourless’ or ‘tasteless’, rather than careless. To further the point, consider how people react in the throes of existential angst when they view their lives as having no meaning; if a person looks about the universe and comes to believe their life is not meaningful, or worse still cannot, be meaningful—not just that their life lacks meaning but is incapable of having it—they describe their life as meaningless.

One might try and soften the blow, as Luper (2014, p. 198) does, by pointing out that just because all animal life is meaningless does not ipso facto make all animal life valueless. But such a manoeuvre does not soften the blow enough, nor does it explain our use of the word ‘meaningless’ with regards to circumstances of animal death. Consider two slaughterhouses, A and B:

Slaughterhouse A: Pigs, lambs, cows, and chickens are killed, processed, with their remains used for a variety of purposes such as meat, clothing, and other goods.

Slaughterhouse B: Pigs, lambs, cows, and chickens, are killed, their carcasses thrown immediately thrown into an incinerator; no part of the animal is ever used.

If animal life were meaningless, then both cases would be equally meaningless. Indeed, there would be no way for one animal life to be more meaningless than another. Yet, given A and B that seems mistaken; intuitively, the animal lives of B are significantly more meaningless than those of A. I do not think I am alone in thinking so. We might say, for example, that at least the animals in A were used for something good and not senselessly wasted. This seems right, given that we undoubtedly describe those of B as being ‘senseless’, ‘pointless’, and so ‘meaningless’—all of which are appropriate uses of the concept of meaning (pre-theoretically speaking). Further, such judgements seem to hold regardless of one’s opinion about the ethical status or value of animals, whether we are justified in using them for our own ends or not. The fact we intuitively recognize that animals killed in B are having their lives rendered more meaningless than A seems to suggest that we have a clear notion that those lives could have been meaningful. Even livestock animals have the capacity for meaning; they can live meaningful lives if given the opportunity to do so.

The above observation complements those made by both James (1895) and Frankl (1959/2000), as noted by Hauskeller (2020). Both James and Frankl recognized that an animal life can be meaningful, even if that life is prudentially awful for the animal whose life it is:

Consider a poor dog whom they are vivisecting in a laboratory. He lies strapped on a board and shrieking at its executioners, and to his own dark consciousness is literally in a sort of hell. He cannot see a single redeeming ray in the whole business; and yet all these diabolical-seeming events are controlled by human intentions which, if his poor benighted mind could be made to catch a glimpse of them, all that is heroic in him would religiously acquiesce  …  lying on his back on the board there he may be performing a function incalculably higher than any that prosperous canine life admits of. (James, 1895, p. 20)

In like-minded fashion, when reflecting upon whether there could be any meaning to human suffering (even when we are unable to grasp it) Frankl (1959/2000, p. 121) writes that the suffering of ‘an ape which was being used to develop poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again’, would be meaningful even if the ape cannot understand the suffering inflicted upon them. And this reasoning seems to be along the same lines as those who justify their work in say, the cattle industry: that the animals they raise—and the cattle ranches themselves—lived meaningful lives precisely because the carcasses of the cattle are used to feed and clothe people.

One might object that James’s dog serves only to underscore the agency requirement. James seems to be noting that if only the animal were capable of intentional awareness then it would acquiesce to its vivisection but, as it does not, it merely performs a function like a tool.¹¹

But this is not the only way in which we might understand or capture James’s observation. It could be the case that the dog’s life is already meaningful even if it is unaware, or incapable of being made aware, of that fact. That is, if only the dog were aware of how meaningful their existence was then it would acquiesce—it would take the meaningfulness of its life as a reason for acquiescing. To get a grip on this, consider a variation of the Sisyphus case, which involves three additions:

1. ‘Unbeknownst to Sisyphus, his stone-rolling scares away vultures who would otherwise attack a nearby community and spread terror and disease’ (Wolf, 2010, p. 21);

2. Sisyphus, in a moment of existential crisis about the meaning of his life, is about to throw himself off a cliff to die; and

3. Just before he is about to commit the act, we have one chance to say something to stop him from jumping.

What could we say, or appeal to, to change Sisyphus’s mind about jumping? In such a situation, Bramble (2015, p. 447) writes his own response: ‘Wait, Sisyphus! Don’t do it! You don’t realise it, but your rock rolling is averting a great deal of suffering. It’s scaring off the vultures that would otherwise attack nearby villagers and spread disease’.

Bramble’s response seems both appropriate and addresses Sisyphus’s concerns, even if he is unmoved by it. That is, the reason Bramble provides Sisyphus directly addresses the concern he has, namely, whether his life is meaningful or not; Sisyphus’s life does have meaning, he is just unaware of it. All Bramble is doing is reporting to Sisyphus the relevant facts about his existence, and it is those facts, and not his attitudes towards them, which are doing the work.¹²

The case of the dog or the ape are similar: that there is some fact about their lives/existences which makes them meaningful, and whether they know, or are even capable of knowing, that reason does not change anything. If James’s dog were capable of understanding, then it would take the meaningfulness of its life as a reason to acquiesce.

Likewise, we can apply the same sorts of reasoning to objects and their existence. If meaning is limited to just humans because of agency, then we are committed to saying that the existence of Uluru, the Pyramids, the Quran, or the American Constitution, is meaningless. Yet, surely, this is highly counterintuitive. Even if one has reservations in accepting that such objects could have a meaningful existence, I imagine saying their existences are meaningless to be more counterintuitive.

Let me clear about what I am, and am not, saying here. I am not saying the animal lives in A are meaningful or, if they are, how meaningful they might be. Nor am I saying that if those same animal lives were meaningful that we are therefore justified or permitted to treat them as means to our own ends. What I am saying, however, is that there is a widespread belief that an animal’s life can be, to varying degrees, made meaningful or rendered meaningless.

So, given the reverence some animals and objects are bestowed (e.g., Smoky), or the special place they hold in our hearts (e.g., the family dog), it seems that, if anything, a theory about meaning in life should be explaining why some animal lives are (i) celebrated and venerated, (ii) entrenched in the public consciousness, and (iii) why we describe an animal life and the existence of objects as being more or less meaningful or meaningless. And the most straightforward explanation, I submit, is by simply admitting that animals and objects have the capacity for meaning.

The agency requirement, then, is not just unmotivated but worse still, a hindrance; in adopting it we are forced into accepting the highly counterintuitive claim that the lives of animals and existences of objects are, ipso facto, meaningless, precisely because they lack agency. Though accepting that animals and objects have a capacity for meaning is counterintuitive for some (though I have argued it is not a widely held intuition), the former result is far worse and, for that reason, should be rejected.

4. Concluding Remarks

In this article I have argued the orthodox position found within the philosophical literature—that only humans have the capacity for meaning—to be mistaken. I argued just the opposite; that when we examine widespread attitudes and behaviours towards non-human entities such as animals and objects, we treat them as having a capacity for meaningfulness. We commonly talk and think about animals and objects as being meaningful in much the same way we treat and talk about human lives. Indeed, some objects and animals have arguably a more meaningful life than some, or possibly most, humans. Further still, accepting the orthodox position produces the highly counterintuitive upshot that everything which lacks agency is ipso facto meaningless. Given how widespread such parlance is combined with the observed counterintuitive upshot, I contended that the agency requirement has no pre-theoretical support and thus should be rejected or at the very least viewed with scepticism until some given point at which a substantive argument can be advanced in favour of it.

One might wonder where this leaves us. Let me end the article by considering one family of theories which might provide vindication for our intuitions whilst avoiding agency: consequentialism about meaning in life (Bramble, 2015; Railton, 1984, pp. 164–171; I. Singer, 2009, pp. 101–140; Singer, 1993, pp. 314–335; 1995, pp. 171–235; Smuts, 2013). Consequentialist theories, roughly, state a life is meaningful insofar as it is causally responsible for the right sorts of outcomes. Such theories hold initial plausibility because making the world better off is intuitively a quintessential source of meaning (Baier, 2000, pp. 128–129; Dahl, 1987, pp. 5–10; Rescher, 1990, pp. 161–165; Teichman, 1993, pp. 159–160). This is perhaps why consequentialism, as Metz (2013, p. 187) observes, has more widespread appeal with regards to meaning rather than ethics. For example, Dworkin (2000, pp. 251–252) acknowledges consequentialism about meaning as a plausible way of unifying widely held intuitions about impact and meaning; that the more impact on the world one has the more meaningful one’s life or existence becomes:

We admire the lives of Alexander Fleming and Mozart and Martin Luther King Jr., and we explain why we do by pointing to penicillin and The Marriage of Figaro and what King did for his race and country. The model of impact generalizes from these examples; it holds that the  …  value of a life  …  is parasitic on and measured by the value of its consequences for the rest of the world. (Dworkin, 2000, pp. 251–252)

His suggestion seems plausible; when moral achievement, scientific discovery or artistic creation intuitively confer meaning upon a life, they appear to do so just insofar as they improve or make the world (i.e., sentient creatures) better off. Conversely, such theories also make sense of the conditions which fail to confer meaning, such as eating excrement, counting grass, harming others, or plugging into an experience machine. What seems to be missing from paradigm cases of meaningless lives is that they do nothing to make the world a better place.

So, consequentialism seems to vindicate our intuitions about paradigm cases because (a) it seems the most meaningful lives are those which, in some way or other, make others better off than they otherwise would have been while also (b) explaining what it is that paradigm cases of meaningless lives lack. But, importantly, such theories about meaning also vindicate and explain our attitudes and behaviours about the meaningfulness of the lives of non-human entities such as animals and objects; they, too, can make the world a better place, whether they have any intention of doing so or not.

Acknowledgements

I thank my PhD supervisors Guy Fletcher and Michael Cholbi. I am grateful to the attendees of the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference at the University of Wollongong, and the Ethics and Morality Workshop at the University of Edinburgh, particularly Elinor Mason, Michael Ridge, and Gwen Bradford. I also thank Kenneth Nichols, James Matthews, and Barry Stevenson. My deepest gratitude to the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments. This article was written with the support of the James Forrester PhD Scholarship, provided through the Carlyle Circle at the University of Edinburgh.

Notes

1 For a potential dissenter to this orthodoxy, see Mawson (2016, pp. 50–56).

2 It should be noted that Smuts (2013) does ultimately reject the orthodox position.

3 I am construing agency very broadly here so my argument applies to as many conceptions of agency as allows, regardless of how basic or sophisticated that conception might be.

4 Nozick, 1974, pp. 42–45.

5 There is the question of whether an animal should or should not have a more meaningful life than a person, but that question sits outside the scope of this article. Regardless, nothing argued here turns upon the answer to that question; unless animals could live meaningful lives then there would be no reason for us to have negative reactive attitudes about them.

6 Anecdotally, when discussing specific immoral/evil lives, such as Hitler, Stalin, or Jimmy Savile, a non-trivial percentage of people who, though feeling angry or disgusted by the suggestion such lives are more meaningful than their own, admitted their pre-theoretical intuition is that such lives are, indeed, meaningful.

7 This last point also runs parallel to immorality and meaningfulness; only recently has the relationship between the two been taken seriously, with arguments attempting to reject immoral/evil lives as being candidates for meaningful lives. For example, see (Campbell & Nyholm, 2015; Kipke & Rüther, 2019; Landau, 2011). I thank the reviewer for pushing me to clarify my point here.

8 One might object that talk of ‘existence’ is enough of a change from talk of ‘life’ such as what we mean by ‘meaning’ with regards to the latter is different from that of the former. In other words, the questions of the ‘meaning of life’ and the ‘meaning of existence’ are two different questions which most likely require two distinct answers. To compare, consider the following questions: ‘What is the quickness of Jones’ wit?’ And ‘What is the quickness of Jones’ greyhound?’—given the different objects, i.e., wit and greyhound, our understanding of ‘quickness’ will be commensurately different. We might reasonably suspect then that our understanding of ‘meaning’ may be different between ‘life’ and ‘existence’. But it is not obvious, in the relevant case, that there has been any change to our understanding to meaningfulness when considering ‘life’ or ‘existence’. Consider the following:

• Jones’ wit and their greyhound are quick.

• The word ‘habitat’ and Jones’ life are meaningful.

• The word ‘habitat’ and Jones’ life have meaning.

In these three cases, it seems that claims about meaning are changing the subject depending upon the object in question. In these cases meaning does not seem commensurate or comparable. But consider the following:

• Jones’ life and the habitat’s existence are meaningful.

This last case, however, does not intuitively appear to be changing the subject; our understanding of meaning appears commensurate. I thank the reviewer for raising this concern.

9 I thank the reviewer for pointing this out.

10 I thank the reviewer for bringing this objection to my attention.

11 I thank the reviewer for bringing this to my attention.

12 Bramble’s response is not idiosyncratic. In It’s a Wonderful Life, it is precisely these relevant facts (i.e., facts about how George positively impacts those around him) that George’s guardian angel appeals to in order to convince George his life is meaningful and worthwhile. It is upon learning about these facts about his life that George changes his mind about the worth of his life, deciding not to commit suicide but instead rush home back to his loving family and friends; George comes to believe his life is worthwhile, even wonderful.