“The purpose of life” and “the meaning of life” are two concepts often bandied about and often intertwined. They are very different though.
The purpose of life is the same for a human as it is for a sunflower and an amoeba. It is to procreate. Being human, though, we can also take a longer view of procreation. In addition to creating the next generation of humans, we can strive to improve our environment for future human procreation. In terms of purpose, nothing else matters.
The human’s interaction with the world is not one of simple stimulus -> response as some other animals’ is. Human sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin) are inexorably linked to the brain. We do not see with our eyes alone but with the integration of eyes and brain, and we do not touch with our skin alone but with the integration of skin and brain. This bipartite process is called perception. The role of the brain in perception is to interpret the pattern of information coming from the external sense organ. In other words, the brain assigns meaning to the raw sensory input. “This pattern of light my eyes are recording right now is a tiger running toward me with its mouth open.” The brain makes that interpretation very quickly (luckily for us) and part of the meaning associated with that interpretation is “Yikes!” The brain follows up automatically; releasing adrenaline, blood sugar, and lactic acid in order to prepare us to either fight or run like hell. We don’t have to consider the situation: “Hmmm, that’s a tiger. Tigers are known to lunch on humans. I’m a human. The tiger may be hungry and it may be lunch time. Thus it is possible that tiger may be coming toward me not to be petted like a good kitty but with rather more untoward intent. Perhaps I should prepare myself for a somewhat unpleasant encounter. Now, how should I go about that?” The tiger would be taking its postprandial nap by the end of that thought process! Instead, we’ve either shot the tiger or jumped into our Land Rover and locked the doors before we would have finished with “Hmmm, that’s a tiger.” My point is that meaning was embedded in the sensory experience. We did not see then interpret. The meaning was part of the seeing.
Meaning in perception is not limited to tigers and the fight-or-flight response. Meaning is part of every perceptual experience. Think of the photograph of the explosion of the dirigible, Hindenburg. You probably have not seen an original photographic print, but rather a book, magazine, or newspaper reproduction of it. So you saw a pattern of black and white dots. You did not have to puzzle over the pattern of dots and work out that it was a representation of some three-dimensional situation from the past. You did not then have to think about the situation to derive a sense of awe, and perhaps shock, sadness, even grief. In the very seeing of the magazine page, the brain provided the meaning of the pattern of dots.
As the tiger showed us, our lives depend upon our ability to create meaning in perception. As perceivers, creating meaning is what we do. But is the meaning something of the world, that we merely recognize, or is it something of our own invention?
If and when I continue this essay, I’ll argue that it is never entirely the former but it is occasionally entirely the latter. The meaning of life lies in the latter.
Resources: Nelson Goodman, especially Ways of Worldmaking; E.H. Gombrich, especially Art and Illusion; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, or his more accessible essay, “The Primacy of Perception”.
R.L. Geyer
2 May 2005