Cheryl E. Fitzgerald

Whether the Meaning of Human Life Can Be Inferred from the Meaning of the World[1]

I. Introduction

For those thinkers who ventured to inquire whether there is any meaning[2] to human life, moved as many of us have been in feeling that pressing question of our own human condition, the following inference has been tacitly assumed to be valid:

If there is an objective meaning to the world (the universe, etc.), then there is an objective meaning to human life.

And so the method of theorizing has been to first seek out and define what meaning the world has in order to derive the meaningfulness of human life. Traditionally, there are two basic categories into which such theories fall: (1) religious-ethical meaning that God qua creator of the world has imbued into His creation, and (2) naturalist-ethical meaning derived from the physical nature of the universe and life. According to the religious metaphysics of the first category, God is traditionally defined as the sort of being who does not act arbitrarily, and thus, He creates the world in order for the realization of some meaning, a religious-ethical purpose that is fully realized through human beings. The details of how such a purpose is to be fulfilled are specific to any theory one might consider, but are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Into the second category fall theories such as moral realisms, atheistic or those that reject a creator, such that the inherent goodness of the universe ought to be increased, which can be partially realized through the free choices of human actions. Again, the details of what the inherent goodness of the universe is and exactly how humans are to fulfill the purpose of increasing it are theory-specific and irrelevant here. All that is relevant is that, for both kinds of theories, there is an inference from the objective meaning of the world to the objective meaning of life.

For both of these types of theories, the inference is indeed valid, but not because the inference is inherently valid. Rather, the validity is a result of the theoretical fleshing out of the concept of meaningfulness as being equivalent to purposefulness. Throughout human history, questions regarding the meaning of life most often piggyback along the question, Why are we here? Essentially, the quest for meaning has been a quest to find out for what reason humans exist. Both religious-ethical and naturalist-ethical theories of meaningfulness fulfill this quest, for they both answer to that search for a reason. For the religious, God non-arbitrarily created human life for and with a specific purpose. For the moral realist, the universe is such that its goodness ought to be increased, and since humans can contribute to the goodness of the universe, human life has a moral obligation to do so. I am not, here, claiming anything regarding the truth or falsity of such theories, only that the inference is valid within the scope of these theories. My interest here is in the validity of the inference, not the truth of the theories; thus, the inference in those theories is a valid one.

But what about a theory that rejects the assumed equivalence of meaning and purpose, and rejects the quest for seeking out a reason as the meaningfulness of existence? According to such a theory, can objective meaningfulness of the world lead us to objective meaningfulness of human life? If so, how?

A contemporary theory for consideration of this kind is that put forth in Quentin Smith’s Felt Meanings of the World (FMW).[3] This particular pantheistic[4] metaphysics, which Smith names the metaphysics of feeling, for which reason I will explain below, sets out to define the meaningfulness of the world in a radically non-traditional theoretical way. Smith briefly addresses the meaningfulness of human life in the Conclusion of the book as derivative from the objective meaning of the world. It is clear that Smith, too, tacitly assumes the validity of the inference in question, but it is not clear that the inference in the scope of this particular pantheism is valid. For, an important aspect of the metaphysics of feeling is that it rejects the traditional notion that meaning is equivalent to purpose, but it was that equivalence that allowed for the validity of the inference in both religious-ethical and naturalist-ethical metaphysics. Thus, the question is, is there anything in the metaphysics of feeling that allows for the validity of the inference from the objective meaning of the world to the objective meaning of human life?

It is my purpose to internally explore the metaphysics of feeling in order to answer this question, but it is not my purpose to propose a defense of the theory. Consistency, coherence and the validity of inferences within a theory is the first step of analysis into the plausibility of it, and making any needed repairs is the second; therefore, these steps are necessarily prior to any promotional defense. There are controversial claims in the metaphysics of feeling that I will here be assuming for the purposes of my exposition. There are also technical terms specific to the theory that I will be using; meticulous care will be given to defining them, as many of them are words we use in ordinary language, but that take on quite a different meaning in the metaphysics of feeling. In order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, one must keep in mind that these terms have a specific meaning within the theory that is different from their ordinary usage. Overall, I am providing a general overview of the metaphysics of feeling, particularly because it is not a well-known theory.

II. The Metaphysics of Feeling: A New Approach to Philosophy

In FMW we find the first attempt at an explication of a non-traditional way of philosophizing about the metaphysical nature of the world. It includes a rejection of the traditional method as inadequate and misguided, and thus it is not proposed merely as an alternative, but as a correction for the way in which we do philosophy. The central focus of the book is to establish that and how the whole of all that exists in meaningful, in an attempt to climb out of the nihilistic conclusion that philosophy, in general,[5] has been gripped by for over a century, that is, that existence, and thus life, is inherently meaningless, or that if there is meaning, it is inherently unknowable.

To begin with, it is necessary to understand that this theory is an approach to understanding the world and its parts, including, but not limited to, their metaphysical nature, through our feelings. Smith has thus named it the metaphysics of feeling, in contrast to the traditional method of philosophy that he calls the metaphysics of reason. However, this distinction specifically does not mean that the metaphysics of feeling is opposed to using logic and reason; after all, Smith, who certainly adopts the theory himself, argues for it in a very logical and reasonable fashion. The metaphysics of reason is defined specifically as a reliance on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, not as a reliance on the mental faculty that we call the capacity for reasoning, or ‘reason’ for short; it relies on the Principle as the beginning focus for metaphysical inquiry, that is, it asks why and what is the reason (or cause) sorts of questions. Ultimately, the metaphysics of reason seeks for explanation by way of sufficient reasons. But as a rejection of this traditional method, seeking for a (sufficient) reason for the existence of the world, the metaphysics of feeling rejects as philosophically important the question, Why does the world exist? And this further includes a rejection of similar questions regarding human existence, the Why are we here? sorts of questions. In their place, the metaphysics of feeling takes as its focus an acknowledgement and appreciation that the world, including its parts, exists, and seeks rather to understand its metaphysical nature through feelings. This ultimately translates into an implicit rejection of the assumed equivalence of meaningfulness and purposefulness. I will make this explicit in further explanative detail in Section __, but it is first necessary to understand the basic method of the theory.

The metaphysics of feeling rests on a hierarchy of ways of knowing about the world that includes reasoning as one of those ways. The first level in the hierarchy is made up of intuitive feelings, especially the experience of the feelings themselves. The second level is made up of afterglowing feelings, where the effects of the feelings linger, and one re-lives the intuitive feelings through remembering the feelings, and thinking and writing about them poetically and evocatively. According to the metaphysics of feeling, a poetic, deliberately vague and metaphorical description of the world is a necessary part of our epistemic nature and has traditionally been ignored and denigrated in the rationalist tradition—the metaphysics of reason—from Plato to the present. The third level is made up of concentrative feelings, where further and more precise analysis and explication of the feelings occurs.[6] Logic and reason are explicitly utilized in concentrative feelings, for their purpose is to “form exact and strict significations that are designed to articulate the structural constituents of the [metaphysical meaning of the feeling] in a precise and detailed way.”[7] And this means precisely that all of analytic philosophy is done on the level of concentrative feelings. The metaphysics of feeling is not in contest with analytic philosophy, but rather has room for the analytic tradition as a part of the metaphysics of feeling; the contention is rather that the analytic tradition cannot encompass the whole of what can be philosophically known and what is philosophically important. The same goes for the continental tradition, the only difference being that within the hierarchy of ways of knowing, continental philosophy is included in the afterglowing feelings, the second level, rather than the concentrative feelings.[8]

The understanding and knowledge about the world and/or its parts that one gains at one level of feeling is different from that which is gained at any other level. For example, what one is aware of and learns in an intuitive feeling of despair about the world’s purposelessness is very different from what one is aware of and learns in concentrative feelings where one gives an exact analysis of the despairing feeling, what it means, etc. In fact, during this logical analysis of the despairing feeling, one could not be experiencing the despairing feeling of purposelessness and hopelessness, for if one was, one would certainly not be engaging in logical analyses! The same would hold true of the intuitive feeling of joy at the world’s existence. It can also be shown that what one is aware of and learns is different at each of the levels of feeling (intuitive, poetic, and concentrative) by showing that someone can have the despairing intuition without understanding the logical analysis given on the concentrative level, if she read a logical analysis written by someone else: she intuitively and poetically knows the despairing feeling and what it means from her intuitive and poetic comprehension. On the other hand, one might be able to completely understand and agree with a logical analysis of despair without ever having the intuitive despairing feeling, and thus without ever having the intuitive and poetic understanding that the world’s purposeless and hopelessness is real, and that the world is a source of feeling despair. It is because of these differences between what is felt and understood on each level of feeling that makes it necessary that obtaining a complete understanding of the world requires that one utilize all three levels of feelings. And thus, according to the metaphysics of feeling, we ought to embrace these different levels of feeling and ways of understanding the world, and recognize that in order for philosophy to reach its goal of gaining complete knowledge about the world, it must become a synthesis of these different ways of knowing.

III. The Structure of Feelings

There are distinct parts that comprise a feeling: there is felt to be a provoking, pressing stimulation, and in return, a sensuous, responsive reaction. If I feel love, there is something that stimulates me in such a way that I react to it with love, and I specifically feel it impelling me to react this way; if I feel anger, there is something to which I respond with anger, and I feel it provoking me to react this particular way. In other words, there is something that is felt to be the stimulus or cause for the feeling with which I meet it in return. It would be wrong to state that the source simply is the cause, for that would lead us to a more deterministic picture than desired. Rather, the source is felt to be the cause, but this provoking stimulation from the source is a projection from oneself onto the thing that is the source of the feeling.

Consider that I am in the bedroom of my apartment, and something on top of the stove catches fire while I am not attending to it. When I become aware of the fire, the immediate feeling that takes hold of me is one of fear, which causes me to tremble and cringe backward. The source of my fear is not properly said to be the fire itself; rather, the source is the dangerousness and/or harmfulness of the fire, which provokes me in a way that I feel as the danger lunging at me from the fire in a threatening manner. The feeling of the fire’s danger threateningly lunging at me is something that I project onto the fire, because of the specific circumstances that I experience, i.e., that I am trapped in my apartment with the fire, and in order to get out I must pass through the kitchen, where the fire is. The stimulation of my feeling, the fire’s danger threateningly lunging at me, is felt as being emitted by the fire itself, even though it is really a projection from myself onto the fire. I experience a sensuous response to this felt stimulation, such as cringing, tightening in my muscles and throat, rapid heartbeat, etc. All of this together comprises the whole of the feeling.

One might wonder how, in this case, the danger of the fire is not something emitted towards me by the fire itself, for certainly fire can be physically damaging to me. In other words, how and why is the stimulation part of the feeling a projection from myself and not something happening in the objective world? Consider the same scenario, except that I am not trapped, but can easily escape my apartment. I would not feel fear; rather, I might feel misfortune or devastation for the loss of my belongings consumed by the fire. The stimulation of that feeling would not be felt to be anything like the stimulation felt in the prior scenario, I would not feel the danger of the fire lunging at me in a threatening manner. Instead, I might feel the destructiveness of the fire to be rapidly pulling away from me everything that I own. This is not to say that the dangerousness, harmfulness, destructiveness, etc. that one feels is merely fiction or somehow not real, but rather, this establishes that their exemplification is mind-dependent.

The feeling is felt to have a spatial direction, such as up, down, towards or away from oneself; the felt direction represents part of the character of the feeling, for example, up is associated with emotionally positive feelings, and down with emotionally negative feelings. These associations are already apparent in ordinary society and culture when we talk about positive and negative feelings metaphorically: “high spirits”, “cheer up”, “low spirits”, “feeling down in the dumps”, when we describe someone as being “close” to us or “distant” from us, etc.

IV. Feelings are the Vehicle for Knowledge

It should be obvious that a feeling is about or directed toward something, in response to something, and in this way, a feeling is a kind of awareness of that thing, what is called a feeling-awareness.[9] An awareness is an awareness of something: to be aware of something is to have one’s attention turned upon it. The thesis of the metaphysics of feeling is that all awarenesses are feeling-awarenesses,[10] for there is no awareness that is not accompanied by any feeling whatsoever: “each and every thing of which we are aware is the source of a feeling,” and every instance of our awareness is a feeling-awareness.[11] Feelings are not inferior to reason and rationality, nor subordinate to them; rather, reason is a type of feeling itself, a concentrative feeling, as I have already indicated in stating that this level of feeling involves logical analysis. We are inherently creatures that have feelings, and our mental activities cannot be separated from our feelings, however slight their phenomenological qualities are. Everything, physical, mental, and otherwise, that holds our attention is felt to elicit some reaction from us, however mild or bland the feeling. One cannot hold something in one’s attention without experiencing that thing as a stimulus provoking a reaction of some sort, a reaction that might be as slight as feeling bored,[12] or as severe as an emotional uprising. This describes precisely what comprises a feeling, and thus, it is in this way that all awareness is feeling-awareness.[13]

The acquisition of knowledge through feeling is called the appreciative method of knowing;[14] this involves the experience of the feeling, an awareness of the thing that one’s feeling is directed toward, and a further recognition and understanding of what feature(s) of that thing stimulated the particular feeling one experiences. The source of the feeling is that feature(s) and not merely the physical realization of the thing; that physical realization is, however, a constituent of the feature(s). Upon perceiving and becoming aware of my bed, for example, I have a feeling about and toward the bed of desiring to crawl beneath its covers, pull them tightly around me, and pass out. The source of this feeling is specifically the feature of the comfortableness of the bed, which is something I perceive in the whole of its physical realization. But this same physical realization of the bed might arouse a very different feeling in me: I might instead feel disgust for the unkemptness or disarray of the bed. The same physical reality of an object may arouse different feelings because the thing possesses different features within the same physical reality; each feature is an aspect of that thing. Thus, the same thing can arouse different feelings because of its different aspects. One aspect of the bed is its comfortableness, while another aspect is its disarray, even though both of these aspects are composed of the same physical realization of the bed. Feelings are not confined to singular objects: one may have a feeling about the whole of one’s surrounding environment, the whole of humanity, the body of human knowledge, etc. Regardless of what it is, or what kind of thing it is, if it can be something of which one is aware, then it can arouse a feeling.

The source of a feeling is specifically referred to as an importance. In the metaphysics of feeling, this word is distinctly not used in the value sense, as an importance to someone; a failure to understand that the words “important” and “importance” as used here are specifically value-neutral words will inevitably lead to a grave misunderstanding of the theory altogether. Here, “importance” means something similar to “noteworthy”[15], in that it is able to catch one’s attention to take note of its existence, which is the most basic feature that anything has, existence. To be an importance, then, is not a relational, extrinsic property, but an intrinsic property. More explicitly, “something is an importance if it is a source of a feeling.”[16] Since all awareness is feeling-awareness, then everything that we are aware of is the source of a feeling, and thus everything that we are aware of is an importance in its own right.[17] This directly follows from the fact that an importance is, in the very least, something that is noteworthy, i.e., something that can catch one’s attention just enough for one to notice its existence. Our awareness involves a range of being intently focused and captivated to being marginally and even hardly aware: at this moment I am focused on the words of this essay as they appear on my computer screen while I am typing them; I am marginally aware of the sounds of the TV in the room above me, the temperature of the room I am in, the color of the walls, etc.

Some importances are composed of other importances, and thus are quantitatively greater in their importance than the parts that compose them. All of humanity is more important than any single human being; an entire garden is more important than a single flower in it; a whole beach is more important than any handful of sand. It follows that there is one greatest importance, that which is composed of all that is, all that exists, the world-whole.

The source of a feeling, as discussed above, is specifically a feature or an aspect of something; since the source of a feeling is referred to as an importance, then the recognition of the specific feature that is the source of a feeling is a recognition of one of the ways in which that thing is important. The ways in which a thing is important are the felt meanings of that thing. Here we find meaningfulness in the metaphysics of feeling: it is the way in which something is important, a feature it has that stimulates a specific feeling. The appreciative method of knowing reveals the features of a thing that allow us all the various ways that we can be aware of it, the ways it is important and meaningful; analysis and understanding of those features and the feelings they invoke provide us with knowledge of the metaphysical nature of the thing.

V. Global Supremacy

One of the felt meanings of the world-whole, i.e., one of the ways in which the world-whole is important, is global supremacy, that it is the greatest whole that exists, and the proper appreciative feeling of this felt meaning of the world-whole is through global reverence.[18] There are four criteria for something’s being worthy of reverence,[19] two of which are relevant for my discussion here. The first criterion is counterfactual possibility: if x is worthy of reverence, then x must be wholly independent of me, i.e., x must be able to exist, according to its actual intrinsic nature, even if no conscious being had ever existed to appreciate its existence and its importance as being worthy of reverence. Furthermore, the world-whole would still possess all of its felt meaningfulness (the ways in which it is important) even if there did not exist a single conscious being to which the world-whole could appear and invoke feelings, i.e., if there were nothing aware of the world-whole and its meanings. “Specifically, the world-whole is felt to be independent of its appearance to me…it is not necessary for the world-whole to appear to me in order for it to happen…”[20] Smith provides arguments against idealistic tendencies to think that the world-whole’s existence is dependent upon its appearance to me,[21] or any person. If the world-whole were dependent upon its appearance to me, if its appearing to me brings it into existence in some way, then the world-whole would not be completely independent of me and thus would not be worthy of reverence. But the world-whole is intuitively felt to be worthy of reverence, it is intuitively felt to be the greatest whole that exists, the most important importance, and that it could have existed even if no humans existed to appreciate it.[22]

Since the world-whole is independent of my existence only if it could have existed according to its intrinsic nature if I, or any other conscious being, had not existed, this intrinsic nature needs to be explicitly noted. The intrinsic nature is comprised of all the globally felt meanings the world-whole has in and of itself. In order for this to retain coherence with what has been said thus far, the theory requires a more careful definition of importance: something is an importance not because it “has the feature of being [the source of a feeling], but that is has such a feature if and when it appears. It need not be [the source of a feeling] in order to be such that it is [the source of a feeling] if and when it appears.”[23] Thus, something is an importance so long as it has the possibility of being the source of a feeling. And Smith expresses the felt reverence with regard to this particular intrinsic nature of the world-whole: “I envisage an intrinsically important whole enduring in absolute silence, appreciated by no one. This whole is important in itself and does not need to be important to anyone.”[24] With respect to the felt meanings described in FMW, the world-whole’s immensity, wholeness, purposelessness, fulfillment, harmoniousness, miraculousness are all meanings the world-whole has in and of itself, without being appreciated by anyone. Thus, the intuitive feeling of the supremacy of the world-whole reveals to us how the world-whole is completely independent of us, and that all of its meaningfulness still exists, intrinsically to its nature, without us. We realize, through this intuitive feeling of reverence, that the world-whole was just as important in all the same ways it is now before the human race ever existed, even at the moment the universe began, if it did in fact begin, and it will continue to be important in these ways when the human race dies out, and when our planet is swallowed by our sun.

The second criterion for supremacy that is relevant to my argument is that, what is worthy of reverence must be the greatest thing of its kind. “The nature of the greatness that is felt to belong to the world-whole is a holistic greatness. The world-whole is the most inclusive whole that happens [exists]; everything other than the world-whole is a part of the world-whole, and the world-whole is not a part of any larger whole.”[25] What makes the world-whole the greatest importance, the most important importance, is that it is quantitatively composed of numerically more importances than anything else, and it is composed of all existing importances other than itself, since it is the whole of all that exists; the world-whole is composed of the greatest quantity of importances. But given the criterion of counterfactual possibility, it must be the case that the actual quantity of importances that composes the world-whole is irrelevant; the relevance only goes so far as to establish that there is no greater quantity in anything else in the possible world being considered. The world-whole is the most important importance so long as, regardless of the quantity of importances that compose it in some possible world, including the actual as one of the possible worlds to be considered, that it is always composed of more importances than anything else in that possible world, and composed of all importances other than itself in that possible world. Similarly, the feature of the world-whole’s being the most important importance is temporally necessary: this feature as it inheres in the world-whole today is no different from the feature as it inhered in the world-whole 13 billion years ago, etc. The feature of being the most important importance inheres in the world-whole in the same way and to the same degree at each temporal instance.

In brief, the two relevant criteria for the world-whole’s supremacy are (i) that its intrinsic nature is modally and temporally necessary, and thus independent of anything else, and (ii) that it is the most important importance, for there is nothing that is composed of more importances than the world-whole, and thus, there is nothing that is more important than the world-whole. Again, this use of the “important” is in the non-value sense as it is defined within the theory.

VI. The Derivative Objective Meaning of Human Life

In the conclusion of his book, Smith introduces the meaningfulness of human life, what he calls the global summons, the intuitive feeling of “the supremely and absolutely important whole’s unconditional demand to be appreciated.”[26] Something “demands” to be appreciated if it is worthy of being appreciated, if it can “attract and hold directed upon itself a feeling-awareness,”[27] and the more feeling-awarenesses that something is able to attract, but not necessarily does attract, the more demanding for appreciation it is. Something demands appreciation if it is noteworthy; its very nature is that it is able to attract and hold the attention, of some sort, and to some degree, of conscious beings. This demand is not to be taken literally to mean the same sort of demand that one person may make upon another; it is rather more correct to say that one metaphorically feels a demand, or being drawn to and pulled towards the thing that is holding one’s attention. One could compare it to an itch that one feels drawn to scratch; or, it would be like noticing a small spot on the wall that one has never seen before, and one feels pulled towards it to see what it is, unable to ignore it. It is in this sense that something demands to be noticed and appreciated.

There is a direct correlation between the degree of importance and the demand and worth of appreciation: the more important something is, the more demanding and worthy of appreciation it is. Since something is more important than another thing only if it is composed of more importances, and importances are just those features of something that can be the source of a feeling, then the greater number of importances something is composed of, the more demanding of appreciation it is. In some cases, the difference may involve physical size and/or expansiveness, in the case, for example, of a city’s being more important than any single citizen of that city. But this is not definitively true, for a person is more important than an empty building, for the building has a limited few features that could invoke feelings, whereas the person has a broad and eclectic range of features that can stimulate various feelings. Since there is only one greatest importance composed of more importances than anything else, it follows that the greatest and most important importance is the most demanding and worthy of being appreciated; and clearly, this is the world-whole.[28] However, this is not the to say that if something demands appreciation, then one ought to appreciate it; there is no feeling of ought, there is only the feeling of being inescapably drawn to appreciate it. But being inescapably drawn to appreciate something does not allow us the inference that one then ought appreciate it, unless we accept (a) a new definition of “ought” and (b) a notion of “ought” that cannot fulfill the moral role that we desire and need it to, for that sense of ought is a prescription for behavior, whereas the demand to be appreciated is a description. Thus, one still cannot derive an objective meaning that humans ought to appreciate the world-whole simply from the fact that is has the nature of being the most demanding and the most worthy of appreciation. Something more is needed to establish the prescriptive ought for the appreciation of the world-whole.

Smith derives the prescriptive ought to appreciate the world-whole from the felt desire of the global summons to “enhance the importance of the whole by endowing it with the important features it can only acquire through being appreciated…as a way of increasing its importance.”[29] In order to avoid contradiction with the notion that the world-whole’s feature of being the most important importance is modally and temporally necessary, and thus cannot change, i.e., cannot be increased, Smith clarifies that, “the acquisition of these features is extrinsical to the world-whole in that these features are accidental; the world-whole could exist without having any of the features that inhere in it through being appreciated.”[30] Since the feature of supremacy, being the greatest and most important importance, is an intrinsic feature of the world-whole, and the enhancing additions to the it by the appreciations humans have of it are extrinsic, then Smith claims they do not conflict with each other.

However, Smith is mistaken: the metaphysics of feeling cannot account for the claim that our appreciations enhance and increase the importance of the world-whole. Furthermore, Smith introduces the notion of purpose into the theory despite that throughout the entire book up to the Conclusion, purpose is nowhere discussed as being a part of the theory; it is never made clear prior to the discussion of the global summons that purpose, and specifically objective purpose, can even be justifiably included within the metaphysics of feeling. I will first address the problems with the claim that our appreciations increase the importance of the world-whole, and following, consider whether it is still possible to derive within the theory the objective purpose of human life as carrying out the global summons.

VII. The Importance of the World-Whole Cannot be Increased

If we can increase and “enhance the importance of the world-whole,”[31] which is the motivation for carrying out the global summons, then the world-whole cannot, without us, be the greatest whole there is. If it is the most important importance, even without us, then, according to the first criterion for the world-whole’s supremacy, the feature of the world-whole’s being the greatest and most important importance in the actual world must be identical to that feature in any possible, counterfactual world, especially those worlds in which no appreciative beings exist. Additionally, regardless of any events and changes that occur in the actual world, the world-whole must always possess the feature of being the most important importance, and we cannot have the ability to increase or decrease the measure or degree of that feature. Essentially, its feature of being the most important importance is modally and temporally necessary.

To be sure that I am not giving Smith a gratuitously unsympathetic reading, one might first consider what specific feature or importance of the world-whole would be increased or enhanced by our appreciations, and to put into question whether it must be something that conflicts with its supremacy, its being the most important importance. If an importance is defined as something that is able to be the source of a feeling, if and when it appears, how can this feature increase? Is it not the case that something simply either can or cannot be the source of a feeling? There is only one sense of “importance” discussed in FMW that is of a kind that can increase: “importance” is similar in meaning to “noteworthy,” and while it is true that something inherently either is or is not noteworthy, or able to catch our attention, of those things that are, we can sensibly inquire into their degree of noteworthiness, i.e., the severity with which they grab attention, how long they keep attention, how many different ways they can captivate us, etc. This translates into the demand for appreciation, which I defined as directly correlated to how important a thing is as determined by the quantity of importances that compose it. This is the only intelligible way that the importance of anything could be increased, by increasing the quantity of importances of its composition; in turn, its overall importance would be increased.[32] But this cannot be true for the world-whole, for it was already discovered in the intuitive feeling of reverence as being modally and temporally necessarily the most important importance regardless of the quantity of importances it is contingently composed of. Therefore, the only sense in which the importance of the world-whole can be increased thoroughly conflicts with its supremacy as being the most important importance.

Smith draws the conclusion that our appreciations can increase the importance of the world-whole because he mistakenly equivocates between two different senses of the notion of ‘important’. It is not entirely incorrect to say that one’s appreciations of the world-whole add to it, for one’s appreciations do exist, and since the world-whole is the whole of all that exists, it follows that the addition of any existents does add something to the world-whole; in the very least, the additions increase the quantity of importances the world-whole is composed of. Since the compositional quantity of importances is directly correlated to how important something is, then it should follow that increases in quantity result in increases of importance. But this is not the case for the world-whole because of the distinction between its intrinsic and extrinsic importances, a distinction that Smith exploits in order to claim that our appreciations do increase the world-whole’s importance, but he misunderstands the nature of that distinction by making the equivocation that he does. The intrinsic importances are those features that the world-whole has in and of itself, by its essential metaphysical nature; the extrinsic importances are those features it has contingently, accidentally, and are inessential to its metaphysical nature. The intrinsic importances are just those ways it is important as a whole, the felt meanings of the world that Smith devotes the second half of FMW to discussing. The extrinsic importances are features such as, “being composed of such-and-such world-part,” or “being composed of x number of importances,” etc. The measure of how important the world-whole is, is an intrinsic feature; it is the most important, the greatest importance of all, and it is necessarily so in all possible worlds and for all time; this aspect of its metaphysical nature is a part of its supremacy, and without this aspect it would not be supreme.

While it is true that how important something is corresponds to how many importances it is composed of, when it comes to that which is most important, the quantity becomes irrelevant; its feature of being the most important is a result of that quantity, but increasing or decreasing the quantity cannot increase or decrease its degree of importance, for again, if it could, the world-whole would not be supreme. The feature of being the most important and its contingent composition of being composed of such-and-such number of importances at time t are not identical. The contingent composition of the world-whole can, and certainly does, change in quantity, while its feature of being the most important importance, how important it is, never changes, i.e., this feature is always inhering in the world-whole. Compare the differences between these two features of the world-whole to the two features of a brick wall, its being composed of red bricks and its being red. Clearly, the wall’s being red is a direct result of its being composed of red bricks; however, add or take away any number of red bricks, so long as one does not remove all of them, and one has not added to nor taken away from the wall’s feature of being red. Should we add bricks to the wall, it is certainly now composed of more bricks, but it would absurd to say that it is more red. One might try to direct attention to the fact that its redness is now being exemplified in a larger physical reality, but this is precisely to direct attention away from the simple feature of the wall’s being red; one would be focusing on how physically large the material object is that its redness is inhering in. The fact is that the wall’s being red has nothing to do with its size, or the number of red bricks that compose it. It certainly does have to do with its being composed of red, and only red, bricks, but this feature is not identical to the quantity of bricks. Should we increase the number of red bricks in the wall, we could truthfully say that it is now composed of more red bricks, but we could not say that it is more red. Similarly to the situation with the world-whole, should it come to be composed of more importances, this does not thereby result in its coming to be more important.

Furthermore, increasing the quantity of importances of which the world-whole is composed would be particularly irrelevant for attempting to define an objective meaningfulness of human life. To add to the quantity of importances that compose the world-whole does not directly add anything to the whole itself; the addition of a single existent to the world-whole is a specifically mundane addition, not a global one. Smith uses mundane to refer to anything having to do with any part of the world-whole, whereas global refers to anything having to do with the wholeness of the world-whole.[33] If a mundane addition to the world-whole could act in some relevant sense to meaningfully increase the importance of the world-whole, then we can ride the slippery slope to conclude that any mundane addition to the world-whole would be a relevant sense of increasing its importance in a meaningful way. It would do no better for me to appreciate the world-whole than to, for example, have as many children as possible—without any requirement for keeping them. The only prevention of such a slippery slope is an adequate distinction between globally appreciating the world-whole as the best sort of addition one can make to the world-whole, and thus the only sort of addition one ought to meaningfully engage in, over any other sort of addition. But then appreciating the world-whole for the fulfillment of the global summons would have nothing to do with increasing or enhancing the importance of the world-whole; appreciating the world-whole would have to be objectively meaningful for some other reason.

VIII. Global Appreciations Cannot Affect the World-Whole

Before considering whether globally appreciating the meanings of the world-whole can be objectively meaningful in some other way, there is another problem with the claim that appreciations enhance the world-whole that is worth discussion. Smith mischaracterizes an appreciation as adding an extrinsic, i.e., relational, property to the world-whole. I want to suggest that there is a significant difference between an extrinsic property such as “being next to such-and-such”, and affairs such as, “appreciating such-and-such”, “thinking about such-and-such”, and “loving so-and-so”.

A property is extrinsic if it does not inhere in the object by itself, but rather that it is given to the object, or the object acquires this property through some interaction or a kind of arrangement with something else. A history book may have the property of being a useful resource of information[34] regarding certain past events in the world, however, it only has this property to those who are literate; thus, this property is not an intrinsic property that the book possesses in and of itself. If the book is composed of paper and glue, this is an intrinsic property regarding its construction, a property that it has in and of itself, without any relationship to anything or anyone else.[35] Even if the book is never looked upon and read by anyone, it is still made of paper and glue; this property inheres in the structure of the book itself, and this makes it intrinsic. Its extrinsic property of being a useful resource arises from a relationship it bears to someone who reads it, but this is not a real property that it acquires that belongs to it, for there is nothing about the book itself that changes, and if there is no change in the book itself, it cannot acquire an intrinsic property.[36] We can contrast this with the event of the book’s having been left out on the porch in the rain, where it gets soaked with rainwater, so that when it dries, the pages and covers of the book become warped. The book acquires the property of being warped, for its warping is not relational to anything; something about the book itself has changed, and thus, in and of itself, it is warped, it has the intrinsic property of being warped.

If I am standing in front of a painting, this is an arrangement between the painting and I and the room we are both in, etc., and in this way results in several relational properties of the objects in the arrangement. But if I am appreciating the painting, this is not merely an arrangement between the painting and I: were there a chair in front of the painting, it could not bear this relation to the painting. Appreciating cannot be an arrangement because it is more than the mere arrangement of two things, an object and my conscious awareness; rather, it is an act of my conscious awareness, an intentional act. To call it a “relation” is a symptom of the sloppiness of our language, for intentional acts bear no resemblance to any relational arrangement in a significant enough way that should allow them to be named similar things.

Appreciating, loving, and thinking are all feeling-awarenesses. But if an awareness is an awareness of something, then certainly, some relation must be present if I am aware of it; however, just because a relation is required in order for an awareness to arise, the intentional act of appreciating is distinct from the relation itself, for a relation “goes both ways,” so to speak, while an intentional act only goes in one direction towards the thing one is projecting one’s feeling onto. To put it metaphorically, it is like stretching your hand out to someone, without him or her taking it; your hand is pointing to that person, but the stretching of your hand is a property inhering in you and you only, it is not something also inhering in the other person. It is in this sense that an intentional act such as an appreciation is a property of me even though it is distinctly directed towards something, for that something does not truly receive my appreciation in the same way that the other person might receive and accept your hand. An appreciation is felt to radiate from me, but it cannot affect anything outside of me; it’s radiating is not like the heat pouring forth from a radiator that warms the room. It is more like the love that one feels for someone who never returns it: you can direct your love towards him or her with as much force as you can stand, and yet, he or she simply remains unaffected, because your feeling is yours alone. A feeling directed toward something is more than just a relation, because I am not just related to the object, but I am relating[37] myself to the object by an act of my intention, and I am forming a feeling about it, I hold it in my attention and have an attitude about it. All of these are actions in my mind, in my consciousness, and in fact, they all involve some real change internal to my consciousness. Because I am relating myself with some object, say, a painting, my appreciation of the painting, which involves a real change in my own conscious awareness, is really a property in me, for the awareness and the appreciation are mine, they do not in any way belong to the painting, nor do they really affect the painting. Furthermore, what arises from my appreciation does not have the same qualities as ordinary, non-intentional relations, and thus is clearly something different from them. For, remove me from view of the painting and I can still appreciate it; the relation does not disappear just because we are no longer arranged in the way that we were, namely, with the painting before me, for it is not the mere arrangement that comprises this appreciation, but my intentional thinking about this painting in a specific way in order to analyze the feelings that I have towards it.

One might still insist that since my appreciations of the world-whole exist, even though they exist as intentional actions in my consciousness, they are parts of the world-whole, and still belong to the world-whole, and thus, are importances of the world-whole, and would fulfill the global summons that global appreciations provide the world-whole with important features it would not otherwise have. However, this is ambiguously true. It is true because, of course, the world-whole is the whole of all that exists, so it is composed of all importances other than itself. But an importance that partially composes the world-whole would not properly be called an importance of the world-whole. The importances of the world-whole are those intrinsic features that it exemplifies as a whole; in other words, they are those globally felt meanings that Smith discusses in Part Two of FMW. But an importance that is only part of the world-whole is not a feature of the whole itself. For example, the saltiness of the ocean is an importance that the ocean has; the feature is exemplified by the ocean as a whole. The importance that is the saltiness is not had by the world-whole, for the world-whole is not what exemplifies it; we would not say that the world-whole has the importance of being salty. Rather, we would correctly say that the world-whole is partially salty. Global appreciations, then, are not importances of the world-whole as a whole, they are not global features at all, but only mundane parts. Therefore, global appreciations cannot fulfill the global summons.

IX. Conclusion: The Meaning of Human Life Without Purpose

Thus far, the inference from the objective meaning of the world to the objective meaning of human life has not found any justification within the metaphysics of feeling as it is presented in FMW. However, the notion of the global summons demonstrates a significant shift in Smith’s Conclusion that takes us back to the equivocation of meaningfulness with purposefulness, despite that the metaphysics of feeling is founded on divorcing these two concepts for the very reason that the assumptions that they are equivalent has been unsuccessful in discovering an objective meaning to human life that can overcome the current state of philosophical nihilism on this issue. The metaphysics of feeling requires that meaning is not identical with purpose because one of the felt meanings of the world-whole is that it is purposeless.[38] However, this is not to say that purpose has no place in the theory, and Smith does give an analysis of the notion of purposes.

A purpose is something to which we experience a magnetic feeling; they are “felt meanings that beckon or draw us towards themselves.”[39] In order to fulfill a purpose, some means are carried out whose reason is the purpose; that is, the “means exists because or for the reason that it is required to attain a certain purpose.”[40] When I feel hunger, I am drawn to satiate it by carrying out the act of eating, and when I see a friend of mine across the room at a party, I feel drawn to him to socially engage him and so I carry out the act of walking across the room to greet him, etc. If the world-whole had a purpose, then there would have to be a reason for its existence, and the world would exist merely as a means to that end. But no such reason can be discovered; instead, one discovers the purposelessness and emptiness of the world-whole in the feeling of global despair. One also discovers purposelessness through logical analysis; for, if something exists for a purpose, then it exists as a means towards carrying out that purpose, and so the purpose must exist prior to the means that are meant to achieve that purpose. But then there can be no purpose to existence itself, since nothing can exist prior to it. Because the world-whole is defined as the whole of all that exists other than itself, then existence is the basic and defining characteristic of the world-whole, which can thus also be referred to by the more evocative expression, “existence itself,” for which there can be no purpose.

With regard to the global summons as Smith describes it, one feels drawn to appreciate the world-whole for the purpose of enhancing it; the global appreciations are the means towards that purpose, and the fulfillment of that purpose is the reason for my globally appreciating the world-whole. This is not an inherent purpose already present in human life, it is not some purpose for which humans exist; rather, it is “a purpose they are able to adopt once they do exist.”[41] In the global summons, one feels the magnetic pull of the demand by the world-whole to be appreciated, and one feels that it is the most demanding and is the most worthy of appreciation. But this purpose of enhancing the world-whole for which one appreciates it, as the reason for appreciating it, cannot be fulfilled, since, as I have shown, the importance of the world-whole cannot be affected in any globally, meaningful way by our appreciations of it. Thus, despite such a feeling of magnetism towards the world-whole’s demand to be appreciated, it can attain no global, and thus, no objective purpose.

Yet, if the metaphysics of feeling is founded on the separation of meaning and purpose, then even if there is no objective reason and purpose to human life, that is, that human life can achieve no objective, global end, it may still be objectively meaningful. The ways in which life may be meaningful must be discovered in a similar fashion to the discovery of the meanings of the world-whole, that is, through feelings of appreciation. It thus turns out that the inference from the objective meaning of the world to the objective meaning of human life simply does not apply to the metaphysics of feeling at all, and the question of its validity becomes unimportant altogether. The notion of meaning according to the theory is defined by the way in which something can be the source of a feeling, that is, the way in which it is important. The meaningfulness of something is, therefore, not parasitic in any way on the meaningfulness of the world-whole, but is meaningful in and of itself, by its own intrinsic features. The inference is completely unnecessary in the metaphysics of feeling. In fact, one could even discovered the felt meanings of the human life without first discovering the felt meanings of the world-whole.

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[1] I am indebted to Quentin Smith for his persistent correspondences and numerous comments on this essay through the lengthy process of its development.

[2] Clearly, I do not mean linguistic meaning, but that notion of meaningfulness that is intuitively understood by such phrases as, “the meaning of life;” furthermore, throughout this paper, the uses of the word ‘meaning’ and any of its derivatives that do refer to linguistic meaning should be obvious.

[3] Smith, Quentin. (1986). Felt Meanings of the World. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. All of the page numbers in these notes refer to this text.

[4] While this essay only discusses the theory presented in FMW, it is worthy to note that there are alternative contemporary pantheistic theories available for consideration, such as John Post’s The Faces of Existence (Cornell University Press, 1987) and Michael Levine’s Pantheism (Routledge, 1994).

[5] This is meant as a broad generalization of philosophy, but certainly allows that there are some exceptions, albeit rare ones. The claim focuses on Western academic/scholarly philosophy.

[6] Pp. 25-26.

[7] Pp. 26.

[8] Smith has shared these claims on several occasions in my personal correspondences with him.

[9] Pp. 64-65. “Every sensuous feeling is accompanied by a feeling-awareness, and the feeling-awareness is an awareness of an importance that is the source of the sensuous feeling.”

[10] For Smith’s argument for this claim, see pp. 78-93.

[11] Pp. 65.

[12] Smith talks about things that we normally say are unimportant, and he argues that they are not completely unimportant, but only relatively unimportant to what one cares about. They were not so unimportant that one did not even notice them; they were at least important enough to catch my attention, however slight my attention was caught.

[13] Smith gives an analysis and explanation of how philosophy, from the beginning, has mistaken the concentrative level of feelings, that of reason and logic, as the superior way of knowing about the world, pp. 93-108. Essentially, this degeneration of feelings to reason, as Smith specifically describes it, is a result of the concentrative level of feelings becoming over-confident of itself, and trying to dislodge itself from all other feelings, declaring itself to be the superior way of obtaining knowledge, and all other feelings, which it consistently refers to as (pathological) “passions”, as not only an inferior way of obtaining knowledge, but as frequently a barricade to obtaining knowledge. Because of this attitude towards feelings that philosophers have sustained and conditioned other philosophers to simply accept without hesitation, Smith not only gives such a lengthy analysis of this degeneration as a degeneration, but overall gives a careful analysis of his theory throughout because of the general, immediate repulsion most philosophers will have towards it. I only say this because I cannot express in this paper the details of his argument, for my purpose is not to defend his view, and that I am only taking much of his view as an assumption. Thus, the reader should hold back any objections to these sorts of claims that Smith has, for this particular essay here is not the place to bring them up. Should one have objections to such claims, I refer the reader to Smith’s original work.

[14] Pp. 24-29.

[15] Pp. 65.

[16] Pp. 75. Technically speaking, this is only one half of the definition of “importance”. The other half is: “…and if there are possible evocative and exact descriptions of it.” However, this part of the definition does not pose any problem for the issue at hand, and thus I will not make any further reference to it.

[17] Cf. note 12.

[18] I could not nearly attempt to fully explain this aspect of Smith’s theory here. He presents an entire chapter on global supremacy, Chapter VI, pages 246-309; even so, this felt meaning is actually dependent upon the felt meaning he presents in Chapter V, that of global love, or apparential closeness, pages 194-245. While there is a lot that can be questioned in this approx. 100 pages of his book, for the purpose of this essay, I am taking his theory as a hypothetical plausibility, as it stands; it is not my place here to question anything beyond what I am proposing is a problem for his theory. This does not mean that I do not believe there to be any other problems, it only means that I have narrowed my scope in this particular essay.

[19] Pp. 248-49. All four criteria are as follows: (1) The thing is independent of me; (2) I am subordinate to it, and it is superordinate to me; (3) it is the greatest thing of its kind; (4) it must have a positive and fulfilled character. (1) simply claims that the thing can exist even if I do not exist. (2) claims that I cannot exist without it existing, that it does, in a sense, sustain my existence, I am dependent upon it. (3) claims it must be the most important importance of its kind. Thus, if I find some king worthy of reverence, part of the reason that I find this king worthy of reverence over and above other kings is that this particular king is the greatest king there is. (4) simply establishes that we don’t have malicious beings worthy of reverence, for clearly they are not worthy of reverence. A king may be the greatest king ever, and possess the other qualities, but if he is a malicious tyrant, then he is not worthy of reverence in the least.

[20] Pp. 248.

[21] Pp. 273-81.

[22] That the world-whole is worthy of reverence may certainly be questioned and challenged, but it is not my place here to give a defense of this claim; rather, I am taking this claim as an established part of Smith’s theory that I am particularly neither challenging nor defending. Should one desire to challenge the claim to the world-whole’s supremacy, that is a matter beyond the scope of this paper, and ought to be directed to Chapter VI of Felt Meanings of the World, where Smith presents and defends this claim in great detail.

[23] Pp. 294.

[24] Pp. 294.

[25] Pp. 249.

[26] Pp. 320.

[27] Pp. 320.

[28] Pp. 320.

[29] Pp. 319, emphasis mine.

[30] Pp. 323.

[31] Pp. 322.

[32] One must be careful not to confuse a feature of a thing as being an importance with the property of that that particular feature. For example, the temperature of a room is one feature of the room, and thus an importance in its own right, for it is certainly able to catch the attention of a conscious being. Obviously, the temperature of the room can be increased, but this does not translate into an increase in importance, only an increase in something that happens to be an importance. It is possible to increase the importance of the room by increasing the temperature, by only as a result of adding a feature that it did not previously have, such as being unbearable, in which case, there is one more way for the room to grab attention and be the source of a feeling, such as the feeling of annoyance in response to its being unbearable. Thus, it is obvious that all kinds of features of things can be increased, but this does not thereby automatically increase the importance of something; the only way the importance of something can be increased is through the addition of importances, or features, that it did not previously have.

[33] Pp. 329 note 86.

[34] Just to be clear, the property I am referring to is not that the books contains information, for depending on how one defines “information”, this can be explicated as an intrinsic property; but rather, that the book is a useful source of information. In order for something to be useful, it must be useful to someone/something.

[35] One should not get hung up on such quibbles as pointing out that paper and glue are artificial, human constructions, especially in concept, and furthermore, that properties in general are ways in which we splice up and categorize the world. While this is an interesting and worthy discussion in its own right, it is outside the scope of this particular essay. Perhaps the reader may at least allow that there is something about the physical structure of that object that corresponds to what we point to when we pick out what is referred to by “paper” and “glue.” After all, we are certainly not imagining there to be physical differences.

[36] This mimics the distinction between change and mere Cambridge change as the defining characteristics for real and non-real properties respectively. If the acquisition or loss of a property in an object involves an actual change in the object itself, the property is intrinsic. If the acquisition or loss of the property is a result of some change in some other object, the property is extrinsic, and thus, relational. However, one can understand this distinction more exactly in modal terms:

For some object x: if the loss of some property P would involve a change in x, P is an intrinsic property; if the loss of P would involve either a change in some other object y or the removal of x from some relational arrangement with y (and any other objects involved in the arrangement), and x remains internally unchanged, P is extrinsic.

It might prove helpful to imagine plucking the object in question out of the actual world and placing it in some possible world in which the entirety of that possible world is simply the object itself, and then ask whether the property in question would continue to inhere in the object. If yes, the property is intrinsic; if no, the property is extrinsic, i.e., relational.

[37] One might point out that my awareness of something is not an intentional act, as in being chosen, and that when presented with something, I cannot help but be aware of it. As such, one could say that there is a causal relationship between the object and my awareness of it. This is a worthy topic of discussion, especially since Smith rejects the general notion of causality in Ch. 2 sec. 14 of FMW, as well as the fact that, in this theory, things can “demand” our attention. However, appreciating something involves more than merely being aware of it, and specifically it involves making a conscious effort to understand what one is aware of by analyzing the feelings one experiences towards it and discovering its felt meanings. But even if there were a causal relationship between the thing and my appreciation of it, this would still not solve the problem, for the effect of my appreciation is cause by the thing I am appreciating, which still leaves it unaffected by my appreciation. Causality does not inherently involve some kind of “two-way” relationship. But discussions of the nature of causation are beyond the scope of this paper.

[38] Pp. 184-188.

[39] Pp. 98.

[40] Pp. 100.

[41] Pp. 323.