Kevin asked:

A friend of mine holds two beliefs that I feel are contradictory. First, that life is objectively
meaningless. We set goals, attain them and set other goals with no ultimate end. Second, that some
careers have (subjectively) more value than others. This, she claims, is measured by the effect the
chosen career has on the world e.g. a doctor is more valuable than a cashier because the doctor
affects more lives.

It seems that belief 2 cancels belief 1. If life is objectively meaningless, then a career's affect on
others has no bearing on value unless the lives they affect can be shown to have objective meaning.
If not, what's the difference?

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I think your friend can sustain her argument. By objective values, my guess is that you mean values
that would exist even in the absence of humans. My view is that such an idea is meaningless (unless
there are other being(s) to value these things — and then it is hard to see why they should apply to us
— unless those/that being made us... but this is getting off the track). To have value, we must have
valuers.

Values can, in my view, be created by a community of valuers. Within that community, we can talk
about values (such as human well-being) which, while not being objective in the sense above, do
transcend individuals. They are created within what Wittgenstein referred to as a way-of-life.

Tim Sprod

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