Felicia asked:

When we ask whether life has meaning, what precisely are we asking?

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You know, this is really an interesting question, but not because we don't know the answer. We don't
know "the" answer because there are too manyanswers. You can take "meaning" to mean all sorts of
things, from "long-term goals" to "purpose" to "relationship to the rest of the universe" to "the ability to
control one's circumstances"... and on and on. So one can get bogged down going from one to
another of these possible answers, around and around... because one never clarifies what one is
actually asking. If you're religious, then the answer has something to do with religion. Or maybe not. If
not, then maybe it has something to do with ethics. Or maybe not. And so forth.

At any rate, you see where I'm going here. It's not for meor anyone else to put that question for you
until you're quite clear on what it is you're asking. And to do that, you have to have a certain amount
of insight into yourself, your situation, etc. Then you can ask something like, "what are the possible
bases for ethical systems?" or "are the sociological reasons for religions related to their
metaphysics?" or "is there a modern argument for something like an Aristotelian teleology?". But to
narrow down to that extent, where you can actually begin to get a glimpse of possible reasonable
questions to ask (and indeed, these are still really too broad), you need to focus on yourinterests and
concerns.

So I would put it back to you: what precisely are youasking?

Steven Ravett Brown

In my view, you can't have meaning without a meaning maker. Hence, we need to specify meaning
for whom. This implies that, unless there is some meaning maker (like a god) that can find meaning
over the whole of life, then we are asking more about how people find meaning in their lives than
about some sort of overarching, eternal meaning of life.

Tim Sprod