What is the Meaning of “What is the meaning of Life?”?
If the question “What is the purpose [or meaning] of life?” is fundamental and important, then surely it raises two questions:
1) Why assume that there’s a purpose to (or meaning of) life at all?
2) Why should there only be a single purpose to (or one meaning of) life?
Often, when people ask this question, it’s because they believe that they already know the answer. Such people are really asking the following question:
Do you want to know what the purpose [meaning] of life is?
And the answer will often be a religious one. However, sometimes it may be “spiritual” or have something to do with what the questioner himself thinks the purpose (or meaning) of life is.
People may have their own views as to what the purpose (or meaning) of their own lives may be for themselves. However, what they believe doesn’t depend on their also believing that there’s a single purpose to/of life which they must somehow discover. (Or that they need to be told what it is by someone else.)
That still wouldn’t be the purpose/meaning of life.
It would be a purpose/meaning of life for a single individual.
What one person sees as his or her purpose/meaning to/in life isn’t the purpose/meaning of life. It’s the main purpose/meaning of his or her life.
Nothing more.
Basically, when most people ask “What is the purpose [meaning] of life?”, they believe that this purpose (meaning) exists separately from human minds. Of course, such a belief can become more metaphysical or complex than the way I’ve expressed it.
For example, the following can be said:
There must be a primary (physical or otherwise) thing from which everything else owes its existence.
However, where does purpose or meaning fit into that belief?
We could all owe our physical existence to the First Cause or to the Big Bang. However, there’s no built-in purpose or meaning here unless it’s argued for, rather than simply assumed. Most biological things owe their existence to air and water — are they “primary things”? Is the purpose (or meaning) of life air and water?