Discussion Group Report

Arthur Falk begins his article with his definition of the "meaning of life". To quote Mr. Falk, the meaning of life is: meaningfulness expressible in the first person, one's sense of one's situatedness, from which one's projects (i.e., large life-purposes) and one's values spring. He then states that Darwinism is seriously misunderstood by the general public and is in fact noncommittal on the question of the meaning of life. The plausible reason he gives for this is that the meaning of life involves the first person point of view, and no scientific theory says anything about this orientation of life.

Falk states that Darwinism does not tell us that there is just one meaning of life, the same for all living things. There are some people who think the meaning of life is the competition that leads a few to great success, many to lesser success, and many more to utter failure. This view, he maintains, says that the meaning of life is natural selection itself. "Do unto others before they do it unto you." This is used as an excuse for some people for oppression of others based on "social Darwinism." This is not what Darwin perceived as natural selection. A science based Darwinism does not espouse the predatory route to fitness and reproductive success as the meaning of life, first of all because that claim ignores the various ways evolution has in fact occurred, some of which are quite pacific. Predation is only one of several mechanisms by which evolution by natural selection occurs. There are cases of evolution by mutual aid or symbiotic evolution.

Nor does biology endorse the old view that pleasure is the meaning of all sentient life. A sybaritic life of false pleasure is a meaningless life. Darwinism does not reduce all life to a single meaning, in that it is a theory of the evolution of each and every species, each one of which has its own way of living. There is a danger of reading the very un-Darwinian idea of essentialism into the question of the meaning of life, leading to the idea that one size fits all.

Mr. Falk then proceeds with positive claims about Darwinism and the meaning of human lives. He proposes that we own our humanity, and each of us own our variant form of it. There are three ubiquitous features of human life, which he calls the three C's: Copulation, Culture, and Consciousness, particularly the consciousness of time passing.

Copulation: He states that monogamous sex or the centrality of matings within families is a strong central tendency within family groups. Family life is central for the meaningfulness of the lives lived in families and good social policy would protect and further the family, Families are self protecting and good for survival therefore natural selection should favor strong family groups.

In discussing variant sexual behavior he feels we should tolerate it, but Darwinism doesn't provide any excuse for the way they are. In the case of gays behavior it certainly isn't sexual selection because they won't procreate. "Using biology to make excuses is a misuse of biology, even if genetic determinism was strictly true, and it is not."

Culture is another biological fact about human beings. Again it is clear that one's culture helps settle the meaning of one's life. It does this by defining modes of excellence and providing projects. Youth are naturally idealistic and will emulate those who manifest meaningfulness and nobility of spirit in their own lives. Darwinism tells us that human beings are culture-driven animals, and so we should look to a culture for the specifics. These human values are the creations of a population that recognizes and rewards with status those who pursue their realization. Differing cultures are cornucopias of differing varieties of human excellence.

Finally there is consciousness, another result, along with culture, of the brain. Because of consciousness we reflect on the spread of our existence from the past into the future. "I want to say consciousness of time's ephemerality enhances positively the meaningfulness of life." Mr. Falk then scrutinizes the religious or theistic view. The religious story about life portrays our temporality as a negative thing. "Notice how it fights the temporality of existence." The concept of immortality erases the consequences of being temporal beings and it gives us the false idea that only achievements that are eternal are lasting ones. Does it erase the value of achieving an Olympic record, just because some one will beat it next year? "How does it subtract from the value of a sublime piece of music that it has an ending?" Contrarily, Mr. Falk states, "One's situatedness in time is exactly what makes values relevant."

Darwinism puts a positive spin on our temporality. We human beings with our culture and consciousness recognize a condition we might call the acme of our lives and the golden age of our culture. As long as there is time, there is hope of achieving it. Even when we are past our prime, there are still ideals to strive for. "So I follow Spinoza who said that a virtuous person thinks of death least of all." "Meaningfulness stems from one's temporal situatedness, as noted earlier". "So as I live my life, I should focus on the considerations that give it meaning then and there."

Mr. Falk then speaks about the tension in the meaning-of-life-as-you-live-it. The "buzz" of life can't go own forever. However, there is an abiding element of this type of life because, although nothing lasts, much persists. This leads to the meaning of life through commitments. People who "live for the day" can still have commitments. Commitments are the true glue of family and society, within which most people, religious or not, find meaningfulness. One does not need to be religious to have commitments.

Finally Mr. Falk concludes with comparing modest Darwinism with grandiose Darwinism. Modest Darwinism allows "God" to play a role in evolution, and is open to religion, while grandiose Darwinism is not; Theism versus atheism. Mr. Falk believes that the issue between the theist and the atheist is no longer over what it is to be rational. It is rather over what it is to be human: Does being human fit together with being god-dependent? Does the latter complete the former somehow? Mr. Falk rejects this view. In other words, one need not be religious to obtain the meaningfulness of life described in this article. Finally to quote Mr. Falk, "My sense of what it is to be human makes the existence of a god unimportant for the meaning of my life; so I no longer give a twig whether a god exists or not."