Last week I received a text from a company called Texperts offering me a free text message as a trial of their service. They apparently have a panel of experts that quickly answer any question that you text them for the sum of £1.
Seeing as I am studying a Philosophy module this year I used my free SMS to ask the eternal question "What is the meaning of life?", hoping to get some sort of humorous reply from a bamboozled "expert". About two minutes later I received the following answer:
The first part is very bleak indeed and anybody religious would be exceptionally liable to disagree. It plainly contradicts the Aristotlean idea of every life having a telos (Greek: specific end, goal or purpose) and the theistic idea of us existing due to God's grand scheme, the divine purpose.
I find the second part equally disagreeable. Can someone's life be worth more because they consider it to be? Is the life of a depression sufferer worth less than that of a happy newly-wed just because they value their life less? I find this hard to agree with; in my opinion every life has an equal and unwavering value, regardless of their state of mind.
The final part has its feet firmly embedded in the relativism that seems to be prevalent in a lot of moral thinking today. It also elevates man above God and says that our will is central to defining our own meaning. I don't like the sound of this: what happens if I believe my life's meaning is that I was put on this Earth to be an axe murderer?
Whoever wrote the text message has given an answer that ignores that we may have a specific telos or reason to exist. By suggesting that our life gains meaning depending on what we believe seems to be reminiscent of Anselm's ontological argument. Just because I believe that my life meaning is to eat muffins does not necessarily correlate with the truth. It's like saying that because I can imagine a pineapple with legs that can run as fast as an ostrich, that it must exist in reality.
I'm tempted to write Texperts an email and get them to update their answer to something a bit less bleak! What if someone in a fragile state of mind asks the same question and gets this reply? I hope that there's nobody out there vulnerable enough to take an answer to the meaning of life via text message as gospel.
Seeing as I am studying a Philosophy module this year I used my free SMS to ask the eternal question "What is the meaning of life?", hoping to get some sort of humorous reply from a bamboozled "expert". About two minutes later I received the following answer:
"No inherent meaning to life other than to create meaning. The more one values life the more valuable it is. Each individual defines their own meaning."Of course the first thing that came to mind was the sweet irony of receiving the answer to the eternal question of existence via a mobile telephone. Oh how technology enhances and enriches our modern lives! I wondered if it was a quote from some revered 20th Century thinker. It seemed a fair statement, albeit staunchly from the perspective of a modern atheist. But as I looked at it more and more, I started to doubt its credibility. It seems more probable that it is just some pseudo-profound waffle from the office's self-appointed "thinker".
The first part is very bleak indeed and anybody religious would be exceptionally liable to disagree. It plainly contradicts the Aristotlean idea of every life having a telos (Greek: specific end, goal or purpose) and the theistic idea of us existing due to God's grand scheme, the divine purpose.
I find the second part equally disagreeable. Can someone's life be worth more because they consider it to be? Is the life of a depression sufferer worth less than that of a happy newly-wed just because they value their life less? I find this hard to agree with; in my opinion every life has an equal and unwavering value, regardless of their state of mind.
The final part has its feet firmly embedded in the relativism that seems to be prevalent in a lot of moral thinking today. It also elevates man above God and says that our will is central to defining our own meaning. I don't like the sound of this: what happens if I believe my life's meaning is that I was put on this Earth to be an axe murderer?
Whoever wrote the text message has given an answer that ignores that we may have a specific telos or reason to exist. By suggesting that our life gains meaning depending on what we believe seems to be reminiscent of Anselm's ontological argument. Just because I believe that my life meaning is to eat muffins does not necessarily correlate with the truth. It's like saying that because I can imagine a pineapple with legs that can run as fast as an ostrich, that it must exist in reality.
I'm tempted to write Texperts an email and get them to update their answer to something a bit less bleak! What if someone in a fragile state of mind asks the same question and gets this reply? I hope that there's nobody out there vulnerable enough to take an answer to the meaning of life via text message as gospel.
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1 comment:
Hi there! I'm Darren Brierton and I work for Texperts. "What is the meaning of life?" is a very commonly asked question, to such an extent that we have a number of standard answers that we use for it. An important business rule that we have is that every answer must be sourced from something authoritative and respected. The particular answer you received was based in part on an essay on The Sceptical Christian website, and is broadly similar to Sartre's Existentialism. Although you have interpreted the answer as being overly bleak, proponents of that answer have argued that it isn't at all.
Although we believe that we offer a great service, we also don't pretend to be able to solve profound philosophical problems in a 160 character text message! What we do hope is that we can offer something thought-provoking for questions such as these.
Thanks for using the service.
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