Good critique of my hypothesis in that piece. But that hypothesis was more about meaning of life discourse than the felt experience of meaningfulness. I actually have a different hypothesis for the felt experience of meaningfulness I propose in my post “Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited.” I’m curious what you think of it. Here is the relevant bit: “We want valuable long-term goals. From an evolutionary perspective, such goals would include rearing offspring to maturity, becoming a valued member of our community, ascending a social hierarchy, or outcompeting rival groups for power and resources. These goals give us a sense of “meaning,” which explains why people find meaning in family, altruism, careerism, and (depressingly) hatred of outgroups. The function of “meaning,” I surmise, is to enable short-term fitness costs in pursuit of long-term fitness gains. The more “meaningful” a goal seems, the bigger the short-term sacrifices we should be willing to make to achieve it.
What this suggests is that having valuable long-term goals is good for you, evolutionarily. If you have no children to care for, no viable path to high status, no way to make yourself valuable to your community, or no tribe to rally, then you’re in a bad spot, evolutionarily. You’re adrift, aimless. Maybe this corresponds to feelings of “depression” or “ennui.” I’m not sure.
But the point is: we’d like to avoid this state. And we’d like to be in the opposite state: the state of pursuing valuable long-term goals (and, ideally, making good progress on them). Confusingly, a lot of people call this long-term-goal-pursuing state “happiness.” But more often, people call it “meaning” or “purpose.” Whatever you decide to call it, I’m okay saying we want it.
But wait. That doesn’t mean we want the mere feeling of it. We don’t want to be tricked into thinking we’re raising healthy children or becoming valuable members of our communities. It would be very bad if somebody lied to us about the health of our children or flattered our egos while secretly despising us. Even if we’d be happier living a lie, we’d prefer to be in touch with reality.
So again, we’re not seeking vibes in our heads. We’re seeking real things in the world. When given the choice between real meaning and fake meaning, we’re going to choose real meaning, even if the fake meaning feels nicer.
"So again, we’re not seeking vibes in our heads. We’re seeking real things in the world. When given the choice between real meaning and fake meaning, we’re going to choose real meaning, even if the fake meaning feels nicer."
I agree generally, with some exceptions. Sometimes it may be optimal to cling to a current "meaning" even in the face of being shown irrefutable evidence that the meaning is fake because a) some goal/framework is often better than none at all, and b) it can be beneficial to share your group's meaning frameworks even if they are totally unrealistic.
But maybe we're getting at different things here. Either way, I think you're right that we generally seek real things in the world, but I also think there is such a thing as useful fictions, and sometimes meaning is conferred by our belief and valuation of useful fictions.
Maybe it's just that real meaning is better than fake meaning, but fake meaning is sometimes better than no meaning at all. And shared fake meaning might sometimes be better than individually held real meaning. Or something like that.
"But the point is: we’d like to avoid this state. And we’d like to be in the opposite state: the state of pursuing valuable long-term goals (and, ideally, making good progress on them). Confusingly, a lot of people call this long-term-goal-pursuing state “happiness.” But more often, people call it “meaning” or “purpose.” Whatever you decide to call it, I’m okay saying we want it."
This proposal sounds very plausible to me, and what you're saying is in line with some current literature on "purpose", though they aren't looking at it from an evolutionary perspective. In terms of what I said in this post, what you seem to be describing is a conflict between short-term impulses and long-term goals, with "meaning" as the feeling we have when that conflict is resolved. My only caveat is that what you are describing is a hypothesis about one facet of meaning in life--purpose--and the other two facets (comprehension & significance) would require other explanations. Comprehension is especially well-established as being important for meaning in life, and this has less to do with goals and more to do with a sense that our beliefs about the world make sense, provide some sense of unity to the world, and aren't too self-contradictory.
--
Also, I wish I'd have known you talked about meaningfulness in another post. I missed that one. Apologies if I misrepresented anything!
I resonate with your thesis: “the subjective sense of meaning in life is the output of an internal regulatory variable tracking the degree of psychological integration, or lack of conflict, between psychological adaptations in addition to the values, beliefs, goals, and perceptions that facilitate the pursuit of adaptive outcomes.”
It seems consistent with Dan Siegel’s definition of mind[ing]: “The process of regulating energy and information, that is emergent, self-organizing, embodied, and interpersonal.” Ultimately, he defines health as the integration of internal states and behavior choices, consistent with environmental conditions. A state which feels like peace of mind.
One can only hope that such a state will help us evolve through our current existential bottleneck.
Wow. Fascinating as usual. (1) The Meaning in life is not an unadulterated good - there’s something significant to grapple with. (2) Delusions and ideologies are meaningful - there’s an explanation for the madness which has poisoned Western civilization lately and how tough it will be, and how long a project, to correct it. (3) Meanings are like moods - that sounds reductive at first, but is clearly backed up by the demonstrated relationships between “meaning” and the negative emotions such as anxiety, so it’s another important observation. Or meaningful fact, I should say!
What surprised me most, going back to earlier in the article, is that the input-computation-output model seems to be still alive and well. I thought it had been fairly discredited years ago. Jordan Peterson was explaining to his students in his Maps of Meaning lectures back in 2015 that values, and therefore meaning and significance, simply cannot be separated out from the mechanisms of perception itself; we don’t see things and then figure out what they are and then work out what to do with them (or our ancestors would be dead from taking too long to figure out the potential danger from a snake or other predator). He used the example of seeing a cup, which immediately activates the motor cortex as well as the visual cortex because it is “something to grasp” - so its meaning, in this case its functional utility, are part of the perception itself - so we see tools, friends, danger, food, we don’t see “things” and then “figure them out”; we see meanings first. Another example could be, we see a round “thing” and then work out what it is - but is it a boulder, is it talking to you, is it made of blinding light, does it have a smoking fuse coming out of the top? No, we see significance or anomaly immediately.
Perhaps I don’t fully appreciate exactly what the academics writing about this always mean by the concept of meaning. I realise that was an entertaining sentence. But how could anyone possibly even bother to write a paper which either denied or refuted “meaning” if it didn’t mean anything to them whether they wrote it or not?
I enjoyed your article Brett, and look forward to your book. The topics of semiotics and evolutionary psychology are landing in my own work through Jack Panksepp and Robert E Innis. Dr Innis has a new book coming out in March that looks to me like some evolutionary explanations of existential orientation will be clarified. Bravo to you.
Journey for Seekers: Ch.10 of my book, Genius, I shatter the biohacking mold of the first 9 chapters—diving deep into psychology, philosophy, & first principles of health via my groundbreaking Quantum Objectivism physics model (world debut!). Here, mind reigns over matter in causal chains, not just emergent from quantum fields or complexity. Raw Gurdjieff (secret source of enneagram) vibes meet cosmic truth. #enneagram #genius #GeniusBook #QuantumObjectivism Read, reflect, comments, follow, “restacks: (not sure what that even means). I follow back. https://open.substack.com/pub/ronaldingram/p/chapter-10-gurdjieffian-journey-from?r=2xhreu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Good critique of my hypothesis in that piece. But that hypothesis was more about meaning of life discourse than the felt experience of meaningfulness. I actually have a different hypothesis for the felt experience of meaningfulness I propose in my post “Happiness Is Bullshit Revisited.” I’m curious what you think of it. Here is the relevant bit: “We want valuable long-term goals. From an evolutionary perspective, such goals would include rearing offspring to maturity, becoming a valued member of our community, ascending a social hierarchy, or outcompeting rival groups for power and resources. These goals give us a sense of “meaning,” which explains why people find meaning in family, altruism, careerism, and (depressingly) hatred of outgroups. The function of “meaning,” I surmise, is to enable short-term fitness costs in pursuit of long-term fitness gains. The more “meaningful” a goal seems, the bigger the short-term sacrifices we should be willing to make to achieve it.
What this suggests is that having valuable long-term goals is good for you, evolutionarily. If you have no children to care for, no viable path to high status, no way to make yourself valuable to your community, or no tribe to rally, then you’re in a bad spot, evolutionarily. You’re adrift, aimless. Maybe this corresponds to feelings of “depression” or “ennui.” I’m not sure.
But the point is: we’d like to avoid this state. And we’d like to be in the opposite state: the state of pursuing valuable long-term goals (and, ideally, making good progress on them). Confusingly, a lot of people call this long-term-goal-pursuing state “happiness.” But more often, people call it “meaning” or “purpose.” Whatever you decide to call it, I’m okay saying we want it.
But wait. That doesn’t mean we want the mere feeling of it. We don’t want to be tricked into thinking we’re raising healthy children or becoming valuable members of our communities. It would be very bad if somebody lied to us about the health of our children or flattered our egos while secretly despising us. Even if we’d be happier living a lie, we’d prefer to be in touch with reality.
So again, we’re not seeking vibes in our heads. We’re seeking real things in the world. When given the choice between real meaning and fake meaning, we’re going to choose real meaning, even if the fake meaning feels nicer.
"So again, we’re not seeking vibes in our heads. We’re seeking real things in the world. When given the choice between real meaning and fake meaning, we’re going to choose real meaning, even if the fake meaning feels nicer."
I agree generally, with some exceptions. Sometimes it may be optimal to cling to a current "meaning" even in the face of being shown irrefutable evidence that the meaning is fake because a) some goal/framework is often better than none at all, and b) it can be beneficial to share your group's meaning frameworks even if they are totally unrealistic.
But maybe we're getting at different things here. Either way, I think you're right that we generally seek real things in the world, but I also think there is such a thing as useful fictions, and sometimes meaning is conferred by our belief and valuation of useful fictions.
Maybe it's just that real meaning is better than fake meaning, but fake meaning is sometimes better than no meaning at all. And shared fake meaning might sometimes be better than individually held real meaning. Or something like that.
"But the point is: we’d like to avoid this state. And we’d like to be in the opposite state: the state of pursuing valuable long-term goals (and, ideally, making good progress on them). Confusingly, a lot of people call this long-term-goal-pursuing state “happiness.” But more often, people call it “meaning” or “purpose.” Whatever you decide to call it, I’m okay saying we want it."
This proposal sounds very plausible to me, and what you're saying is in line with some current literature on "purpose", though they aren't looking at it from an evolutionary perspective. In terms of what I said in this post, what you seem to be describing is a conflict between short-term impulses and long-term goals, with "meaning" as the feeling we have when that conflict is resolved. My only caveat is that what you are describing is a hypothesis about one facet of meaning in life--purpose--and the other two facets (comprehension & significance) would require other explanations. Comprehension is especially well-established as being important for meaning in life, and this has less to do with goals and more to do with a sense that our beliefs about the world make sense, provide some sense of unity to the world, and aren't too self-contradictory.
--
Also, I wish I'd have known you talked about meaningfulness in another post. I missed that one. Apologies if I misrepresented anything!
I resonate with your thesis: “the subjective sense of meaning in life is the output of an internal regulatory variable tracking the degree of psychological integration, or lack of conflict, between psychological adaptations in addition to the values, beliefs, goals, and perceptions that facilitate the pursuit of adaptive outcomes.”
It seems consistent with Dan Siegel’s definition of mind[ing]: “The process of regulating energy and information, that is emergent, self-organizing, embodied, and interpersonal.” Ultimately, he defines health as the integration of internal states and behavior choices, consistent with environmental conditions. A state which feels like peace of mind.
One can only hope that such a state will help us evolve through our current existential bottleneck.
Wow. Fascinating as usual. (1) The Meaning in life is not an unadulterated good - there’s something significant to grapple with. (2) Delusions and ideologies are meaningful - there’s an explanation for the madness which has poisoned Western civilization lately and how tough it will be, and how long a project, to correct it. (3) Meanings are like moods - that sounds reductive at first, but is clearly backed up by the demonstrated relationships between “meaning” and the negative emotions such as anxiety, so it’s another important observation. Or meaningful fact, I should say!
What surprised me most, going back to earlier in the article, is that the input-computation-output model seems to be still alive and well. I thought it had been fairly discredited years ago. Jordan Peterson was explaining to his students in his Maps of Meaning lectures back in 2015 that values, and therefore meaning and significance, simply cannot be separated out from the mechanisms of perception itself; we don’t see things and then figure out what they are and then work out what to do with them (or our ancestors would be dead from taking too long to figure out the potential danger from a snake or other predator). He used the example of seeing a cup, which immediately activates the motor cortex as well as the visual cortex because it is “something to grasp” - so its meaning, in this case its functional utility, are part of the perception itself - so we see tools, friends, danger, food, we don’t see “things” and then “figure them out”; we see meanings first. Another example could be, we see a round “thing” and then work out what it is - but is it a boulder, is it talking to you, is it made of blinding light, does it have a smoking fuse coming out of the top? No, we see significance or anomaly immediately.
Perhaps I don’t fully appreciate exactly what the academics writing about this always mean by the concept of meaning. I realise that was an entertaining sentence. But how could anyone possibly even bother to write a paper which either denied or refuted “meaning” if it didn’t mean anything to them whether they wrote it or not?
I enjoyed your article Brett, and look forward to your book. The topics of semiotics and evolutionary psychology are landing in my own work through Jack Panksepp and Robert E Innis. Dr Innis has a new book coming out in March that looks to me like some evolutionary explanations of existential orientation will be clarified. Bravo to you.
Journey for Seekers: Ch.10 of my book, Genius, I shatter the biohacking mold of the first 9 chapters—diving deep into psychology, philosophy, & first principles of health via my groundbreaking Quantum Objectivism physics model (world debut!). Here, mind reigns over matter in causal chains, not just emergent from quantum fields or complexity. Raw Gurdjieff (secret source of enneagram) vibes meet cosmic truth. #enneagram #genius #GeniusBook #QuantumObjectivism Read, reflect, comments, follow, “restacks: (not sure what that even means). I follow back. https://open.substack.com/pub/ronaldingram/p/chapter-10-gurdjieffian-journey-from?r=2xhreu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false