What exactly is a man to live for? Consider the first possibility: technological improvement. Kevin is an engineer who firmly believes that the meaning of life is to increase one's and one's society's technological prowess. Sean is a lone, wayfaring stranger who annoys people to no end in asking them about their worldview as they sit down to drink their overpriced cappuccinos at Starbucks. And yet, people can't seem to get enough of his zeal for conversation.
Sean saw Kevin rapidly tapping away at his computer and came over to introduce himself. After exchanging pleasantries, Sean popped the big question, "What, sir, is the meaning of life?". Kevin responded as follows.
Kevin: Man is to live for technological improvement. Technology is the sum total of the processes, sciences, and mechanics by which we can harness the powers inherent in nature to better serve the ends of mankind. If technological improvement is to be man's ultimate end, then it follows that man's life should be ordered towards improving the technological prowess of mankind, the technological prowess of his society, the technological prowess of his family, and his personal allotment of technological prowess.
Sean: While certainly a powerful driver of human action, choosing technological improvement as the purpose of life simply pushes the original question back a question. Technology is only the means to an end; man can use technology for good or for evil. Therefore, without solidifying what is good and what is evil, technological improvement, of its own accord, does not give us a meaning of life, since it can only be used as a means by which to attain the end of life.
Kevin: Yes, it is true that technology is a means to an end, and thus cannot be considered the end of life in and of itself. However, is it really intelligible to speak of good and evil as existing, as objective entities in the world which we can know? Rather than "good" and "evil", which are old-fashioned terms which we sophisticated modern people no longer use, why not use "pleasure" and "pain"? Thus, the end of life could then be stated as acquiring pleasure. Since, in man's primeval condition, man is very often in pain, it stands to reason that the process that brings man away from his primeval condition – that is, technology – is what man must improve. In other words, man must pursue technological improvement so that he can decrease the probability of pain and increase the probability of pleasure.
Sean: Sir, I must say, I don't understand why we should discard the concepts of objective good and objective evil simply because they were used in the past. Anyways, this is an interesting conversation, so for its sake, I'll grant your wish: we shall replace objective good and objective evil with pain and pleasure. Now, is pain and pleasure also objective, or are they subjective?
Kevin: My girlfriend is a doctor. She tells me that we have neural circuits which make us feel pain and neural circuits which make us feel pleasure. Therefore, since neural circuits are empirically verifiable, pain and pleasure are empirically verifiable. Empirically verifiable entities are objective entities. Therefore, pain and pleasure are objective entities.
Sean: Sir, that's an airtight syllogism, but there seems to be a problem.
Kevin: What is that?
Sean: Pain and pleasure are states of something, correct? Meaning, that pain is not something such as, say, color. Whereas you and I can both look at a basketball and see that it is orange, you and I cannot look, touch, feel, taste, or smell pain. Pain isn't something that any of our five senses can interact with, but rather seems to be entirely dependent on the subject.
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