Some Naturalists believe in God and others don’t, but they all agree that the question of God’s existence is independent from the question of life’s meaning. Instead of relying on a higher power to provide a purpose, Naturalists think that we imbue our own lives with meaning and that we can do so, even if there is no purpose in the grand scheme of things
Naturalists believe that we can make our own lives meaningful. But how exactly do we do this? Naturalists of different kinds disagree with one another. To start, there are Subjective Naturalists who believe that your life is meaningful if, and only if, it is worthwhile to you. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do with your life. As long as you find your life worth living, it is. According to Subjective Naturalism, meaning is entirely dependent upon the person who grants it — just like beauty is often said to be (“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” as the saying goes). A meaningful life can be spent writing books, raising a family, or even counting blades of grass — as long as the person finds the endeavor worthwhile. Richard Taylor, a well- known Subjective Naturalist, writes that “the meaning of life is from within us, it is not bestowed from without”
Other Naturalists agree that we can make our own lives meaningful but disagree with Subjective Naturalists about how exactly this can be done. According to these Naturalists, who are called Objective Naturalists, our lives are meaningful when they exhibit value that is independent of our personal judgment. Their idea is that some projects are inherently valuable (for example, writing a book or raising a family), whereas others are not (for example, counting blades of grass or staring at a blank wall). Objective Naturalists think that no particular person or group of people decides which projects are valuable; rather, they believe that value is something that exists in the world independently of people and their opinions. Some things simply are more worthwhile than others, and therefore some lives (namely, those filled with these more worthwhile things) simply are more meaningful than others. Saving someone’s life is a project that many Objective Naturalists think has intrinsic value. They think that this is a worthwhile project for anyone to undertake, even if someone isn’t really invested in it
A third kind of Naturalism combines Subjective and Objective Naturalism into what is called “Hybrid Naturalism.” Hybrid Naturalists think that a person’s life is meaningful only if two conditions are met: (1) that person finds their own life to be meaningful and (2) that person’s life exhibits objective value. As Susan Wolf, the most famous proponent of Hybrid Naturalism, puts it: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” One reason why Hybrid Naturalists think that Subjective Naturalism falls short is that, on this view, a life spent doing seemingly meaningless things (such as counting blades of grass or staring at a blank wall) can be meaningful — so long as the person doing them believes they are meaningful. In fact, such a life could be just as meaningful as a life spent as a doctor, an artist, or a parent. This is a conclusion that Hybrid Naturalists think we should resist. A reason why Hybrid Naturalists think that Objective Naturalism falls short, on the other hand, is that on this view we are forced to say that someone’s life is meaningful even if that person doesn’t find their life to be worthwhile. This seems wrong
According to Hybrid Naturalism, if we want to live meaningful lives, then all we have to do is take up objectively valuable projects and be subjectively engaged with them. It’s not hard to grasp what it means to be subjectively engaged with a project because we all know the difference between caring about a project, on the one hand, and feeling alienated, bored, or checked out, on the other. When an activity (or your life as a whole) feels worthwhile to you, this subjective condition is met. But the other requirement is not quite as straightforward. What exactly are objectively valuable projects?
This is a hard question to answer because which activities, projects, and lives are more valuable than others are, on this view, objective facts — like the facts of science and mathematics. Just as some scientific facts are hard to establish (for example, exactly how many stars there are in the Milky Way), so are facts about value. This doesn’t mean that these facts don’t exist; it just means that it’s hard to find them. Some philosophers have proposed short lists of objectively valuable things, called “Objective List Theories.” The items on these lists are supposed to be good for anyone — at any time and any place — even if a person doesn’t subjectively value them. After all, that’s just what it means for these values to be objective: they are independent of people’s preferences and opinions. (Remember that the subjective side is taken care of by the first condition!)
It may help to have some concrete examples of Objective List Theories. Thomas Hurka, for example, writes: “There isn’t just one intrinsic good but many, not just pleasure or virtue but also knowledge, achievement, and maybe more.” Jean Kazez, by comparison, offers the following, slightly different list: happiness, autonomy, self-expression, morality (virtue), and progress. Kazez calls these “fundamental goods that are necessities” for a good life. And finally, as a third example, Christopher Belshaw suggests that relationships, pursuing a plan or project, and moral goodness (virtue) are “the sorts of things that sit, often, towards the centre of the meaningful life”
