> The meaning of human life is the same as an animal life. Spread our genes and die. This may sound sadistic but it is true.

Hmm. 'Meaning' is an interesting notion. Grice wrote a paper (very influential in philosophical circles) on the nature of meaning. I guess one needs to figure out what 'meaning' is before one can figure out the meaning of life / the meaning of a life...

One thing that is important is the notion of causation. When we say 'the meaning of life is to spread genes and die' one might be making a descriptive claim in the sense that one is describing certain kinds of causal processes in the world (the spreading of genes and death of the organism).

There are lots of other causal processes going on too, though. One might say 'the meaning of life is to work, socialise, raise children, retire' and that would be an alternative description of certain kinds of causal processes in the world.

What makes it the case that the first description of causal processes captures the meaning of life whereas the second does not?

Grice talks about the nature of meaning... And he distinguishes between natural meaning (causal process claims e.g., 'that smoke means fire') and non-natural meaning (a feature of thought and language where we have representation and truth evaluability). Neither of those notions seem relevant with respect to 'the meaning of life', however, so it seems that something else is going on there...

I quite like the idea of replacing the question 'what is the meaning of life?' with the question 'what makes a life meaningful?' (kind of like how turing thought we should replace the vague and unhelpful question 'can a computer think?' with the question 'can a computer pass the turing test?'). So... What makes a life meaningful? aka: What makes a life worth living? It might be that there is some objective standard whereby we can measure the meaningfulness / worth of a life (because human beings are similar enough in certain relevant respects) or it might be that the question is deeply personal.

What sorts of things do people find meaningful? Here are some ideas:

- emotional bonds / connections to other human beings (and perhaps animals as well)
- satisfaction in ones work (including such enterprises as raising kids and creating a pleasant home environment for people and animals who one has bonded to)

etc etc etc...

So...

What kinds of things makes life worth living for you?

Maybe... Those kinds of things... Are what makes your life meaningful.

Maybe... Those kinds of things... Are the meaning of your life.

Make sense?