| I just want to say that there are two perspectives expressed in response to this comment. One is the idea that pleasure in life comes from starting out abstract (e.g. with abstract goals) and finding more specific things to enact those goals. The other is the idea that pleasure in life comes from starting out concrete (e.g. pooping, eating, quenching thirst, etc). The first idea is wrong, the second idea is right. But from those concrete things you build up more and more abstract. The more abstract things gain meaning (bring pleasure) from the less abstract things. As a primitive man, you feel cold and want to be warm, so you build a fire. Then you build a house. Then you kill an animal and make a warm coat. Then you build a better bow. Then you learn how to hunt better. Then you start planning years ahead. You move to better hunting grounds, you start saving up firewood, etc. That is the primitive man's version of a career; the same applies to a modern career. However, you can't reduce the value of the more abstract things to the less abstract things. Saving up firewood is not reducible to the sum of warm nights you get as a result. It has its own, separate meaning. But that meaning is only possible because of the less abstract things. Relatedly, people are wrong to say that life is pointless. The point is the pleasure and pain you feel. Meaning is derived from pleasure and pain. Nature gave us a source of meaning---that had to be the case for advanced life to evolve, and it's pleasure and pain. tl;dr 1) values are built from the ground up, not the top down 2) values are based on pleasure and that is the "point" |