Let's say that the meaning of life is X (avoiding evil, fulfilling our desires, obeying God, fleeing the pain of the fear of the death, collecting turtles – anything). What is the meaning of X?
Even before the pitfall of an infinite regress, the question seems to run aground because if I agree that X is my ultimate quest, I have no criteria to evaluate X a part of Xs – I'm compelled by the meaning, so to say.
Edited question: Since this topic is on hold as off topic, I'll try to make my question more explicit. It's pacific that these and similar arguments make the quest for a meaning non-sensical, and/or any ultimate meaning necessarily axiomatic?
More generally, the problem is that of the "rules of the rules", well exposed by Wittgenstein's aphorism:
This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule (PI201)
of which Kripke has proposed a convincing analysis. Thomas Nagel also addresses the problem.
Edit in reply to some comments
My question has similarities with this one, but from a different angle. Mine is not related to the presence of one or more human beings, but to the possibility to evaluate the criteria of a criteria following the latter.
I use meaning in a quite loose way: anything that gives a satisfying explanation for something to be in a specific way and not a different one.
As wrote by @Conifold in a comment that hopefully will become an answer, Wittgenstein propose a solution to it: "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call „obeying the rule‟ and „going against it‟ in actual cases".
I'm inclined to accept an interpretation of this answer: we can't evaluate our meaning, we can only follow it, since we are educated to do so. But this raise an interesting issue: this is also an evaluation of the meaning – an attempt to evaluate the meaning of the meaning. Should I refuse it as well? (Here there are similarities with the famous critic by Bertrand Russell to the Tractatus, but I'm not sure to find Wittgenstein's ladder answer satisfying)
