7) Everything is Meaningless...?

        A lover of reason might say that, if it were demonstrated to him that a particular worldview is true, he would be compelled to embrace that worldview, not because he thought it was objectively valuable but because it was objectively true.  Thus he might argue that the force behind his decision was reason and not value.  Not bad; for a lover of reason, he argues well.  However, he has missed a crucial step in his own decision-making process.
          If I were to ask the question, “Why embrace the worldview that is true?” what answer could possibly be given to me?  One might say, “Truth ought to be embraced,” or,  “It is good to engage the world as it really is.”  Look at this language: ought and good.  Once again, objective value has sneaked in through the back door.  It might seem obvious to us that, once a system of thought is demonstrated to us as being true, we ought to adhere to that system.  But this jump from demonstration to adherence is not itself made by reason.  It is, if you look closely, the result of one of man’s most powerful, most universal, and most fundamental intuitions simply stating that truth ought to be embraced.  This intuition is so fundamental that it is often confused with reason itself, but there is clearly a difference.
          Case in point: to demonstrate decisively to someone that a particular worldview is true does not, in fact, guarantee that they will embrace that worldview.  Embracing requires something else; it requires them to value reason more than whatever else they might have to give up by dropping their own worldviews for this new one.
          So we see that worldview selection is based on two criterion: reason, defined as the evaluation of truth-value, and values, one of which is the value that truth ought to be embraced.  But that is the supreme difficulty with the worldview that everything is meaningless; it cuts itself off from this second criteria by denying the existence of any objective value.  If this worldview demonstrated its own truth-value, it would simultaneously cut itself off from the only thing that can compel anyone to embrace it.  There is no reason to embrace one worldview over another if everything is meaningless.