Thesis Taylor’s happy Sisyphus shows meaning is purely subjective
Where it stands
I coach high school debate, and I make my students argue the side they don't believe. So here's me arguing a side I'm only half sure of.
Richard Taylor's version of Sisyphus goes like this. The gods, in pity, implant in Sisyphus an overwhelming desire to roll boulders. Nothing else changes: the stone still rolls back, the labour still produces nothing. But now he's doing exactly what he most wants, forever. Is his life now meaningful?
Taylor says yes, and I'll defend him. The futility was never what made Sisyphus's life miserable. What made it miserable was that he didn't want it. Remove the gap between desire and activity and the misery disappears. If you still say "but it's meaningless", what exactly are you pointing at? Not his experience, which is now fulfilling. You're pointing at some external standard of what activities are worth doing, and I don't see where that standard comes from or why it should override what he actually cares about.
Notice that most human lives look like Sisyphus's from far enough away. We build things that decay, raise children who will die, write essays nobody reads in a hundred years. If meaning required objective accumulation, nobody would have any. What we have instead is caring about what we do. That's all there is, and it's enough.
Thesis: if you grant that implanted-desire Sisyphus is fulfilled, you've granted that meaning is subjective. Prove me wrong.