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For just a few examples, consider making an intellectual discovery, rearing children with love, playing music, and developing superior athletic ability,” Metz proposes.īasically, he’s saying meaning is like an equation-add or subtract value variables, and you get more or less meaning. “It seems to most in the field not only that creativity and morality are independent sources of meaning, but also that there are sources in addition to these two. If meaning happens through cognition, then it could come from any number of sources. Subjectivists-Landau among them-think that those views are too narrow. For example, some say that creativity offers purpose, while others believe that virtue, or a moral life, confers meaning.
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Objectivists argue that there are absolute truths which have value, though they may not agree on what they are.
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The two naturalist camps are split over whether the human mind makes meaning or these conditions are absolute and universal. Then there are two camps of “naturalists” seeking meaning in a purely physical world as known by science, who fall into “subjectivist” and “objectivist” categories. Others ascribe to a soul-centered view, thinking something of us must continue beyond our lives, an essence after physical existence, which gives life meaning. Some are god-centered and believe only a deity can provide purpose. Those who do think meaning can be discerned, however, fall into four groups, according to Thaddeus Metz, writing in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy. The 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, said the question itself was meaningless because in the midst of living, we’re in no position to discern whether our lives matter, and stepping outside of the process of existence to answer is impossible. Philosophers’ answers to this question are numerous and varied, and practical to different degrees. He is among many thinkers over the ages who’ve wrestled with the difficult question, “What is a meaningful life?” The question of meaning In other words, Landau thinks that people who feel purposeless actually misunderstand what meaning is. (Some of them, after our discussions, agreed with me.) Most of the people who complained about life’s meaninglessness even found it difficult to explain what they took the notion to mean. Many, I thought, did not pose relevant questions that might have changed their views, or take the actions that might have improved their condition. But I have often found the reasons my interlocutors gave for their views problematic. Many even presented their lives as outright meaningless. If it is the brevity or finiteness of human life that gives it shape and purpose (an argument associated with the philosopher Bernard Williams), then an eternal afterlife cannot, in and of itself, have any purpose.To my surprise, most of the people with whom I have talked about the meaning of life have told me that they did not think that their lives were meaningful enough. Reliance on an eternal afterlife not only postpones the question of life’s purpose, but also dissuades or at least discourages us from determining a purpose or purposes for what may be the only life that we do have. The concept of the afterlife merely displaces the problem to one remove, begging the question: what then is the purpose of the afterlife? If the afterlife has a pre-determined purpose, again, we do not know what that is, and, whatever it is, we would rather be able to do without it. Even if there were such an afterlife, living for ever is not in itself a purpose.It is not at all clear that there is, or even can be, some form of eternal afterlife that entails the survival of the personal ego.You might yet object that talk about the meaning of life is neither here nor there because life is merely a prelude to some form of eternal afterlife, and this, if you will, is its purpose.īut I can marshal up at least four arguments against this position: