The paper proposes to base the notion of the significance of life on the grounds of the singularity of each person as a psychical subject, i.e. personal singularity. No two persons are alike; each one of us, as a person, is intrinsically different from every other person. This personal singularity has a universal significance, namely, it makes a universal difference, whether or not this difference is distinct and acknowledged. Because morality and the significance of a person's life both rely upon (...) personal singularity, there is an inseparable connection between morality and the significance of a human life. Nevertheless, as relying upon personal singularity, there is no insignificant or meaningless life, for a person's life has a universal significance whatever the actions of that person may be. Immoral actions or behavior do not reflect or express the personal singularity of an agent, whereas moral ones reflect or express this singularity. There is more to personal singularity and the significance of life than morality. As singularity is not subject to any comparison or competition, personal singularity implies that the life of one person is not more significant than the life of any other person. Thus, in my view, the significance of life is strictly egalitarian. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the nature and scope of Moore’s paradox, articulates the desiderata of a successful solution and claims that psychological expressivism best meets these desiderata. After a brief discussion of prominent responses to Moore’s paradox, the paper offers a solution based on a theory of expressive acts: a Moorean utterance is absurd because the speaker expresses mental states with conflicting contents in commissive versions of the paradox and conflicting states of mind in omissive versions. The paper presents a theory (...) of expressivism for self-ascriptions of mental states. In addition, it introduces the idea of expressive denegation—the speaker’s expressing the absence of a mental state—as an analysis of negative self-ascriptions of mental states. Some of the consequences of expressivism for avowals are explored. (shrink)

Absurdist accounts of life’s meaning posit that life is absurd because our pretensions regarding its meaning conflict with the actual or perceived reality of the situation. Relationary accounts posit that contingent things gain their meaning only from their relationship to other meaningful things. I take a detailed look at the two types of account, and, proceeding under the assumption that they are correct, combine them to see what the implications of such a combination might be. I conclude that another way (...) of looking at the absurdity of life is to see it as a conflict between our dual beliefs that there exist intrinsically meaningful contingent things, and that contingent things may only gain their meaning extrinsically through their relationships to other meaningful things. In this way, I provide another lens through which feelings of life’s absurdity may be interpreted and analysed: as the conflict between the simultaneous beliefs in both intrinsically and relationally meaningful contingent things. Looking through this lens gives us an entirely different framework for analysing life’s absurdity than that which Nagel described in 1971, providing opportunity for more potential avenues of analysis and discussion. (shrink)

If David Lewis's modal realism is true, then there are many, many people. According to Mark Heller, this is bad news. He takes modal realism (MR) to imply that "there are at least some cases in which it is permissible to let drowning children drown when it would be easy to save them." But since he holds the reasonable view that this is never permissible, he thinks that MR is false. Here, I argue that Lewis needn't be troubled by this (...) objection, and that it provides no reason to reject MR for those who share Lewis's moral outlook. Moreover, I argue that disagreement with common sense needn't be severe if we can show both (a) that there's a sense in which common sense is correct and (b) we have little reason to care about the sense in which common sense is mistaken. (shrink)

I seek to reply to the thoughtful and challenging papers by Helen Steward, Saul Smilansky, and John Perry. Steward argues that agency itself requires access to alternative possibilities; I attempt to motivate my denial of this view. I believe that her view here is no more plausible than the view that it is unfair to hold someone morally responsible, unless he has genuine access to alternative possibilities. Smilansky contends that compatibilism is morally shallow, and that we can see this from (...) the "ultimate perspective." In reply, I explore the nature of "zooming" arguments, and I contend that even from a somewhat more detached perspective, important features that distinguish us from mere animals can be discerned. Finally, I seek to address Perry's defense of classical compatibilism. My main objection to his form of compatbilism is that agents must be construed as having a certain kind of "baggage"— even on his own account. (shrink)

I seek to reply to the thoughtful and challenging papers by Helen Steward, Saul Smilansky, and John Perry. Steward argues that agency itself requires access to alternative possibilities; I attempt to motivate my denial of this view. I believe that her view here is no more plausible than the view (which she rejects) that it is unfair to hold someone morally responsible, unless he has genuine access to alternative possibilities. Smilansky contends that compatibilism is morally shallow, and that we can (...) see this from the “ultimate perspective.” In reply, I explore the nature of “zooming” arguments, and I contend that even from a somewhat more detached perspective, important features that distinguish us from mere animals can be discerned (even in a causally deterministic universe). Finally, I seek to address Perry’s defense of classical compatibilism. My main objection to his form of compatbilism is that agents must be construed as having a certain kind of “baggage”—even on his own account. (shrink)

In a colloquium on “lyric philosophy,” this contribution records the efforts of an analytic philosopher to come to grips with questions that Jan Zwicky, who is both a fine poet and a subtle philosopher, has raised about anglophone analytic philosophy. The essay situates Zwicky between the analytic and Continental traditions in philosophy: like the best analytic philosophers, it is argued, she is enamored of clarity, but, like what is best in the Continental tradition, she demands of philosophy a deeper sense (...) of meaning than philosophical analysts tend to do. It is from this unusual position that Zwicky is said to challenge the dogmas of the analytic tradition. Notable among those treated in this article are the belief that attributing literal meaning to anything but linguistic items is futile, belief in the possibility of distinguishing literal from metaphorical meaning, belief in the supremacy of argument over aphorisms, and belief in the importance of the “reductionist” program, which seeks to understand wholes in terms of their parts. (shrink)

Pessimists sometimes declare that death makes everything we do pointless or meaningless. In this essay, I consider the motivations for this worry about our collective mortality. I then examine some common responses to this worry that emphasize moderating our standards or changing our goals. Given some limitations of the “moderating our standards” response, I suggest that Viktor Frankl’s view about the permanence of the past offers a different and perhaps better way of responding to the worry that death renders our (...) lives meaningless. After outlining his view, its implications, and the view of time it assumes, I consider and respond to some possible objections to Frankl’s view. If Frankl is right, death cannot make life meaningless or pointless because meaning is attained within life, and when we die our completed lives endure as part of the past. (shrink)

An e-book devoted to 13 critical discussions of Thaddeus Metz's book "Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study", with a lengthy reply from the author. -/- Preface Masahiro Morioka i -/- Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi -/- Source and Bearer: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning Hasko von Kriegstein 1-18 -/- Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value David Matheson 19-32 -/- Meaningful and More Meaningful: A Modest Measure Peter Baumann 33-49 -/- Is Meaning in (...) Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of ‘The Heart of Meaning in Life’ Masahiro Morioka 50-65 -/- Agreement and Sympathy: On Metz’s Meaning in Life Sho Yamaguchi 66-89 -/- Metz’s Quest for the Holy Grail James Tartaglia 90-111 -/- Meaning without Ego Christopher Ketcham 112-133 -/- Death and the Meaning of Life: A Critical Study of Metz’s Meaning in Life Fumitake Yoshizawa 134-149 -/- Metz’ Incoherence Objection: Some Epistemological Considerations Nicholas Waghorn 150-168 -/- Meaning in Consequences Mark Wells 169-179 -/- Defending the Purpose Theory of Meaning in Life Jason Poettcker 180-207 -/- Review of Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life Minao Kukita 208-214 -/- A Psychological Model to Determine Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life Yu Urata 215-227 -/- Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life Thaddeus Metz 228-278 . (shrink)

This is an edited transcript of a lecture given at the LSE in March 2023. The lecture introduces the “meaning of life” question via Tolstoy’s Confession, then considers the strengths and limitations of religious and secular answers to the question.

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

A 10,000+ word critical overview of analytic philosophy devoted to life's meaning, with some focus on books and more recent works.

This paper is an overview of contemporary theories of meaning in life and its relation to well-being.

Brief overview of accounts of the meaning of life for 1000-Word Philosophy.

Discussion of whether values and norms are neutral or not has mainly appeared in works on the nature of prudential rationality and morality. Little systematic has yet appeared in the up and coming field of the meaning of life. What are the respects in which the value of meaningfulness is neutral or, in contrast, partial, relational, or ‘biased’? In this article, I focus strictly on answering this question. First, I aim to identify the salient, and perhaps exhaustive, respects in which (...) issues of neutrality arise in the contexts of life’s meaning. In addition to providing a taxonomy of the key points of contention, a second aim is to advance reflection about them by considering the most important arguments that have been marshalled in favour of one side or the other, particularly as they appear in recent neutral positions. I conclude that meaning in life is neutral with respect to time but not any other conditions such as agents and patients, with a third aim being to point out that this makes the value of meaning different from the kinds of non/neutrality encountered in some salient conceptions of prudence and morality. (shrink)

Persian translation by Mohammad Saeedi of 'Could God's Purpose Be the Source of Life's Meaning?' (first published in Religious Studies 2000).

Aristotle believes that certain pursuits are objectively choice worthy regardless of our attitudes towards them. Moreover, in order to have the correct beliefs about which actions are choice worthy, they must have acquired the right dispositions during their upbringing. Bernard Williams argues that Aristotle’s theory of moral education undermines belief in objective values. In response to Williams, Julia Annas argues that Aristotle does not ground ethics in the external point of view, but rather in the desires and commitments that people (...) already have. In this thesis, I argue that Aristotle held the view to which Williams objects and that Williams’ objection fails. Aristotle’s appeals to nature shows that he does not ground values in individual desires and commitments. Moreover, moral education does not alone undermine our confidence in the truth of our commitments. (shrink)

Life is pointless. That’s not okay. I show that. I argue that a point is a valued end and that, as agents, it makes sense for us to want our efforts and enterprises to have a point. Valued ends provide justifying reasons for our acts, efforts, and projects. I further argue that ends lie separate from the acts and enterprises for which they provide a point. Since there can be no end external to one’s entire life since one’s life includes (...) all of one’s ends, leading and living one’s life as a whole cannot have a point. Finally, I argue that since we live our lives and structure our living­a­human­life efforts both in parts and as a whole, it is fitting to be sad to recognize that leading and living a life is pointless. My discussion helps make sense of the literature that frequently talks around this topic but often does so vaguely and indirectly. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that a virtual life would be less meaningful (perhaps even meaningless). As virtual reality technologies develop and become more integrated into our everyday lives, this poses a challenge for those that care about meaning in life. In this chapter, it is argued that the common assumption about meaninglessness and virtuality is mistaken. After clarifying the distinction between two different visions of virtual reality, four arguments are presented for thinking that meaning is possible in virtual reality. Following (...) this, four objections are discussed and rebutted. The chapter concludes that we can be cautiously optimistic about the possibility of meaning in virtual worlds. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present the responsibility-compatibilist argument against responsibility-incompatibilists (hard-determinists and libertarians), according to whom the existence of ‘free-will’, threatened by determinism, is necessary for moral responsibility. First, I will identify what responsibility-incompatibilism presupposes as necessary conditions of moral responsibility: the Strong Doctrine of Free-Will and the Voluntary Control Principle. Second, inspired by Williams, I will demonstrate that our real practice of responsibility does not necessarily presuppose these conditions. Finally, I will defend responsibility-compatibilism from an objection.

The purpose of this essay will be to set out an analysis of a certain philosophical, metaethical angst, which I call “absurd angst,” defend angsty thinking (to the extent it can be), and offer up hopeful suggestions regarding consolation of this angst. In short, I take absurd angst to be a painful worry that there are no normative, non-instrumental reasons to act. This worry, it seems to me, can only come about under a certain moral conceptual scheme, and I will (...) devote a large amount of time here to understanding it. This moral conceptual scheme leads the angsty to accept several nontrivial beliefs about the relationships between moral concepts and their application in true/accurate moral ascriptions. The angsty are led to these beliefs by, I think, a strongly ingrained set of moral concepts which form the basis of their moral system(s). Ultimately, I argue that absurd angst arises in some because the angsty possess moral concepts which lead them to believe either that normative reasons require external reasons (reasons which do not depend, in some critical way, on the internal evaluative states of agents), or that normative reasons require external sources of normativity (grounds or explanations for the normative force and authority of reasons which do not depend, in some critical way, on the internal evaluative states of agents) (these possibilities are not exclusive). This worries the angsty. First, because external sources of normativity are theoretically problematic, and this is felt to, in some way, make moral claims problematic. Second, because a host of painful consequences are thought to follow from a lack of these external sources and a denial of normative reasons to act. (shrink)

On a widely accepted view, what gives meaning to our lives is success in valuable ground projects. However, philosophers like Kieran Setiya have recently challenged the value of such orientation towards the future, and argued that meaningful living is instead a matter of engaging in atelic activities that are complete in themselves at each moment. This chapter argues that insofar as what is at issue is meaningfulness in its primary existential sense, strongly atelic activities do not suffice for meaning. Instead, (...) finding one’s life meaningful is warranted both by sustainable success in valuable prospective (future-oriented) projects, and by success in reflexive projects that aim to promote or realize a practice-dependent value that can be realized at each moment, but never for good. The latter kind of activities are only weakly atelic, since their aim remains distinct from the activity, and individual actions gain significance from serving a long-term commitment. Thus, whether our ground projects are prospective or reflexive, what we do at each moment contributes to leading a meaningful life only when it’s connected in the right way to what we do at other moments. (shrink)

Within the community of inquiry literature, the absence of the notion of genuine doubt is notable in spite of its pragmatic roots in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, for whom the notion was pivotal. We argue for the need to correct this oversight due to the educational significance of genuine doubt—a theoretical and experiential understanding of which can offer insight into the interrelated concepts of wonder, fallibilism, inquiry and prejudice. In order to detail these connections, we reinvigorate the ideas (...) of Peirce by borrowing the language and concepts of Albert Camus, at the same time demonstrating their unlikely congruence. In particular, we argue for the necessity of genuine doubt along with the need for the presence of a diversity of prejudices as a starting point for genuine inquiry. (shrink)

The eighteenth century philosopher David Hume was much influenced by Greek philosophy and literature. His favourite writer was the satirist Lucian. What is David Hume’s thanatotherapy (therapy of the fear of death)? Is he an Epicurean or Pyrrhonian thanatotherapist? I argue that, while he is in part an Epicurean who is sceptical about his Epicureanism, he is primarily a Lucianic thanatotherapist. A Lucianic thanatotherapist uses self and other deprecating irony as a form of therapy. He also ruthlessly satirises religious consolations. (...) I use Hume’s deathbed allusions to Lucian’s Kataplous (floating downwards) and the Dialogues of the Dead to explain my view. (shrink)

According to subjectivist views about a meaningful life, one's life is meaningful in virtue of desire satisfaction or feelings of fulfilment. Standard counterexamples consist of satisfaction found through trivial or immoral tasks. In response to such examples, many philosophers require that the tasks one is devoted to are objectively valuable, or have objectively valuable consequences. I argue that the counterexamples to subjectivism do not require objective value for meaning in life. I also consider other reasons for thinking that meaning in (...) life requires objective value and raise doubts about their strength. Finally, I argue that beauty is not plausibly objective, but that it seems important for meaning. This puts pressure on the objectivist to explain why objectivity matters in the case of other values. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Øyvind Dahl’s argument for the conclusion that Malagasy people conceive of the future as coming from behind them and not as being before them as most worldviews do. I argue that we have good reason not to attribute this view to Malagasy people. First, it would mark an inefficient and anomalous way of keeping track of the past and future. Second, the linguistic and testimonial evidence presented by Dahl doesn’t support the conclusion. Even though this (...) specific argument fails, Dahl has many enlightening things to say about Malagasy time conceptions, such as the various time-conceptions that figure more predominantly in their worldview as opposed to the general modern Western worldview. Dahl is right that successful communication for Westerners in Madagascar requires understanding that the Malagasy worldview is structured more by an event-related conception of time than the general modern Western worldview. I also show in this paper that the three time conceptions Dahl outlines are relevant to living a good life. (shrink)

A lengthy reply to 13 critical discussions of _Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study_ collected in an e-book and reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy of Life_. The contributors are from a variety of philosophical traditions, including the Anglo-American, Continental and East Asian (especially Buddhist and Japanese) ones.

Through the years, many philosophers have appealed to reflective endorsement to address important philosophical problems. In this dissertation, I evaluate the merits of those approaches. I first consider Christine Korsgaard’s appeal to reflective endorsement to solve what she calls “the normative problem.” I then consider Harry Frankfurt’s use of reflective endorsement as part of his account of “caring,” which plays a crucial role in his accounts of agency, free will, and personhood. I then turn to Marilyn Friedman’s use of reflective (...) endorsement to explain autonomous action. Finally, I turn to Alan Gibbard’s use of reflective endorsement as part of an account of what it is to make a normative judgment. I argue that each of these positions is subject to similar problems—they fail to provide a plausible account of the self. In the remaining chapters, I argue that empirical psychological studies suggest that reflective endorsement plays an important role with respect to psychological health, but that judgments made by using a process of reflective endorsement are generally not accurate. Ultimately, I argue that reflective endorsement is valuable, but only under certain circumstances. (shrink)