Philosophers often claim that humility is a dependent virtue: a virtue that depends on another virtue for its value. I consider three views about this relation: Specific Dependence, Unspecific Dependence, and Fittingness. I argue that, since humility cannot uniquely depend on another virtue, and since this uniqueness is desirable, we should reject Specific and Unspecific Dependence. I defend a Fittingness view, according to which the humble person possesses some objectively good quality fitting for humility. I show beyond Slote’s original characterization (...) of the dependence relation that, even if humility’s value depends on having objectively good qualities, humility itself can be one such quality. So, humility can depend on itself. I call this view Bootstrapped Fittingness. (shrink)

Duncan Purves and Nicolas Delon have argued that one’s life will be meaningful to the extent that one contributes to valuable states of affairs and this contribution is a result of one’s intentional actions. They then argue, contrary to some theorists’ intuitions, that non-human animals are capable of fulfilling these requirements, and that this finding might entail important things for the animal ethics movement. In this paper, I also argue that things besides human beings can have meaningful existences, but I (...) disagree with Purves and Delon’s theory of meaning, and some of the practical implications they suggest arise from their conclusion. Specifically, I argue that Purves and Delon are wrong to suggest that intentional agency is necessary for one’s life to be meaningful; contributing to valuable states of affairs can be sufficient by itself. Purves and Delon’s objection to such a claim is that it would allow even inanimate objects’ existences to count as meaningful. However, while I accept this... (shrink)

Thoughts of mortality sometimes bring on a crisis in confidence in the meaning in one's life. One expression of this collapse is the midlife crisis. In a recent article, Kieran Setiya argues that if one can value activities as opposed to accomplishments as the primary goods in one's life then one might avoid the midlife crisis. I argue that Setiya's advice, rather than safeguarding the meaning in one's life, substitutes for it something else, a kind of happiness. I use Susan (...) Wolf's concept of meaning in order to make this case. Wolf has not written much about the importance of death, but I argue that her account of meaning shares essential features with the theories developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. Sartre argues that death is an unqualified harm, while Heidegger argues that there is meaning in life only because we are mortal. I conclude by showing how Heidegger's theory of mortality underwrites accounts of meaning like those found in Wolf. (shrink)

Volume 47, Issue 3, November 2018, Page 403-427.

The focus of AI ethics has recently shifted towards the question of whether and how the use of AI technologies can promote sustainability. This new research question involves discerning the sustainability of AI itself and evaluating AI as a tool to achieve sustainable objectives. This article aims to examine the justifications that one might employ to advocate for promoting sustainable AI. Specifically, it concentrates on a dimension of often disregarded reasons — reasons of “meaning” or “meaningfulness” — as discussed more (...) recently in the “meaning in life” literature of analytic ethics. To proceed, the article first elucidates the working definitions of “sustainable AI” and “meaning in life”, while also setting the criteria for evaluating the plausibility of these reasons. Subsequently, it presents and scrutinises three arguments for the claim that one has reasons to care about sustainable AI from a perspective of meaning: the Meaning-conferring-action Argument, the Afterlife Argument, and the Harm Argument. In conclusion, this article asserts that only the Harm Argument presents a viable line of reasoning. However, it also outlines the presuppositions of this argument and the additional steps necessary to make it compelling. (shrink)

We find meaning and value in our lives by engaging in everyday projects. But, according to a recent argument by Samuel Scheffler, this value doesn’t depend merely on what the projects are about. In many cases, it depends also on the future generations that will replace us. By imagining the imminent extinction of humanity soon after our own deaths, we can recognize both that much of our current valuing depends on a background confidence in the ongoing survival of humanity and (...) that the survival and flourishing of those future generations matters to us. After presenting Scheffler’s argument, I will explore two twentieth century precursors—Hans Morgenthau and Simone de Beauvoir—before returning to Scheffler to see that his argument can not only show us why future generations matter, but it can also give us hope for immortality and a blueprint for embracing a changing future. (shrink)

Pride in our own actions tells a story: we faced a challenge, overcame it, and achieved something praiseworthy. In this paper, I draw on recent psychological literature to distinguish to between two varieties of pride, 'authentic' pride that focuses on particular efforts (like guilt) and 'hubristic' pride that focuses on the whole self (like shame). Achievement pride is fitting when either efforts or traits explain our success in meeting contextually relevant, authoritative, and challenging standards without excessive opportunity cost. When it (...) is fitting, our lives are at least somewhat meaningful. (shrink)

There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and (...) how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting —it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today. (shrink)

There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and (...) how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting —it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Affect Attunement in the Caregiver-Infant Relationship and Across SpeciesExpanding the Ethical Scope of ErosCynthia WillettCompelling glimpses into the ethical capacities of our animal kin reveal new possibilities for ethical relationships encompassing humans with other animal species. Consider the remarkable report of a female bonobo in a British zoo who assists a bird found in her cage by retrieving the fallen bird, and spreading its wings so that this fellow (...) creature might fly away to its freedom. Or the report of a cat in a nursing home who curls up around dying elderly patients, and remains steadily by their side as they, unbeknownst to the medical personnel, pass away.1 Or of a sacred moment of silence by a stream for baboons in East Africa.2 Or of the ethics that spontaneously emerges among wolves at play.3 On the basis of extensive studies, biologist Frans de Waal argues that such anecdotes are far from rare, and that some core elements of moral understanding and compassion occur among a significant range of nonhuman as well as the human animal species. Apes, monkeys, and perhaps all nonhuman animals fail to display a distinctly human capacity for abstract moral reasoning. As de Waal (2006) remarks, it is difficult to tell (173–75). But our furry and feathery kin do without a doubt demonstrate rich elements of ethical response, and they often enough extend their moral concern to creatures beyond their own species. Of course, they will also bite each other’s heads off or eat their own young as well. But this is just to say that animals are neither natural [End Page 111] innocents nor savage brutes. Like us, they belong to what post-Nietzschean philosophers might frame, somewhat ironically, as a postlapsarian world of good and evil.What kind of philosophical approach could account for these postlapsarian genealogies of ethics? Biologists, primatologists, and anthropologists are drawing upon investigations of prosocial behavior to remap the boundaries of ethics, as for example in Isabelle Stengers’s call for cosmopolitical ecologies of relationships (2010, 33). Such a cosmopolitics aims to encompass our kin and kind from diverse species within the ethical boundaries of common worlds. Donna Haraway discovers an opening for Stengers’s ecology of relationships in the intimate encounters among co-evolving species, especially those she calls companion species (2008, 83). She argues, following Derrida, that the abstract reasoning processes of Stoic and Kantian cosmopolitan ethics remain closed to the participation of nonhuman animals as anything more than dependents, failing to observe the ways in which they act as companions, if not moral subjects. But then, what normative force might bind together an ethically attuned biosocial sphere that we as humans co-inhabit with other animal species?To explore this question, this essay takes its cues from well-established research on the responsive, preverbal connection of the human infant and adult caregiver (Bateson 1979; Trevarthen 1984; Stern 1985, 2010; Gibbs 2001, 2010; Hansen 2004; Anderson 2006; Papoulias and Callard 2010; Willett 1995, 2001). To this research we can add new animal studies (Smuts 1999, 2001; Fudge 2002; de Waal 2006, 2009; Bekoff 2007; Molnar 2008; Haraway 2008). These animal studies provide a basis for extending an “ethics of eros” with roots in Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault, Enrique Dussel, Africana feminism, Freudo-Marxist critical theory, and Plato (for discussions of this tradition, see Bergoffen 1997; Huffer 2009; Willett 2001)—but reconfigured in terms of social bonds across multiple animal species. In this tradition of ethics, the lack of a cognitive-based moral subjectivity that can translate into human terms does not consign nonhuman species to a mute moral status. On the contrary, some more primordial basis for relationship and meaning may weave thin but substantial threads of a postmoral ethics across regions of the biosphere.Given the diverse modes of subjectivity among animal species, and even the lack of what we call a moral subject altogether in many species, neither ordinary modes of empathy nor of moral understanding go very far in forging multispecies social bonds. For this reason, we turn to research on “the attunement of affects” in the infant-caregiver relationship (Stern 1985). As we shall see, this... (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

A 22-month longitudinal study of (self)employed disabled workers (_Following the preference of the lead author who identifies as disabled, the linguistic self-presentation by our participants, the precedent of _(Hein and Ansari, Academy of Management Journal 65:749–783, 2022)_, and the clarification note included in Jammaers & Zanoni’s recent review of ableism _(Jammaers and Zanoni, Organization Studies 42:429–452, 2021)_, we chose, and consistently use, the term “disabled employees” throughout the paper. We do so to underscore the premise of the social model of (...) disability, which explains that “people are disabled first and foremost by society, not by their individual, biological impairment. To us this term most clearly highlights that it is society (and possibly organizations) that disable and oppress people with impairments, by preventing their access, integration and inclusion to all walks of life, making them ‘disabled’.” _(Jammaers and Zanoni, Organization Studies 42:429–452, 2021_: 448_)) models the growing centrality of the body in meaning-making. We inductively explain how body dramas of suffering or thriving initially instigate cycles of meaning deflation and inflation at work. Our disjunctive process model shows that, at the beginning of the pandemic, disabled workers performed either dramas of suffering or on dramas of thriving. However, as the global pandemic unfolded, disabled workers begun crafting composite dramas that deliberately juxtaposed thriving and suffering. This conjunctive process model stabilized meaning-making at work by acknowledging the duality of the disabled body, as both anomaly and asset. Our findings elaborate, and bridge, emerging theories of body work and recursive meaning-making to explain how disabled workers explicitly enroll their bodies to make meaning at work during periods of societal upheaval. (shrink)

Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some defend human procreation by saying that procreative parenting adds meaning to parents’ life. This article examines one such defence, and argues that it does not suffice to rescue human procreation from the challenges to procreation.

In liberal political theory, meaningful work is conceptualised as a preference in the market. Although this strategy avoids transgressing liberal neutrality, the subsequent constraint upon state intervention aimed at promoting the social and economic conditions for widespread meaningful work is normatively unsatisfactory. Instead, meaningful work can be understood to be a fundamental human need, which all persons require in order to satisfy their inescapable interests in freedom, autonomy, and dignity. To overcome the inadequate treatment of meaningful work by liberal political (...) theory, I situate the good of meaningful work within a liberal perfectionist framework, from which standpoint I develop a normative justification for making meaningful work the object of political action. To understand the content of meaningful work, I make use of Susan Wolf’s distinct value of meaningfulness, in which she brings together the dimensions of objectivity and subjectivity into the ‘bipartite value’ of meaningfulness (BVM) (Wolf, Meaning in life and why it matters, 2010). However, in order to be able to incorporate the BVM into our lives, we must become valuers, that is, co-creators of values and meanings. This demands that we acquire the relevant capabilities and status as co-authorities in the realm of value. I conclude that meaningful work is of first importance because it is a fundamental human need, and that society ought to be arranged to allow as many people as possible to experience their work as meaningful through the development of the relevant capabilities. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the use of the concept of human flourishing with regard to children. We will argue that the concept can meaningfully be applied to parts of human lives, specifically one's childhood, and discuss when we can meaningfully speak of a flourishing child. Viewing children's lives in terms of whether they are flourishing may be able to help us understand and articulate in which ways a child's life may go better or worse. This is (...) relevant, firstly, to the overall evaluation of people's lives, and secondly, because a flourishing childhood could be instrumentally necessary for adult flourishing. But, most importantly, childhood is a period of life that is good in itself irrespective of its contribution to adult flourishing, that is, being able to be a child has intrinsic goodness. Children have particular characteristics that can optimally function in childhood. While these contribute to the overall evaluation of a flourishing life, they are not regarded as valuable only because of this contribution. (shrink)

In this paper, I make the case for risks and burdens of morality and meaning. Recognizing such risks and burdens would require many of us to expand how we think about the imposition of risks and burdens. As I take it, if such an expansion helps us make more sense of relevant cases and helps us clarify or resolve debates for which risks and burdens are relevant, then it is well-motivated. Accordingly, I will demonstrate the relevance of my proposed expansion (...) to recent philosophical discussion on the ethics of procreation and provide a series of cases which my proposed expansion makes more sense of than an unexpanded account of risks and burdens and. Moreover, if adopted, I expect an expanded notion of risks and burdens will have implications far beyond procreative ethics. (shrink)

Despite urgent calls for more research on the integration of business ethics and the meaning of work, to date, there have been few corresponding efforts, and we know surprisingly little about this relationship. In this study, we address this issue by examining when and for whom ethical leadership is more effective in promoting a sense of work meaningfulness among employees, and their subsequent work attitudes. Drawing on the contingency theories of leadership and work meaningfulness literature, we speculate that both employees’ (...) core self-evaluation and perceived organizational support moderate the relationship, but in different ways, and these associations carry over to employees’ subsequent work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data collected from 377 employees. Results indicate that ethical leadership is effective in eliciting work meaningfulness and attitudes for employees higher in CSE or when POS is lower, and ineffective for those lower in CSE or when POS is higher. A supplementary analysis reveals a three-way interaction between ethical leadership, CSE and POS in predicting a sense of work meaningfulness and subsequent work attitudes. Our research cautions that ethical leadership is not a universally positive practice; it can be ineffective or even have a negative impact under some circumstances. (shrink)

This paper argues that the principles of spiritual traditions provide normative ‘standards of goodness’ within which practitioners evaluate meaningful work. Our comparative study of practitioners in the Buddhist and Quaker traditions provide a fine-grained analysis to illuminate, that meaningfulness is deeply connected to particular tradition-specific philosophical and theological ideas. In the Buddhist tradition, meaningfulness is temporal and rooted in Buddhist principles of non-attachment, impermanence and depending-arising, whereas in the Quaker tradition, the Quaker testimonies and theological ideas frame meaningfulness as eternal. (...) Surprisingly, we find that when faced with unethical choices and clashes between organizational normativity and spiritual normativity, Buddhist practitioners acknowledge the temporal character of meaningfulness and compromise their moral values, whereas in contrast, Quaker practitioners morally disengage from meaningless work. Our study highlights how normative commitments in different spiritual traditions can influence different levels of adaptability in finding work meaningful and stresses the central importance of normative commitments in meaningful work. Our study concludes with practical implications and future pathways for inter-disciplinary research. (shrink)

The literature on meaningful work often highlights the role of leaders in creating a sense of meaning in the work or tasks that their staff or followers carry out. However, a fundamental question arises about whether or not leaders are morally responsible for providing meaningful work when perceptions of what is meaningful may differ between leaders and followers. Drawing on Buddhist ethics and interviews with thirty-eight leaders in Vietnam who practise ‘engaged Buddhism’ in their leadership, we explore how leaders understand (...) their roles in creating meaningfulness at work and their perceptions of how employees experience their leadership approach in this respect. On the basis of Buddhist ontology on the sense of meaningfulness, we introduce a number of leadership approaches in cultivating meaning at work that question the argument that leaders are primarily responsible for enabling or satisfying employees’ search for meaning. The study provides an alternative lens through which to examine the role of leadership from a Buddhist ethics perspective and shows how an insight from this particular tradition can enrich secular interpretations of meaningful work and leadership. (shrink)

Remote work, understood here as a working environment different from the traditional office working space, is a phenomenon that has existed for many years. In the past, workers voluntarily opted, when they were allowed to, to work remotely rather than commuting to their traditional work environment. However, with the emergence of the global pandemic (corona virus-COVID-19), people were forced to work remotely to mitigate the spread of the virus. Consequently, researchers have identified some benefits and adverse effects of remote work, (...) especially in the age of COVID-19, ranging from flexible time and environment to technostress and isolation. In this paper, using a phenomenological approach, specifically, the sub-Saharan African experiences, I contend that remote work in the age of advanced technologies has obscured the value of relationality due to the problem of isolation in sub-Saharan African workplaces. For sub-Saharan Africans, relationality is a prerequisite moral value to becoming a person. In addition, relationality contributes to meaningfulness in the workspace. Obscuring the value of relationality in the aforementioned locale leads to meaninglessness in the workspace. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the existing literature on meaningful work by critically showing the importance of the value of relationality as a key element that adds meaning to work in sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

Meaningful work is an important ideal, but it seems hard to give an adequate account of meaningful work. In this article, I conduct a revisionary conceptual analysis of ‘meaningful work’, i.e. a conceptual analysis that aims at finding a better and more useful way to use this term. I argue for a distinction between cases where work itself is meaningful and cases where other sources of meaning are found at work. The term ‘meaningful work’ is most useful for the former (...) cases. I then argue for the reasons account of what makes work itself meaningful: work is meaningful if (and to the extent that) there are good reasons to do it. I compare this to established accounts of meaningful work, such as subjective meaningfulness, self-realization, alienation, the unity of conception and execution, autonomy, social contribution, and Veltman’s four-dimensional account. None of these capture the distinct concern that the concept ‘meaningful work’ should capture, or they do so less well than the reasons account. This also shows that work can be meaningful regardless of whether it is good in other respects, such as in inherent interest or opportunities for self-realization. (shrink)

Philosophy, by and large, tends to dwell on what might be called the woeful nature of reality—finitude, suffering, loss, death, and the like. While these topics are no doubt worthy of philosophical concern, undue focus on them tends to obscure other facets of our experience and of reality, giving philosophy a temperament that could justifiably be called melancholic. Without besmirching the value of such inquiry, this paper suggests that philosophers have largely ignored the experience of joy and, consequently, missed its (...) distinctive contributions to our understanding of the meaningfulness of life and the goodness of being. Traditional accounts of the problem of evil are rooted in what John D. Caputo calls “strong theology,” which tends to construe evil as a problem to which God should supply the answer or solution. However, if we call into question traditional accounts of omnipotence, evil ceases to be a problem, and we become free to engage it as part of what Gabriel Marcel calls “the mystery of being.” Thus liberated, we are free to assess more clearly phenomena missed by melancholic accounts of being, among them the experience of joy, attested to in diverse forms of philosophy, literature, memoir, and elsewhere. (shrink)

This paper focuses on three distinct issues in Fischer’s Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life, viz. meaning in life, fearing death, and asymmetrical attitudes between our prenatal and postmortem non-existence. I first raise the possibility that life’s total meaning can be negative and argue that immoral or harmful acts are plausibly meaning-detracting acts, which could make the lives of historically impactful evil dictators anti-meaningful. After that, I review Fischer’s two necessary conditions for meaning in life and argue against each. In (...) the second section, I review Fischer’s argument that we should fear death in virtue of it bringing about a permanent loss of our viewpoint. I offer an opposing argument that only intrinsic badness is a fitting object of fear. Since death is extrinsically bad, it cannot merit fear, even though it can be the appropriate object of other negative attitudes. In the third and final section, I consider Fischer’s solution to the asymmetry problem, which appeals to the rationality of temporal bias. I then raise two worries about it. I first argue that temporal bias is not necessarily, as Fischer claims, survival conducive. I then argue that, even if it is, this may actually be an epistemic defeater for the rationality of temporal bias. (shrink)

It is only in the last few decades that analytic philosophers in particular have begun to pay any serious attention to the topic of life’s meaning. Such philosophers, however, do not usually attempt to answer or analyse the traditional question ‘What is the meaning of life?’, but rather the subtly different question ‘What makes a life meaningful?’ and it is generally assumed that the latter can be discussed independently of the former. Nevertheless, this paper will argue that the two questions (...) are indeed connected, and that identifying and expanding upon the most plausible analysis of the former will provide the resources necessary to determine the most plausible answer to the latter. Specifically, this paper will argue that the traditional question is simply a request for the information which constitutes a coherent answer to one or more of a certain set of questions regarding human existence that were salient to the asker. In simpler language, the meaning of life itself is the information a person needs to make sense of it. This analysis can then also be applied to individual lives, such that asking for the meaning of X’s life is an analogous request for the information necessary to make sense of that life in particular. Running with this concept of the ‘meaning’ of something as its ‘sense’, the paper then outlines an accompanying theory of ‘meaningfulness’ as ‘sensefulness’: a measure of the richness of certain aspects of the life, multiplied by their intelligibility. (shrink)

One way of being responsible for an action is being praiseworthy for it. But what is the “praise” of which the praiseworthy agent is worthy? This paper provides a survey of answers to this question, i.e. a survey of possible accounts of praise’s nature. It then presents an overview of candidate norms governing our responses of praise. By attending to praise’s nature and appropriateness conditions, we stand to acquire a richer conception of what it is to be, and to regard (...) another as, a responsible agent. (shrink)

Meaningfulness is the dimension of importance that exists for beings capable of adjudicating between competing kinds of normative reasons. The way an agent decides to rank competing values in terms of importance reflects that agent’s understanding of what counts as meaningful. We can imagine agents who do not engage in this kind of deliberation. Agents who fail to adjudicate between kinds of normative reasons can still act in ways that are prudentially valuable, aesthetically pleasing, and morally praiseworthy. While the actions (...) of such agents can be good in a variety of ways such actions can also be meaningless. This paper explains how meaningfulness is connected to deliberation, how one can be mistaken in one’s judgments of meaningfulness, and how some lives and practices can be more meaningful than others. (shrink)

This paper explores the process of aging from a phenomenological perspective. Supplementing the model of becoming old found in Simone de Beauvoir’s work with a phenomenology of human suffering and flourishing, it asks whether it is possible to lead a good life in the process of becoming old. Is it possible to flourish while experiencing bodily waning? Is it possible to flourish while experiencing the shrinking of one’s everyday world and the passing away of close others? Aging, at least in (...) its protracted phases, appears to become full of suffering rather than flourishing. What are the prospects of finding meaningful life projects despite old age? By making use of insight found in Heidegger and other phenomenologists the paper tries to develop a slightly different view on aging than the one found in Beauvoir, stressing the importance of embodied experiences and life choices, which not only depend upon societal oppression and being objectified by others, but also upon processes of nature and the possibilities of an intergenerational intersubjectivity. Resources for this project is found in the philosophy of affectivity developed by Heidegger and other phenomenologists of facticity, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

Can a moral monster - a person whose life is characterised by immoral actions - live a meaningful life? Pre-theoretical intuitions appear divided. For some, moral monsters can't live a meaningful life because they were immoral, while for others they did because morality is irrelevant. So what is the relationship between morality and meaning? This article contends that both sides are partially correct but for the wrong reasons: moral monsters don’t live meaningful lives, but morality is irrelevant for meaning. First, (...) it is argued moral monsters live meaningless lives not because of immoral actions per se, but rather the harm they cause. Second, that moral monsters can live meaningful lives confuses meaningfulness with significance. Significance, I propose, is conferred upon a life when one's actions impact others' well-being for good or ill. On the view, moral monsters live meaningless but significant lives. (shrink)

The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is asking. (...) I go on to articulate a theory of what I call existential grounding, a notion which explains the role that prospective children play in the lives of many would-be parents. Procreative ethicists who want their work to have real practical relevance must, I claim, start to engage with this markedly first-personal kind of practical consideration. (shrink)

David Benatar argues that being brought into existence is always a net harm and never a benefit. I disagree. I argue that if you bring someone into existence who lives a life worth living, then you have not all things considered wronged her. Lives are worth living if they are high in various objective goods and low in objective bads. These lives constitute a net benefit. In contrast, lives worth avoiding constitute a net harm. Lives worth avoiding are net high (...) in objective bads and low in objective goods. It is the prospect of a LWA that gives us good reason to not bring someone into existence. Happily, many lives are not worth avoiding. Contra Benatar, many are indeed worth living. Even if we grant Benatar his controversial asymmetry thesis, we have no reason to think that coming into existence is always a net harm. (shrink)

I defend the theory that one's life is meaningful to the extent that one promotes the good. Call this the good cause account (GCA) of the meaning of life. It holds that the good effects that count towards the meaning of one's life need not be intentional. Nor must one be aware of the effects. Nor does it matter whether the same good would have resulted if one had not existed. What matters is that one is causally responsible for the (...) good. I argue that the best theory of the meaning of life should clearly distinguish between subjective fulfillment and objective meaningfulness. The GCA respects the distinction. And it is superior to its leading rivals in the recent literature, most notably those of Erik Wielenberg and Susan Wolf. (shrink)

Can any being worthy of worship make others worship it? I think not. By way of an analogy to love, I argue that it is perfectly coherent to think that one could be made to worship. However, forcing someone to worship violates their autonomy, not because worship must be freely given, but because forced worship would be inauthentic—much like love earned through potions. For this reason, I argue that one cannot be made to worship properly; forced worship would be unfitting. (...) My principal claim is that no being worthy of worship could exercise the power to make others worship it, since the act of making another worship would necessarily make one unworthy of worship. (shrink)

The concept of meaningful work has recently received increased attention in philosophy and other disciplines. However, the impact of the increasing robotization of the workplace on meaningful work has received very little attention so far. Doing work that is meaningful leads to higher job satisfaction and increased worker well-being, and some argue for a right to access to meaningful work. In this paper, we therefore address the impact of robotization on meaningful work. We do so by identifying five key aspects (...) of meaningful work: pursuing a purpose, social relationships, exercising skills and self-development, self-esteem and recognition, and autonomy. For each aspect, we analyze how the introduction of robots into the workplace may diminish or enhance the meaningfulness of work. We also identify a few ethical issues that emerge from our analysis. We conclude that robotization of the workplace can have both significant negative and positive effects on meaningful work. Our findings about ways in which robotization of the workplace can be a threat or opportunity for meaningful work can serve as the basis for ethical arguments for how to—and how not to—implement robots into workplaces. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence-driven technology increasingly shapes work practices and, accordingly, employees’ opportunities for meaningful work (MW). In our paper, we identify five dimensions of MW: pursuing a purpose, social relationships, exercising skills and self-development, autonomy, self-esteem and recognition. Because MW is an important good, lacking opportunities for MW is a serious disadvantage. Therefore, we need to know to what extent employers have a duty to provide this good to their employees. We hold that employers have a duty of beneficence to design (...) for opportunities for MW when implementing AI-technology in the workplace. We argue that this duty of beneficence is supported by the three major ethical theories, namely, Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. We defend this duty against two objections, including the view that it is incompatible with the shareholder theory of the firm. We then employ the five dimensions of MW as our analytical lens to investigate how AI-based technological innovation in logistic warehouses has an impact, both positively and negatively, on MW, and illustrate that design for MW is feasible. We further support this practical feasibility with the help of insights from organizational psychology. We end by discussing how AI-based technology has an impact both on meaningful work (often seen as an aspirational goal) and decent work (generally seen as a matter of justice). Accordingly, ethical reflection on meaningful and decent work should become more integrated to do justice to how AI-technology inevitably shapes both simultaneously. (shrink)

I explore some surprising results concerning positive individual contributions, focusing on those made in one's job or in the position one holds. The replaceability of most people on the job or in positions of influence threatens our common sense notion of contribution. Two concepts of contribution are distinguished, and help to limit the sense of paradox, but do not completely eliminate it. The ideal of making a contribution that would not be done were one not to do it is seen (...) as both highly threatening and potentially very important for acquiring meaning in one's life. Finally, some hazards of our conclusions are seen to lead to thoughts about the dangers of open disclosure. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show how MacIntyre’s concept of a practice can survive a series of ‘scope problems’ which threaten to render the concept inapplicable to business ethics. I begin by outlining MacIntyre’s concept of a practice before arguing that, despite an asymmetry between productive and non-productive practices, the elasticity of the concept of a practice allows us to accommodate productive and profitable activities. This elasticity of practices allows us to sidestep the problem of adjudicating between practitioners and non-practitioners as (...) well as the problem of generic activities. I conclude by suggesting that the contemporary tendency to regard work as an object of consumption, rather than undermining MacIntyre’s account of practices, serves to demonstrate the potential breadth of its applicability. (shrink)

Aaron Smuts argues that the holiday film It's a Wonderful Life should be understood as both an illustration and a cinematic vindication of objective list theories of worth. This article argues that he is right about the first point but wrong about the second. It's a Wonderful Life is an excellent illustration of objective list theories. However, it also exposes a problem for them – their susceptibility to sceptical anxieties about whether we can know if our lives are worth living. (...) More specifically, I argue that It's a Wonderful Life shows how our lives are vulnerable to two sceptical anxieties, one arising from our potential inability to confirm our successes in promoting the good, the other from our potential inability to ascertain which goods can properly be said to be in our lives due to gaps in our self-knowledge and our potential for self-deception. (shrink)

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Wolf's recent collection of essays, The Variety of Values, makes clear that she is a hedgehog in Isaiah Berlin's well-known sense of the term. That is, she is engaged with an overarching problematic rather than a series of disconnected inquiries. The reader is presented with a rich tapestry of interwoven motifs (...) that offer a complex portrait of the mind of an important figure in contemporary moral philosophy. The greatest virtue of this volume lies in the Gestalt that emerges from essays written over the course of a fruitful philosophical career. In the semi-autobiographical introduction, itself one of the gems of the volume, Wolf acknowledges the deep unity of her thought. As she lightheartedly jests, ‘I wonder whether I... (shrink)

John Danaher and Sven Nyholm have argued that automation, especially of the sort powered by artificial intelligence, poses a threat to meaningful work by diminishing the chances for meaning-conferring workplace achievement, what they call “achievement gaps”. In this paper, I argue that Danaher and Nyholm’s achievement gap thesis suffers from an ambiguity. The weak version of the thesis holds that automation may result in the appearance of achievement gaps, whereas the strong version holds that automation may result on balance loss (...) in possibilities for workplace achievements, i.e., in the appearance of an overall gappier work landscape. Against the strong version of the achievement gap thesis, I characterize situations where automation may result in boons to meaning-conferring workplace achievements: the appearance of what I call achievement spread and achievement swaps. Nevertheless, Danaher and Nyholm are right to worry about some uses of automation whereby human workers become subservient to AI. But these situations are better framed, I argue, as autonomy gaps rather than achievement gaps. (shrink)

A common idea about assessing meaning in life is that one draws up a list of those various positive values that one has achieved and subtracts from it one's negative deeds in life. The resulting balance is the meaningfulness of one's existence. I call this the ledger theory. Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita and Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending, I argue for a phenomenology of remorse that gives us reason to reject the ledger theory. Even (...) those agents whose lives have been exceptionally meaningful in some respects may remain haunted by their past. Certain sorts of misdeeds – those that involve significant, irreparable damage – leave life marred in such a way that the negative remains, even in the face of all the meaningful deeds of life. (shrink)

What place do experiences of beauty have in a meaningful life? A marginal one, at best, it would seem, if one looks at the current literature in analytic philosophy. Treatments of beauty within so-called “analytic existentialism” tend to suffer from four limitations: beauty is neglected, reduced to artistic production, saddled to theology, or taken as a mere application of a broader theoretical framework. These discussions fail to engage with the rich tradition of philosophical aesthetics. In this essay, I begin by (...) responding to the contention that experiences of beauty cannot lend life meaning because they are passive. Drawing on work in philosophical aesthetics, I then argue that encounters with the beautiful count as genuinely meaning-conferring because they have features commonly taken as marks of meaningfulness. (shrink)

What can one person teach another about living meaningfully? Recent discussions about the relationship between education and finding meaning in life have tended to focus on institutional and curricular matters and, as a consequence, have sidelined the importance of the vocation of teaching. Drawing on Raimond Gaita’s philosophy of education, I suggest that his view of the love of a subject embodied in and demonstrated by teachers illuminates both the nature of leading a meaningful life as well as an important (...) role that education might play in helping students to live meaningfully. I argue that a significant way for teachers to aid students in leading meaningful lives is to show them what it is to love a subject or field of inquiry. (shrink)

Does the rise of artificial intelligence pose a threat to human sources of meaning? While much ink has been spilled on how AI could undercut meaningful human work, John Danaher has raised the stakes by claiming that AI could “sever” human beings from non-work-related sources of meaning—specifically, those related to intellectual and moral goods. Against this view, I argue that his suggestion that AI poses a threat to these areas of meaningful activity is overstated. Self-transformative activities pose a hard limit (...) to AI’s impingement on meaningful human activities. Contra Danaher, I suggest that a wider range of sources for meaning will continue to exist in a world dominated by AI. (shrink)

The partiality we display, in so far as we form and sustain personal attachments, is not normatively fundamental. It is a by-product of the deference and responsiveness that are essential to our engagement with the world. We cannot form and sustain valuable personal relationships without seeing ourselves as answerable to the other participants in those relationships. And we cannot develop and sustain valuable projects without responding to the constraints imposed on our activities by the nature and requirements of those projects (...) themselves. More generally, we cannot engage with the world without responding differentially—or displaying partiality—with respect to the objects of our engagement. Partiality is thus a by-product of engagement. We cannot engage with the world at all without exhibiting forms of partiality. (shrink)

Why are hard decisions hard? According to the incomparabilists, hard choices are hard because the options cannot be compared. Proponents of parity hold that hard choices are hard because the options can be compared but only in terms of a fourth value relation—parity—in addition to the three standard relations: better, worse, and equally good. Others claim that hard choices are hard because it is vague (or indeterminate) how the options relate in terms of the three standard relations. Lastly, there is (...) the epistemicist. For the epistemicist, hard choices are hard because one is irresolvably ignorant about how the options compare. In the debate about hard choices, epistemicism is often mentioned but rarely defended. The present paper is a contribution to closing this gap. (shrink)