Meaning of Life Final

Wolf's critique for Feinberg

Mistakes what's good for the agent for meaning. aka) why is fulfilling your nature your meaning? 2) what about a person who transcends her nature and does something great? Is that a meaningless life? (Why not just say you were wrong about your nature? 3) lots of us have a desire to live lives we can be proud of from the 3rd person point of view. Feinberg closes of that possibility.

Trace Scheffler

Traces are at least necessary for meaning.

what does the will cheat

VALUES - relative as opposed to facts (projection of mind)

Williams

What makes death bad? Flanagan- takes away ability to express yourself

Numerical identity versus qualitative identity (STRAWSON)

(strict) v (human being) self = person we want a distinction between a person and a human being.

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what does intellect recognizes

FACTS

how does Sartre reply to that objection? why isn't this committed to the destruction of all morality? isn't this just 'anything goes'? Is there any basis for judging other human beings?

we have to act in anguish. bad faith as a basis for judgement. bad faith is a logical error - cowards.

Sartre Despair. ex and objection.

we have to act without hope. attaching ourselves to long term goals. simply the existentialist's attitude to the recalcitrance or obstinacy of the aspects of the world that are beyond our control ex) communism (sartre time) objection: why isn't this committed to the destruction of all morality? isn't this just 'anything goes'? Is there any basis for judging other human beings?

dangers of achieving a set aim

what do you do when you get there?. no guarantee you will get there.

Pitcher's view

what happens post-mortem can affect your life in all sorts of ways, good and bad, but while you're alive. If pitcher is right, can't rule out Traces view from the start. Not all harms change intrinsic properties (slander). the future is fixed (no backwards causation).

objection to any traces view

what happens post-mortem can't affect the meaning of the pre-mortem life.

Sartre

what really is existentialism? it is existence preceding essence. (blueprint, purpose, nature, goal = essence) ex) paper knife.

Wiggins Lynchpin

when the will attaches to something, it/intellect has to believe it's objectively good.

Would either of these changes work? example of blind cannibalistic cave worm

worms glow and attract bugs to eat, go through metamorphosis and become the bug, then get attracted to the lights of the cave worms and then die. (cycle).

difference between wronged and harmed

wrong- someone is wronged just in case her rights were violated/an obligation to her its not honored. harm: an event or state of affairs harms someone just in case it's contrary to one or more of her important desires or interests .

How could the God be kind to Sisyphus?

1) Allow Sisyphus to build a temple (change circumstance 2) make sisyphus enjoy rolling the rock up the hill (change him)

What are the arguments for thinking human life is Taylor Absurd (feinberg)

1) super market regress. circular justification. go to grocery store to get food to continue to live to go to work to make money to get food

Problem with Traces

1- are we free? Flanagan: not a problem. Compatibilism -> Traces view -> turning on some agency. why death is prima facie bad Traces matter because they are expressions of a self. 2- is there such a thing as a self that continues through time (during life)?

Flanagan

Compatibilism. Determinism and freedom are compatible.

Flanagan -

Meaning is a function of self expression. Naturalistic transcendence: leaving traces of one's self-expression.

Wolf's reply to Cahn

I'm not telling you what's valuable, just that there is a fact of the matter. If Cahn believes in objective morality, why is he so sure there's non-moral objective to value.

Wiggins claim

JPS, RT, TN all committed to this divorce of FACT from VALUE and INTELLECT from WILL.

what is that view?

MORAL REALISM

What does Sartre deny

Sartre denies mind-independent morality, because he didn't believe in God. (so morality couldn't be based on faith)

Why Nietzshean?

Suggests that we have to use a narrative artistry to express ourselves.

how do lessons 1 and 2 help with Taylor absurdity?

Taylor absurdity (pointlessness) discrepancy between means (merely instrumental) and goal/outcome/ends. nothing or something without value.

Sartre and Taylor

Taylor- real story is biological. Sartre- thinks claiming biological is bad faith. Taylor AND Sartre - there is no objective purpose to life, except what comes from within.

Wolf's positive view

a meaningful life is one of active engagement in project's of worth.

order of Sartres things

abandonment, anguish, despair

success. primae facie problems (based on first impression)

absolute versus relative success

Feinberg not all _____ are merely instrumentally valuable

activities. salmon's nature is to swim upstream

naturalism

all phenomena are natural and subject to causal principles (determinism plus physicalism)

Flanagan's reply to the Libet experiment

as long as you have the power to stop the action you have free will. compatibilism is not threatened by Libet.

try to flee our freedom because: anguish (sartre)

awareness of your own freedom and hence responsibility. In choosing your essence, you choose for all mankind. If you choose a path as the right one, you're saying it's right for everyone else. results in bad faith

Cahn weaknesses

badly written piece of philosophy. All he does is attack other (Wolf's) view. in a patronizing way of rephrasing wold in a way that's less convincing than the original.

germ of truth of relative success

being the best you can given the circumstances. inner success as a process/continuing state. being the best you CAN given the CIRCUMSTANCES

sartre and taylor

both separate fact from value. realm of value is not part of the objective realm.

Kant's moral theory difference

can't treat other people as means to an end. it is independent. JPS says someone is always the means to an end.

2 kinds of why questions:

cause and justification ex) against recreational torture of infants -causal - mind numbingly complex neurons etc/ justification - moral

is this true?

counterexample - drugs , chocolate when the will attaches to something BIG (not immediate pleasure )

substance dualism

the mind is a non-physical substance (=thing). the mind is a non-physical thing that could interact with a physical thing gives up laws on physics

distinction between the I that is the object of inner awareness: diachronic and episodic

diachronic: someone who naturally figures in her own past and future as numerically the same self episodic: (someone who is not a diachronic) instead experiences past and future as belonging to a numerically different self

Wiggins overall on distortion

distortion bc that's not how things look from the inside (AKA tous).

danger of relative success

does this set the bar too law? does it matter what the goal is

Values are akin to prescription - Taylor is forced to agree BECAUSE

don't do x,y,z otherwise sisyphus wouldn't need the injection to enjoy rolling the rock uphill.

Which of the four threats are worth worrying about?

erasure/death and contingency aren't that big of a deal (Edwards and Baggini)

four threats of meaninglessness (RT)

erasure/death, contingency, absurdity, pointlessness.

determinism

every state of affairs follows necessarily from the previous one.

why hedonism can't be right

experience machine- people don't choose it. authenticity matters more than happiness. - hedonists would have to change he definition of happiness to include authenticity

Baggini on success

falling in love/staying in love. having your own home. financial independence.

libertarianism

free will is not determinism. we are free -> so determinism is false. this looks like free choices are random.

compatibilism

freedom and determinism are compatible. weak sense of could have done otherwise.

Sartre and right and wrong

good and bad are agent-neutral (if hitler did a good thing it would still be good)

Epicurus thoughts on happiness

happy, but never experiencing pleasure

For other things, essence precedes existence when granted by humans

having an essence provides mind-independent standards of goodness/quality.

difference between human being and self/person

human being: biological category self/person: The 'I' that is the object of inner awareness (?) Inner mental presence distinction

Sartre against which option

if God created us, we began with essence. It's actually good that our essences don't precede our existence. Then there would be no free will. he wants meaning that is going to be self-created

what if that is right?

if this is right, then the non-cog view is incoherent. the objective view revels a world of no value. But the inner view reveals a world of no value. But the inner view has to believe that there are values. incoherence doesn't work without lynchpin

bad faith (Sartre)

ignoring the fact of your own freedom. when people blame things on human nature. sexual harassment- it's just how men behave.

non-cognitivism

in a realm of facts you can use cognitivism, but you can't in the realm of values, you can only rely on the will, which blindly choses.

Traces VIEW SCHEFFLER

indirect support to Pitcher. leaving a lasting achievement is necessary and sufficient for meaning.

constraints for a meaningful life

intrinsically valuable. isolation test- why do you want it?

non-cognitivist reply

isn't this my view? When things are apt to turn out badly, the will falters.

why is happiness a good candidate for meaning?

it is an intrinsic good

Wolf's praise of feinberg

it's possible to realize you have wasted your life, even if you've chosen your activities and they've been fun. 2) that realization is possible only if there are objective values and meaning

we're mostly free to choose otherwise than we do, even keeping the history of the universe constant

libertarian

who would say this: Nearly all events are determined; only free human actions are not determined

libertarian

RTs view on life's meaning

life is not objectively BUT it is subjectively meaningful (= we find ourselves driven to continue through life.)

Rt's solution to the threats of meaninglessness (pointlessness)

life is objectively meaningless, but subjectively meaningful in that we desire to do what we in fact do.

What is the option (from sisyphus) to make our lives meaningful? Why is the other not an option?

make us enjoy it. changing our circumstances wouldn't work because nothing we do endures forever and what would we do after ? (infinite boredom). what's so great about a temple - why does that have meaning?

Flanagan

meaning is not intrinsic to a life. Meaning is relational. What makes life meaningful on Flanagan's view.

Richard Taylor on Sisyphus- what makes his job/life meaningless?

meaninglessness is pointlessness.

Libet experiment

measured brain activity and said to move hand when you feel like it. the conscious worry: your choice is not actually causing the physical event to happen.

Cahn's objection to Wolf

mindless futile never ending tasks brings no meaning. How do we determine what is and isn't valuable? Further, there is no fact of the matter about intrinsic value. AD HOMINEM- who is susan wolf to tell us what is and isn't valuable?

genetic fallacy

missing a cause or a justification

which is friendly toward freedom

neither determinism nor libertarianism is friendly toward freedom.

Pitcher: does ultimate failure outweigh temporal success?

no, but it does diminish it.

the paradox of hedonism

not all goods change your psychological state and not all harms make a difference to your psychological state. Baggini: John Stuart Mill. hedonism- go out and be happy. if you make that your goal, you are guaranteed not to achieve it. missing concept of happiness - the directive to be happy is empty. happiness is not itself what we really care about, but the activities / goals that bring happiness

Feinberg

nothing comes from fulfilling your nature. focus on fulfilling individual nature, but also your generic nature. How could the Gods be kind to Sisyphus? -friends to fulfill generic human nature -build a temple -unique skill set to make him perfect for pushing

happiness versus pleasure

pleasure is fleeting and you are conscious of it. happiness is enduring, not necessarily a conscious state.

Taylor's new pessimistic threat

pointlessness. It is not erasure or death because his efforts are pointless even though he's immortal. It is not Nagel style absurdity because you have to take a backward step and think pointlessness. it is not contingency because being created with a purpose doesn't entail that you activity has a point.

Feinberg's view on wolf's

projects of worth have to be relevant to your nature.

how is hedonism different from psychological (descriptive) or ethical (normative) egoism

psychological egoism- all humans are selfish hedonism- meaning of life is happiness hed vs ethical - hedonism doesn't take a stance on morality, your own moral code falls within (utilitarianism, etc). ethical does take a stance; self-interest is in your best interest. ethical egoism- morality is acting in your own self-interest.

what is the germ of truth of success

relative success is the way to go

episodic examples

sketchy kev when he's sketchy. episodic can remember past event BUT doesn't experience it is happening to them.

lesson 1 : feinberg

some activities are their own point

fatalism

some future state of affairs will happen no matter what happens in the interval

supernaturalism

some phenomena are NOT natural and NOT subject to causal principles

Connection with nagel

the backwards step only buys absurdity if you believe

What is the argument here (in premise/conclusion/form) for scheffler

the existence of future generations is necessary for our lives to be meaningful (descriptive) conclusion: pointlessness requires IGs (normative claim)

Nietzsche

the greatest great. eternal return- not to tell you what the world is like, but an ethical test that splits people into yes sayers and no sayers. yes-sayers: strong no-sayers: weak and hence always out for revenge: resentment

Feinberg's story

the right way to be kind to sisyphus.

Sartre abandonment

the sense of loss caused by the realization that there is no God to warrant our moral choices. consequence of principle. no constraints, moral or otherwise, on our free choices. abandonment by God to make moral choices. ex) student- stay with lonely mother or go fight Nazis. even if Kant were right in people shouldn't be means to an end, it is not SPECIFIC enough to guide our choices. you only go to the person who you know well enough/have thought about to guess/foresee what they will see.

Taylor's take on the differences between blind cannibalistic cave worm

there are little. no different in kind from the cave worm (just degree). 'Their endless activity is just what it is their will to pursue (OPTION 2 FOR SISYPHUS)

Triezl

things last because they're important, not vice versa. the motivation for leaving traces is narcissistic -> people don't want to leave traces for future generations -> just for themselves.

Wiggins objection to this picture

this picture distorts third distortion = omits much of what we value/ understand in human life. first distortion- it makes too little to the meaning of life, how well our strivings are apt to turnout

Wiggins

this plays into my hands - if this is true, it's because the will is responding to the facts: there is a connection between WILL and the objective word. the WILL craves objective reasons.

lesson 2: feinberg

those activities are the ones that fulfill our natures

Wiggins view (usually)

we desire these things because they're good, not the case that things are good because we desire them. value/meaning is discovered, not invented at random by will. values are subset of facts