PHILOSOPHY ESSAY QUESTION: What is a ‘naturalist’ account of meaning in life? Within that category, assess whether or not there is a plausible form of the objectivist view, according to which having meaning in one’s life is a matter of having certain worthwhile things in it, whether or not one has any pro-stance toward these things.
Notes to include: Objectivists instead say the things in life that add to its meaning do so whether or not one desires these things. Some candidates for being objectively meaningful things in one’s life are: loving relationships, self-knowledge, achievement. One objectivist view, for example, is that any instance of any of these three things adds some meaning in the life of anyone who has it. Metz thinks of objectivism as a form of ‘naturalism’ about meaning in life. He also tends to treat any view that includes any objectivist component as an objectivist view, even if that view also includes a subjectivist component. For instance, he treats as objectivist the view that to add meaning in one’s life is to be both an objectively attractive thing in one’s life and an object of one’s subjective attraction.
Readings
Thad Metz, ‘The Meaning of Life’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/ Section 3.2.
Thad Metz, Meaning in Life, Oxford University Press, 2013, chs. 10-12 (ch.12 is on Metz’s own objectivist theory, chs. 10-11 are on the objectivist accounts of others).
Andrew Moore, ‘Naturalism’, Blackboard, to be updated in Sept. 2020.
Andrew Moore, ‘Metz on meaning of life’, Blackboard, to be updated in Sept. 2020.
Aaron Smuts, Welfare, Meaning, and Worth, Routledge, 2017. Chapter 5 argues for a consequentialist form of objectivism about meaning in/of life. Chapter 3 argues for an objective list theory (OLT) about worth, but is also a valuable source of ideas for a potential OLT about meaning. On Smuts, see also Andrew Moore, ‘Review: Aaron Smuts, Welfare, Meaning, and Worth’, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2018) https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/welfare-meaning-and-worth/