The Meaning of Life Sub Specie Aeternitatis

Several philosophers have argued that if we examine our lives in context of the cosmos at large, sub specie aeternitatis, we cannot escape life's meaninglessness. To see our lives as meaningful, we have to shun the point of view of the cosmos and consider our lives only in the narrower context of the here and now. I argue that this view is incorrect: life can be seen as meaningful also sub specie aeternitatis. While criticizing arguments by, among others, Simon Blackburn, Nicholas Rescher, and Thomas Nagel, I show that what determines assessments of the meaning of a life are the standards of meaningfulness one endorses rather than the size of the context in which that life is assessed. Employing non-demanding standards of meaningfulness to assess a life is compatible with examining it in the context of the cosmos at large. That is also the case if we accept Nagel's claim that to examine a life sub specie aeternitatis is to examine it externally, impersonally and objectively: life can be evaluated as meaningful also when under these perspectives if the standards of meaningfulness we adopt are not overly challenging. Nor does the contingency of our existence, realized sub specie aeternitatis, render our life meaningless. Contrary to a commonly accepted view, then, examining our lives sub specie aeternitatis does not necessitate that we see them as meaningless.     

How successfully can we measure well-being through measuring happiness?

Happiness is currently the topic of a wide range of empirical research, and is increasingly becoming the focus of public policy. The interest in happiness largely stems from its connection with well-being. We care about well-being – how well our lives are going for us. If we are happy it seems that, to some extent, we must be doing well. This suggests that we may be able to successfully measure well-being through measuring happiness. The problem is that both happiness and well-being are elusive and their measurement is far from uncontroversial. What exactly does information about happiness tell us about well-being? Is there more to well-being than happiness? If so, to what extent is happiness connected to well-being? These are controversial questions, but answers to them must be given if we are to make progress in the measurement of well-being. I argue that we should view happiness as an indicator of changes in well-being. I call this the Indicator View. According to this view, someone can be doing badly yet be happy insofar as their well-being is improving (and vice versa). More precisely, the Indicator View is the view that happiness is a defeasible indicator of local changes in well-being. Thus, we can successfully measure an important aspect of well-being through measuring happiness. I argue in favour of this view on the basis of an understanding of well-being that is widely acceptable. The Indicator View, therefore, has the potential to unite divided opinion over what happiness research can tell us about well-being.     

Aretaic Appraisal and Practical Reasons

When we criticize someone for being unjust, deceitful, or imprudent—or commend him as just, truthful, or wise—what is the content of our evaluation? On one way of thinking, evaluating agents in terms that employ aretaic concepts evaluates how they regulate their actions (and judgment‐sensitive attitudes) in light of the reasons that bear on them. On this virtue‐centered view of practical reasons appraisal, evaluations of agents in terms of ethical virtues (and vices) are, inter alia, evaluations of them as practical reasoners. Here I consider and respond to an objection that threatens to debunk the virtue‐centered view.     

What Sort of Collective Afterlife Matters and How

In Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler argues that the assumption of a “collective afterlife” (i.e., the assumption that the human race and humanity lives on after our own individual deaths) plays an essential role in us valuing much of what we do. If a collective afterlife did not exist, our value structures would be radically different according to Scheffler. We would cease to value much of what we do. In Part I of the paper, I argue that there is something to Scheffler’s afterlife conjecture, but that Scheffler has misplaced the mattering of a collective afterlife. Its significance lies not in the realm of axiology but more importantly in coming to terms with the fact of death and in viewing our lives as having meaning. In Part II of the paper, I outline three views on the sort of collective afterlife that matters and argue in favor of the view that it must involve creatures that recognize our existence, reasons, values, and contributions (“The Recognition Thesis”) and the view that it must involve creatures that value similar things to us (“The Valuers Like Us Thesis”)—but argue against the view that it necessarily be a human collective afterlife (“The Human Form Thesis”).     

A Systems Dilemma

The current shift of interest, reflected in public policy, from the production of goods to the provision of services, has caused a major re-examination of the nature of the services the individual can expect from his society. This re-examination is producing a number of insights, some of them shocking. In particular, we are learning that many of the systems we have created to deliver services are, in the name of “progress” and “civilization,” contributing to the conditions of human distress they were designed to alleviate. Much has been written lately about how service systems of one kind or another subvert their announced goals—how a welfare system perpetuates poverty, or how the medical profession creates iatrogenic illness. There has not been very much written, however, about how several systems inadvertently combine in their day to day operations in such a way as to frustrate each others' activities, and how, in so doing, they destroy in varying degrees the lives of people, or render it difficult for them to improve their lives. We have all been much too tightly locked in our own niches by training, experience, and various types of private interest to see this kind of interlock. It comes into sharp perspective only when one studies the problems of a single person in terms of his total life space, his “ecology.” This paper represents an effort to describe one such situation in a family as viewed from a community health services program designed to approach human crises as ecological phenomena, and to explore and respond to them within this framework. We have found that the best way to organize our view of the environmental field people move in is according to the diverse systems which make it up, so we have labeled our theoretical base “ecological systems theory.” ( 1 ) What is of particular interest to the behavioral scientist in the situation described is that neither individual nor family diagnosis, nor the contributions of the larger systems (in this case a housing system and a system of medical care) will, if viewed separately, explain the state of the man in question. Only when the contributions of all of these systems are made clear, and their interrelationships explored, do the origins of the phenomena described begin to emerge.     

Defeaters to best interests reasoning in genetic enhancement

Pre-natal genetic enhancement affords us unprecedented capacity to shape our skills, talents, appearance and perhaps subsequently the quality of our lives in terms of overall happiness, success and wellbeing. Despite its powerful appeal, some have raised important and equally persuasive concerns against genetic enhancement. Sandel has argued that compassion and humility, themselves grounded in the unpredictability of talents and skills, would be lost. Habermas has argued that genetically altered individuals will see their lives as dictated by their parents’ design and therefore will not acquire an appropriate self-understanding. How should we view enhancement efforts in light of these concerns? I propose that we begin by adopting a defeasibility stance. That is, I ask whether our belief that genetic enhancements serve in the best interests of the child is reason to genetically enhance, underscoring a sort of epistemic vulnerability. I utilize the epistemological notions of defeasible reasons, undercutting (also called undermining) and overriding (or rebutting) defeaters in order to better understand and systematically evaluate the force of such concerns. I argue that close examination of both objections using this framework shows that we have reason to enhance, a reason that is defeasible but as yet, undefeated.     

Phenomenology, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pokémon Go</Emphasis>, and Other Augmented Reality Games

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects on the everyday world of actual Augmented Reality games which introduce digital objects in our surroundings from a phenomenological point of view. Augmented Reality is a new technology aiming to merge digital and real objects, and it is becoming pervasively used thanks to the application for mobile devices Pokémon Go by Niantic. We will study this game and other similar applications to shed light on their possible effects on our lives and on our everyday world from a phenomenological perspective. In the first part, we will show how these digital objects are visualised as merged in the surroundings. We will point out that even if they are visualised as part of the everyday world, they are not part of it because they are still related to the fictional world generated by the game. In the second part, we will show how the existence of these objects in their fictional world has effects on the everyday world where everybody lives. The goal of Augmented Reality is not reached yet because these objects are not part of the everyday world, but it already makes our lives embedded with digital elements. We will show if these new objects have effects on our world and on how we live our lives.     

Are There Differences in Fatalism Between Rural Southerners and Midwesterners?1

We conducted a phone survey of the rural South and Midwest examining fatalism and riskiness of health practices. Contrary to the contentions of some historians, ethnographers, writers, and social scientists, we found no evidence that Southerners were more fatalistic than Midwesterners. Southerners were not more likely to express the view that God or fate controlled their lives, and they were not more likely to take chances with their health and safety. The present findings contradict a commonly held view of the South, as well as a famous report in Science (Sims & Baumann, 1972) maintaining that higher death rates for tornadoes in this region might be due to Southern fatalism.     

Expressions of Preference and Other Morally Problematic Instances of Prayer

When considering the role of prayer in the lives of believers, most theists agree that one important effect is the psychological impact on the person who is praying. Nevertheless, the way many of us pray, by primarily or solely focusing on our welfare and the welfare of our loved ones, agitates the human tendency towards exclusion. If we take seriously God’s commandment to love the neighbor as the self, we should use prayer, instead, as a prime opportunity to help cultivate a moral character that embraces more inclusion. In this paper, I use Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love as a framework for working towards this more inclusive view of prayer—one that widens our moral circle and awareness to include all human beings, and not just the select ones we have chosen to prefer above all others. It does not follow that we are prohibited from praying for our own welfare or the welfare of our loved ones, but it does mean that using prayer in a way that only (or primarily) shows concern for those whom we prefer is morally problematic.     

Meaning without fulfilment

Some philosophers argue that a necessary component of a meaningful life is positive affect. The implication of this type of view is that a meaningful life necessarily feels good. I respond primarily to Susan Wolf's version of this type of view; for Wolf, meaningful lives are necessarily fulfilling lives. In contrast to Wolf, I argue that people do sometimes find parts of their lives to be meaningful when the feeling of fulfilment is absent. I propose an alternative subjective condition that does not involve positive affect. I argue that meaningful parts of our lives obtain their value through their relationship to our practical identities.     

Relative Deprivation and Social Identity in Times of Dramatic Social Change: The Case of Nurses1

In the present study, an integration of relative deprivation theory and social identity theory is proposed to account for people's reactions to dramatic changes affecting their daily lives. Data collected among nurses (n = 108) indicate that feelings of relative deprivation are influenced by different perceptions of organizational change. Path analysis shows that feelings of social relative deprivation derive from negative changes that are numerous, and that temporal relative deprivation is experienced as a result of negative changes that are rapid. In terms of the link between social identity and relative deprivation, 2 contrasting approaches were tested. Analyses support the view that in‐group identification acts as a precursor, rather than as a consequence, of relative deprivation.     

Autobiographical memories for places

The purpose of the present exploratory study was to investigate operations and contents of a naturally occurring reminiscence for physical places in 26 Swedish participants. Using Conway and Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) model of autobiographical memory as a framework, two main questions were examined. First, in what sense are physical places ingredients of our selves—that is, of our self-knowledge—and, if so, how are they and their characteristics organised in the autobiographical knowledge base? Second, what form do personal memories for places take and what kinds of meanings and emotional contents do we bind to this type of reminiscence? The results showed that the Swedish participants' most important places in their lives were mainly childhood- and cottage-related rural types of milieus, and mostly categorised as summarised events; that is, frequently revisited. The personal recollections of the place-related event-specific knowledge were mostly of the generic imagery type, comprising semantic, perceptual, and emotional contents related to the “self”, “others”, and the “environment”. The memories mainly reflected on the participants' growth period and feelings of activation and pleasantness. This was more pronounced in older (M = 59) than in younger (M = 35) participants. All this indicates that physical places can serve as thematic pathways guiding reminiscence and self-knowing consciousness as we recollect details of perceptual, semantic, and emotional characters of periods in our lives.     

Virtue Ethics,Applied Ethics and Rationality twenty-three years after After Virtue

Abstract

In evaluating the merits and shortcomings of virtue ethics I focus on some central differences between virtue ethics and rival theories such as deontology and utilitarianism. Virtue ethics does not prescribe strict rules of conduct. Instead, the virtue ethical approach can be understood as an invitation to search for standards, as opposed to strict rules, that ought to guide the conduct of our individual lives. This requires a particular method. The importance of this approach in present times will become clear when we investigate the relation between virtue ethics and postmodernity. In our postmodem age moral concepts are no longer perceived as deriving their meaning from larger frameworks. Instead, their meanings are perceived as being derived from the contingencies that define our particular existences. Thus ongoing grassroots moral engagement is required, and virtue ethics is the appropriate moral framework for doing this. This results in a broadening of rationality insofar as the full richness of our situated lives are factored into our accounts of rationality. At the same time virtue ethics prevents relativism, mainly because it does justice to the social embeddedness of human activities. In order to illustrate the virtue ethical approach I will discuss two key concepts in our moral vocabulary: responsibility and integrity. We will see how these basic concepts can be properly understood only if one takes into consideration the contingencies, inherent paradoxes and tensions in human life.     

Simulation, Theory and Collapse

Recent philosophical discussions of our capacity to attribute mental states to other human beings, and to produce accurate predictions and informative explanations of their behavior which make reference to the content of those states have focused on two apparently contrasting ways in which we might hope to account for these abilities. The first is that of regarding our competence as being under-girded by our grasp of a tacit psychological theory. The second builds on the idea that in trying to get a grip on the mental lives of others we might be able to draw on the fact that we are ourselves subjects of mental states in order to simulate their mental processes. Call these the theory view and the simulation view. In this paper I wish to discuss an argument—which I shall call Collapse—to the effect that if our capacities can be explained in the way that the simulationist supposes then they can also be explained along lines that the advocate of the theory view favours. I am not the first person with simulationist sympathies to have addressed this argument. However, my response is somewhat less concessive than others in the literature: while they attempt to soften its force by attempting to reformulate the simulationist view in a way that evades the conclusion of the argument, I attempt to meet it head on and to show that it does not even succeed in refuting the version of simulationism which it takes as its target.

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Child’s Play: The Role of Play in Mitigating the Fear of Death Among Pediatric Palliative Care Team Patients,Families, and Caregivers

Terror Management Theory (TMT), derived from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (1974), maintains that humans are motivated by the desire to overcome our fear of death by constructing meaning and significance in our lives in various ways, including making light of our mortality. In this paper, we examine the role of play as seriously ill children involved with a hospital-based palliative care team live out what may be the remainder of their lives. We question the function that play has, if any, in mitigating the fear of death among dying children and their caregivers. We explore formal and informal manners of therapeutic play among children and adults occurring in moments of terrible stress, pain, and the looming threat of death. We draw on playful representations of death from popular culture and from extended field research conducted with a pediatric palliative care team in a large regional children’s hospital caring for seriously ill children and their families, as patients, families, and caretakers struggle to make sense of their suffering, fear and loss.     

Are Truth and Reference Quasi-Disquotational?

In a number of influential papers, Hartry Fieldhas advanced an account of truth and referencethat we might dub quasi-disquotationalism. According to quasi-disquotationalism, truth and reference are to be explained in terms of disquotationand facts about what constitute a goodtranslation into our language. Field suggeststhat we might view quasi-disquotationalism aseither (a) an analysis of our ordinarytruth-theoretic concepts of reference andtruth, or (b) an account of certain otherconcepts that improve upon our ordinaryconcepts. In this paper, I argue that (i) ifthe view is understood along the lines of (a)it fails, and (ii) if it is construed along thelines of (b) it is, at best, under-motivated.     

Aristotle on Universal Quantification: A Study from the Point of View of Game Semantics

In this paper we provide an interpretation of Aristotle's rule for the universal quantifier in Topics Θ 157^a34–37 and 160^b1–6 in terms of Paul Lorenzen's dialogical logic. This is meant as a contribution to the rehabilitation of the role of dialectic within the Organon. After a review of earlier views of Aristotle on quantification, we argue that this rule is related to the dictum de omni in Prior Analytics A 24^b28–29. This would be an indication of the dictum’s origin in the context of dialectical games. One consequence of our approach is a novel explanation of the doctrine of the existential import of the quantifiers in dialectical terms. After a brief survey of Lorenzen's dialogical logic, we offer a set of rules for dialectical games based on previous work by Castelnérac and Marion, to which we add here the rule for the universal quantifier, as interpreted in terms of its counterpart in dialogical logic. We then give textual evidence of the use of that rule in Plato's dialogues, thus showing that Aristotle only made explicit a rule already implicit in practice, while providing a new interpretation of ‘epagogic’ arguments. Finally, we show how a proper understanding of that rule involves further rules concerning counterexamples and delaying tactics, stressing again the parallels with dialogical logic.     

Communist Conventions for Deductive Reasoning

In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief‐forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first‐personal deliberation. In the rest of the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational.