Philosophy paper

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Meaninglessness

Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor!player "at struts and frets his hour upon the!stage And then is heard no more:!it is!a!tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and!fury, Signifying nothing.

— # $ % % $ & ' ( ) & * + , - + & . + Macbeth, Act 5, Scene!5

The bad!news

The most expansive kind of meaning that we could want for life is what we might call “cosmic meaning.” This is meaning from the perspective of the universe— or sub specie aeternita- tis, as this perspective is sometimes known. Now, as I!noted in the previous chapter, speaking literally, the universe itself has no perspective. The universe is not an experiencing subject.1 It has no point of view. However, the suggestion is not that this “perspective of the universe” be taken literally. It should no more be taken literally than the phrase “a God’s eye view” need be taken literally. Atheists can speak of a God’s eye view with- out implying the existence of God. They are speaking about the perspective that God would have if he existed. The cosmic

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perspective is the view of the cosmos even if nobody actually has that view in its entirety.

Many people who are concerned that life is meaningless are (usually) thinking about meaning from a cosmic perspective, as I!illustrated at the beginning of chapter!2. "ey notice how cosmi- cally insigni/cant we are. Although we collectively can have some e0ect on our planet, we have no signi/cant impact on the broader universe.2 Nothing we do on earth has any e0ect beyond it. "e evolution of life, including human life, is a product of blind forces and serves no apparent purpose. We exist now, but we will not exist for long. "at is true of us as individuals, but in the grand sweep of planetary time, let!alone cosmic time, it is also true of our species and all!life.

Earthly life is thus without signi/cance, import, or purpose beyond our planet. It is meaningless from the cosmic perspec- tive. Because this is true of all life, it is true of all sentient life, all human life, and each individual life. Neither our species nor individual members of it matter sub specie aeternitatis. Whatever other kinds of meaning our lives might have, the absence of this meaning is deeply disturbing to!many.

However, human nature tends to abhor a meaning vacuum— horror vacui. "ere are strong psychological impulses that impel most but not all people to cope with this, either by denying the vacuum or by denying its importance.

The theistic!gambit

Arguably, the most ancient and also the most pervasive of these coping mechanisms is theism and associated doctrines. Many theists believe that even if our lives seem meaningless from

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the cosmic perspective, they are not in fact so. "is, they say, is because we are not an accident of purposeless evolution, but rather the creation of a God who endows our lives with meaning. According to this view, we serve not merely a cosmic purpose, but a divine!one.

"is is a seductively comforting thought. For that reason alone, we should be suspicious of it, given how easy it is for humans to believe what they would like to believe.

Many people have raised the objection that theism cannot do the meaning- endowing work it is purported to do here. For example, it has been suggested that serving God’s purposes does not su4ce, as this makes people “puppets in the hands of a supe- rior agent”3 or mere instruments to the goals of God.4 A!related objection notes that not merely any divine purpose would give us the kind of meaning we seek. If we had been created “to provide a negative lesson to some others (‘don’t act like them’) or to provide food for passing intergalactic travelers who were important,”5 our lives would not have the sort of cosmic meaning we!seek.

"e theist might well respond that an omnibenevolent God, who is also omniscient and omnipotent, and who loves us, would have only positive, ennobling purposes for us. He would not cre- ate us merely to serve as a negative lesson to others or to provide food for intergalactic travelers. Because of this, the theist could say, there is no problem in being a means to any end set for us by such a God; better to be a means to a supreme being’s bene/cent purpose than neither to be an end of cosmic signi/cance nor to have any (cosmic) purpose at!all.6

"e problem with such a response is that, insofar as it provides any reassurance about life’s cosmic meaning, it does so by provid- ing a hand- waving account of what that meaning is. "e account

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is as mysterious as the ways in which the Lord is o5en said to move. We are told that serving the purposes of a bene/cent deity provides (cosmic) meaning to our lives, but to be told that is not to be told what those purposes are. “Serving God’s purposes” is a placeholder for details that need to be provided.

When the details are provided, however, the results are unsat- isfactory. If, for example, we are told that our purpose is to love God and serve him, we might reasonably ask why a being as great as God is said to be would possibly want or need the love and service of humans at all— let! alone so badly that he would cre- ate them to serve that purpose. If loving and serving God is our purpose, the act of creating us sounds like that of a supremely narcissistic rather than a supremely bene/cent being. "is alleged purpose is thus unconvincing.

Alternatively, we might be told that our divinely endowed purpose— the purpose for which God created us— is to help our fellows. However, while such a purpose might be cosmic in the sense of being endowed by the creator of the cosmos, this par- ticular purpose of the cosmic creator would be distinctly local. Moreover, it would not explain why any of our fellows (whether human or animal) were created. If you were created to help your fellow, and your fellow was created to help you, we are still le5 wondering why either of you (and by extension any being) was created. "is purpose smacks of circularity.7

Another possible suggestion is that our purpose on earth is to prepare us for the a5erlife. "at does not explain what the pur- pose of the a5erlife is. If it is eternal bliss, it might be thought not to require any further end. However, if religious doctrine is to be believed, then for a great many people, the a5erlife is not a /nal good but rather a /nal bad— hardly the sort of meaning

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people yearn for. Even in the best- case scenario, it is hard to understand why God would create a being in order to prepare it for an a5erlife, given that no a5erlife would be needed or desired if the being had not been created in the /rst place. It is much like a parent creating a child for the purpose of that child’s having a satisfying retirement. Satisfying retirements are worth aiming at if one already exists, but they hardly provide grounds for creating people who will have such retirements. "e sort of meaning that the a5erlife provides cannot explain why God would have created us at!all.8

As all this illustrates, it is not easy to specify a divinely ordained meaning that convincingly and non- circularly explains the cosmic meaning of human life in a way that a4rms rather than demeans humanity. However, even if it were possible to say how God could endow our lives with desirable cosmic mean- ing, a fundamental issue would remain:!Do our lives in fact have such meaning? "at a God could bestow such meaning does not imply that he exists or that God actually gives our lives the cosmic meaning many humans!crave.

Debates about the existence of God are interminable, and I!cannot hope to settle them here. In my view, though, the per- sistence of this debate is not surprising for one reason only:!the depth of the widespread human need to cope with the harsh realities of the human predicament, including but not limited to the fact that our lives are meaningless in important ways. Upton Sinclair famously remarked that it “is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”9 It is similarly difficult to get some- body to understand something when the meaning of his life depends on his not understanding!it.

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Some will ask how I!can know that our lives lack cosmic mean- ing.10 "ey may suggest that I!should instead say that “perhaps there is … [such] meaning, but I!personally can’t imagine what it could be.”11 If we assume, for the moment, that that objection has merit, it would be a noteworthy feature of the human predicament that, even if human life does have cosmic meaning, humans cannot know what it is. Having to live in fear that one’s life is cosmically meaningless is an unfortunate condition for beings that yearn for the con/dence that their lives are cosmically meaningful.

"at would be bad enough. "ings are still worse because the objection is misguided. Obviously none of us can be certain that life has no cosmic meaning, but to claim to know something is not to claim that one could not possibly be wrong. I! cannot be certain that the following claim is untrue:! “Seventy- /ve million years ago, Xenu, a tyrant who ruled a 76- planet galactic federa- tion, had his o4cers capture and then freeze beings of all shapes and sizes in the confederation; billions of them were then trans- ported to earth (then called Teegeeack) in aircra5, thrown into volcanoes and then had hydrogen bombs dropped on them.”12 Yet there is no evidence to support this claim, and thus I!can reason- ably say that (I know that) it did not happen, even though I!can- not be absolutely certain.

In any event, as the claim about Xenu illustrates, there is no limit to the possible claims religions can make. Even religious people need to sort between all the claims that are made, decid- ing which to reject and which, if any, to accept. In rejecting some, they are saying (they know or at least believe) that those claims are!false.

It would indeed be wonderful if there were a bene/cent God who had created us for good reason and who cared for us as a

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loving parent would for his or her children. However, the way the world is provides us with plenty of evidence that this is not the!case.

Imagine you were to visit a country in which the evidence of repression is pervasive:!"ere is no freedom of the press or expres- sion; vast numbers of people live in squalor and su0er severe mal- nutrition; those attempting to 6ee the country are imprisoned; torture and executions are rampant; and fear is widespread. Yet your minder tells you that the country, the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” is led by a “Great Leader” who is an omnibe- nevolent, infallible, and incorruptible being who rules for the bene/t of the people. Other o4cials endorse this view with great enthusiasm. "ere are impressive rallies in which masses of people profess their love for the Great Leader and their grati- tude for his magni/cent bene/cence. When you muster the cour- age to express skepticism, citing various disturbing facts, you are treated to elaborate rationalizations that things are not as they seem. You are told either that your facts are mistaken or that they are reconcilable with everything that is believed about the Great Leader. Perhaps your minder even gives a name to such intellec- tual exercises— “Kimdicy.”13

It would be wonderful if North Korea were led by an omnibenevolent, infallible, and incorruptible ruler, but if it had such a leader, North Korea would look very different from the way it does look. The fact that many people in North Korea would disagree with us can be explained by either their vested interests in the regime, by their having been indoctrinated, or by their fear of speaking out. The presence of disagreement between them and us is not really evidence that deciding the matter is complicated.

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Not all of earth is as bad as North Korea, but North Korea is part of “God’s earth”; so are Afghanistan, Burma, China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Zimbabwe, to name but a few appalling places for many to live.14 Even in the best parts of the world, terrible things happen. Assaults, rapes, and murders occur, injustices are perpetrated, and children are abused. Fortunately, the incidence of such evil in places like Western Europe is lower than in worse places on earth, but my point is that they all occur within the jurisdiction of a purportedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Nor should we forget the horri/c dis- eases from which people su0er around the globe, or the fact that every day, billions of animals are killed and eaten by other ani- mals, including humans.

"e numbers are so staggering that we cannot even com- pute them. However, to get some sense, consider that one study found that common dolphins and striped dolphins along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula consume 27,500 tons of sardines, gadids, hake, and scads annually. "at is over 75 tons of /sh per day— by only two kinds of predators in one corner of the world’s oceans. Globally, sperm whales are (conservatively) estimated to consume 100! million tons of cephalopods.15 "e annual loss of wildebeest to predators is estimated to be 42% of this prey species’ total biomass.16 "e overwhelming majority of turtle hatchlings are eaten or otherwise die a5er surfacing from their sandy nests before they can make the few- minute scamper into the ocean. More die in the mouths of ocean pred- ators. “"e little turtles come out into a world anxious to eat them.”17

"ese numbers, which are but a few examples, should not cause us to forget the severity of the su0ering for individual

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animals. It varies, of course. Some prey die instantly. For others, death is protracted. Consider the following description:

"e lioness sinks her scimitar talons into the zebra’s rump. "ey rip through the tough hide and anchor deep in the muscle. "e startled animal lets out a bellow and its body hits the ground. An instant later the lioness releases her claws from its buttocks and sinks her teeth into the zebra’s throat, choking o0 the sound of terror. Her canine teeth are long and sharp, but an animal as large as a zebra has a mas- sive neck, with a thick layer of muscle beneath the skin, so although the teeth puncture the hide they are too short to reach any major blood vessels. She must therefore kill the zebra by asphyxiation, clamping her powerful jaws around its trachea (windpipe), cutting o0 the air to its lungs. It is a slow death … the zebra’s death throes will last /ve to six minutes.18

Some animals are eaten alive. In the following description, the victim is an adult blue!whale:

"e beleaguered whale, trailing streams of blood from several wounds, is 6anked on either side by three or four individuals. Two more swim ahead and three behind. A!squadron of /ve killer whales takes turns patrolling under the blue whale’s belly, preventing it from diving. "ree more swim over its head, discouraging it from raising its blow- hole above the surface, thereby hampering its breathing. Dominant males lead sorties to rip o0 slabs of blubber and 6esh. "ey have already shredded its tail 6ukes.19

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"is continues for over /ve!hours. "is does not look like a world created by a bene/cent deity

with unbounded knowledge and power. It is credulous to believe that things are not the way they seem and that the world was cre- ated by such a!being.

"e (nonhuman) animal predicament is particularly reveal- ing. Confronted with the awful spectacle of billions of animals being eaten, o5en alive, by predators, humans typically do not attempt to propose any cosmic meaning to those lives. Indeed, the usual monotheistic response is to say that the (or at least one) purpose of animals is to be eaten by others higher up the food chain. It is hard to reconcile that with the existence of a purport- edly benevolent God, who surely could have created a world in which billions did not have to die each day to keep others alive.20 And if one thought that a benevolent God did create some ani- mals as food for others, it should at least weaken one’s con/dence that God would have a satisfying purpose for humans.

"e common response here is that humans are special, and thus God would have a special purpose for them. However, pos- tulating such a massive discontinuity in cosmic meaning between humans and nonhuman animals presupposes the very religious commitments that are in question— namely, that humans are the capstone of God’s creation, rather than a product of the same evo- lutionary process that produced every other species.21

It is not uncommon for theists to treat life’s meaninglessness as a reductio ad absurdum of atheism. According to such arguments, denial of God’s existence has such horri/c implications that such denial must be mistaken.22 It is not at all clear that atheism has all the implications that are attributed to it,23 but those advancing the argument fail to take seriously the possibility that any genuine

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implications of atheism that are unpalatable may indeed be true. It is much more likely, given the evidence, that our lives lack cos- mic meaning than that God exists. "eism might provide com- fort, but its existential anesthesia comes at a veritable!cost.

It is not only theists who seek relief from anxiety about cos- mic meaninglessness. "ere are many secular arguments that are intended to provide or have the e0ect of providing such relief. By secular arguments, I! do not mean only those that actively deny the claims of religion, but more generally those that do not pre- suppose religious claims.

Nature’s “purposes”

For example, it has been suggested that it is a mistake to suppose that, without God, there can be no ultimate purpose. Stephen Law says that every other living organism has a purpose, namely, “to reproduce and pass on its genetic material to the next genera- tion.”24 He says that we “each exist for a purpose, a purpose sup- plied by nature, whether or not there is a God.”25

If that were our ultimate purpose, it would not be su4ciently ultimate to count as a cosmic purpose. Instead, it would be a dis- tinctly terrestrial purpose. Nor would this purpose be inspiring enough to console us. When people wonder whether their lives have meaning, they are not likely to be reassured by the observa- tion that they are (merely) a mechanism for replicating genetic material. Indeed, that is the very kind of thought that drives peo- ple to wonder what life is all about. To think that humans would /nd genetic replication a satisfactory cosmic purpose is as absurd as the quip that a chicken is an egg’s way of making another!egg.

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Most important, however, to suggest that our nature- endowed purpose is to pass on genetic material to the next generation is to mischaracterize what a purpose is. A!purpose is something endowed by a being capable of having goals. Such beings, which include humans and some animals, and would include a God if one existed, create things to serve the pur- poses they have for them, or they use preexisting things for some purpose.

For example, the purpose of a paperclip is to hold papers together. Its existence and attributes are explained by the fact that humans created it to function in this way. However, paperclips can also be used for other purposes to which goal- directed beings might put them. "us, we might unfold a paperclip and use one end of it to depress a reset button on an electronic device. "at was not why paperclips were created, but we can endow a paper- clip with this alternative purpose by using it to attain our goal of resetting the machine. Furthermore, things never created for any purpose can subsequently be endowed with one. A! rock might be used for the purpose of hammering something even if it was never created for that purpose. Nature, however, has no goals. It is a blind process that unfolds without any end in mind. It nei- ther intends our existence nor has any goal at which our existence is!aimed.

Nature might help us explain our existence, but that explana- tion is a causal one rather than a purposive one.26 It imputes no purposes, at least not in a literal sense, to anybody or anything. It merely provides an explanation of how rather than why we came to exist.27 We might /nd it interesting to know how humans evolved and replicated, but understanding this does not imply that there is a nature- endowed purpose to our existence.

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It is true, of course, that many (but by no means all) of us were brought into existence for a creator- endowed purpose. "e relevant creators were our parents.28 "ey might have created us for any num- ber of purposes— to ful/ll their desires for genetic o0spring, to have a child to rear, to silence their parents’ pleas for grandchildren, to pass on particular values or ways of life, or to contribute to the sur- vival or growth of an ethnic or national group, for example. However, these are the purposes of our parents rather than of nature. Nor are they purposes of cosmic signi/cance.

Scarce!value

"ere is another, more sophisticated attempt to argue that our lives have cosmic meaning— or at least that they may have such meaning. "e core of the philosopher Guy Kahane’s argument takes the following!form:

1. We possess value. 2. If there is no other life in the universe, then nothing else has

value. 3. If nothing else has value, then we possess the most value. 4. "erefore, if there is no other life in the universe, we have

immense cosmic signi/cance.29

Dr.! Kahane says that although there is disagreement about the basis for our having value, the /rst premise enjoys widespread support. He notes, however, that it is ambiguous. It— or, more speci/cally, the word “we”— “can refer to terrestrial sentient life in general, or it can refer only to us humans.”30 If earth is the only

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place where life is found, then all terrestrial sentient life has great cosmic signi/cance. "ose who want to say that humans possess greater cosmic signi/cance than their fellow earthlings “must further claim that our intelligence and the achievements and fail- ures it makes possible are associated with a distinctive, superior kind of value.”31

"ese and other comments32 suggest that although Dr.!Kahane avoids explicating why we have value, he seems to think that it derives from sentience and possibly also from sapience (that is, wisdom or intelligence).33 Basing our value on such attributes is necessary to ensure the truth of the second premise by ruling out the view that inanimate objects, natural formations, and sys- tems also have value. If these possessed value, then other parts of the universe would be replete with value. Consider, for example, the Milky Way, Saturn’s rings, or Olympus Mons, a mountain on Mars that is the tallest mountain in our solar system, standing nearly two- and- a- half times the height of Mount Everest.

Dr.!Kahane is clear that, because we do not know whether we are alone in the universe, we do not know whether we have the massive cosmic signi/cance supported by the conditional con- clusion of his argument. If there is abundant life elsewhere, then our signi/cance is considerably reduced. "us, the argument is intended to show only that our lives may have great cosmic signi/cance. Ironically, our lives could have this signi/cance, according to Dr.!Kahane’s argument, only if God does not exist, for if there were a God, our signi/cance in the cosmos would be dwarfed by God’s signi/cance.34

"e conclusion of Dr.! Kahane’s argument may be (super/- cially) comforting to those who fear that a godless world is one in which our lives are cosmically meaningless. However, the

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argument has a number of problems, most importantly ones per- taining to the inference from the premises to the conclusion. "e upshot of this is that the conclusion fails to provide the comfort it /rst seems to!o0er.

"e argument’s premises are concerned with value, whereas the conclusion makes a claim about signi/cance. Dr.! Kahane realizes that signi/cance is not the same as value,35 but this does not prevent him from making the unwarranted inference. He correctly notes that although “claims about signi/cance … are related to claims about value,”36 something’s being valuable is not su4cient for it to have signi/cance. It also “needs to be important, to make a real di#erence.”37

"us, part of the problem is that it is possible to possess the most value without possessing much value. Even if we were the most valuable beings in the universe, it would not follow that we are immensely valuable. "e value we do have would not be increased by the fact that there was nothing else of value. By anal- ogy, the bowhead whale is the animal species with the longest lifespan of all earthlings, perhaps living up to or beyond two cen- turies. If it also has the longest lifespan in the universe, it would not follow that the lifespan is immense (when judged by the stan- dards of cosmic!time).

However— and this is the more important point— even if our lives do have immense value, it does not follow that they have immense cosmic signi$cance. Whether they do depends on what one means by cosmic signi/cance. It is not at all clear what Dr.!Kahane means by it, and this is because he slips from speak- ing about value to speaking about signi/cance. However, there are places where he seems to be speaking about our mattering morally— our being morally considerable.38

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If that is what is meant, then we can say that moral agents, wherever they might be in the cosmos, should desist from actions that would wrongfully harm us, and that they should do so because we have (moral) value. It would not matter if they could not see us, just as it does not matter that we cannot see remote people on earth whom we might wrongfully harm by performing some action. In this sense, our value could be signi/cant in some distant corner of the universe, just as it is signi/cant in some dis- tant corner of our globe. Our value can extend a moral claim to a moral agent anywhere in the cosmos (if there are any such agents elsewhere in the cosmos).

However, that is simply not the sense of “signi/cance” that people have in mind when they are concerned about human cos- mic insigni/cance.39 Instead, people are concerned that the uni- verse (including our own planet and its powerful natural forces) is indi0erent to us, that nothing we do makes any di0erence beyond our planet or in cosmic time, and that human life has no purpose.40

In other words, the existential concerns people have are not the sorts that are dependent on how much other life the universe contains. Knowing that there is no life anywhere else in the cos- mos would bring no solace to those who fear that human life is cosmically meaningless.

Nor will such people be comforted by an argument that con- cludes not only that we have immense cosmic meaning but that toads do too. Even if one thinks that humans may have more cos- mic meaning than toads can have, it is still the case, according to the argument, that if humans have immense cosmic meaning, toads also have impressive cosmic meaning.

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Dr.!Kahane’s argument has another odd implication. According to his argument, how much signi/cance human life has depends, at least in part, on how much other life there is. If there is no extraterrestrial life, then human life would have immense cos- mic signi/cance. However, we know that earth is teeming with life. It follows, therefore, that human life would have much less terrestrial signi/cance than cosmic signi/cance.41 (Human life would have less terrestrial signi/cance because there are also aardvarks, elephants, llamas, and zebras, for example.) "is is the exact opposite of what we usually think. We usually, and plausi- bly, think that we have a much greater impact on our planet than we do on the rest of the cosmos, and that although our planet is as indi0erent to us as the rest of the universe, we are at least able to exercise more control over our planet than we are over other parts of the universe.

Perhaps Dr.! Kahane realizes that the kind of cosmic signi/- cance he thinks we might have is not the sort that people seek. A5er all, he says that he does “not mean to deny that the universe we inhabit is bleak, blind and indi0erent.”42

Discounting the!cosmic perspective

Not all arguments aimed at providing secular comfort claim that our lives have cosmic meaning. Some attempt to undermine the relevance of the cosmic perspective. For example, "omas Nagel responds to a number of thoughts that prompt pessimism about our cosmic signi/cance. First, he argues that if it is true that “nothing we do now will matter in a million years … then by

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the same token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now.”43

However, this response seems too glib, at least if it is viewed as a response to the position I!am defending. It is not infrequently the case that the signi/cance of what we do now is in6uenced, if not determined by, whether it will matter later. For example, one might wonder whether to spend the morning writing philosophy or instead waste the time. In an important sense, it really does not matter now which option one chooses. If one indulges oneself, nothing bad will come of it now or tomorrow. But it will matter later. More speci/cally, it will matter later whether one used one’s time wisely or frivolously. Because it matters later, it also (instru- mentally) matters!now.

Similarly, sometimes things do not matter now because they will not matter later. For example, it might not matter that one has prostate cancer if one is old enough and likely to die from something else before the cancer becomes symptomatic. (It is said that many men die with rather than from prostate cancer.) It also does not matter if one does not /x the cracks on a building that will soon be demolished, and it does not matter now because it will not matter!later.

Or consider somebody who dies in battle. Whether that death was meaningless or not depends, at least in part, on whether it matters later. If that battle has no e0ect on the war or if the war is eventually lost, then the death of that soldier was meaning- less. Perhaps the soldier exhibited bravery and inspired his com- rades, but his death was nonetheless ultimately in vain. It did not achieve any long- term purpose.

"us, we see that an eye on what will matter in the future sheds at least some light on what matters now. It is true, of

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course, that the foregoing examples of this do not involve adopt- ing the cosmic perspective, but that di0erence is less important if we accept the most reasonable interpretation of the existential concern.

So understood, the claim is not that nothing matters now. Professor Nagel is correct that chains of “justi/cation come repeatedly to an end within life”44 and that “[n] o further justi- /cation is needed to make it reasonable to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhibition of the work of some painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his hand on a hot stove.”45 Instead, the claim is that while these activities do matter, they only matter now— during the lives of those a0ected. Chains of justi/cation can end within a life making various actions within the life entirely reasonable. However, the bigger existential ques- tions are about whether the life as a whole has any purpose. To answer that question, it is not su4cient to point to justi/cations internal to the!life.

Consider an analogy. If one is playing a game of backgam- mon, it is entirely reasonable to make various moves. Indeed, one is not playing backgammon unless one is making (permitted) moves. "ere are justi/cations for this move and for that one. It is an entirely di0erent matter to ask what the point of backgam- mon is, whether one should be playing backgammon at all, and whether one should pass it on to the next generation (by teaching it to children— or by creating children to whom one can teach it). Similarly, it can be entirely reasonable to relieve headaches and prevent harms to children and yet worry that one’s life as a whole— or human life in general— has no cosmic purpose. "e absence of cosmic meaning may provide one with a reason to regret one’s existence or to desist from perpetuating the whole

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pointless trajectory by abstaining from bringing new people into existence.

Professor Nagel also takes issue with other pessimistic argu- ments about life’s cosmic meaning. He argues that our limits in space and time do not matter in the way that many people think they do. "us, he asks rhetorically:! “would not a life that is absurd if it lasts seventy years be in/nitely absurd if it lasted through eternity?46 And if our lives are absurd given our present size, why would they be any less absurd if we /lled the universe!…!?”47

"ose responses sound super/cially plausible, but they fail to engage with what generates the existential questions. "e quest for meaning is, as Robert Nozick notes, a quest for transcending “the limits of an individual life.”48 "is is true at all levels, not only cosmic meaning. We seek purpose in family, in broader commu- nities, and in contributions to humanity— all ways of transcend- ing one’s own limits. Many humans also have the futile desire for purpose at a cosmic level. "e quest for meaning would not arise if we were not limited. God, presumably, would not worry about the meaning of his life. God would not worry whether he was ful/lling some external purpose.

Indeed, it is comically absurd to think of God having this sort of existential anxiety, but we can well understand how a limited (self- conscious) being might want to transcend his or her own limits. Imagine that you had no temporal limit— that you were immortal. Under those circumstances, the purposes internal to your life might well suffice. Because you would endure, there would be no need to seek a purpose that sur- vived your personal extinction. Temporal limits seem more problematic than spatial ones, but a comparable point can be

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made about the latter. If you were spatially unlimited then, of necessity, there would be nothing spatially beyond you, and there would be no need to seek purpose beyond one’s own spa- tial limits. The whole project of transcendence makes sense only if one is limited.

Once we see this, we understand why Professor Nagel’s responses are problematic. An absurd life of seventy years would not necessarily be in/nitely absurd if it lasted an eternity. It really depends on the kind of absurdity one has in mind. (I assume here, as before, that an absurd life is a meaningless one.) Some lives are absurd even from various terrestrial perspectives. If they were of in/nite duration, they would indeed be in/nitely absurd. "us, immortality by itself is not su4cient to make a life cos- mically signi/cant. However, there are lives that are not absurd from more limited perspectives, but are absurd from a cosmic perspective, and they are absurd from that broader perspective in part because there is a temporal limit that they cannot tran- scend. "ose lives would not be in/nitely absurd if they lasted an eternity, at least if the meaning could be sustained or evolve over eternity. Instead of the meaning of a life ending, it would continue in some form in perpetuity. Such lives would, at least in this respect, cease to be absurd (that is, meaningless) from the cosmic perspective.

Imagine somebody trying to burrow through (or under) the reinforced concrete walls of a prison. His ardent labor is absurd only if he fails to breach the wall and escape. If he does transcend the limits imposed by the wall, the labor ceases to be absurd. By the same token, transcending one’s temporal limits would be to overcome one feature of one’s existence that renders one’s labors absurd (from the cosmic perspective).

56 "e Human Predicament

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Professor Nagel’s point about our size is similarly unfair. When people ponder their insigni/cant size in the vast cosmos, the point is not so much size as limit. If the universe consisted of you and you alone, you would not be limited in this way (unless there was something beyond the universe), and it would be incoherent to want to transcend a limit you did not have. "is point is satirized if it is reduced to comparing your current size relative to the uni- verse and your /lling the universe.

Focusing on!terrestrial meaning

Another common and related strategy for downplaying the importance of the cosmic perspective is to frame questions about meaningfulness in life exclusively in terms of terrestrial meaning. Many of those who employ this strategy do not explicitly argue that the cosmic perspective is irrelevant and that we should focus exclusively on terrestrial perspectives. Instead, they frame the entire issue of meaningfulness of life in terms of terrestrial mean- ing, implicitly assuming that questions concerning the meaning of life are questions only about this kind of meaning.49 In so doing, they beg the key question. "ey assume a formulation of the ques- tion that, as we have seen, enables an optimistic answer. "ey ignore a fuller formulation of the question— one that will require an explicit confrontation with the ugly truth that our lives lack the cosmic meaning for which humans so o5en!yearn.

Others who employ the strategy of focusing on terrestrial meaning do not entirely ignore the specter of cosmic meaning- lessness. Instead, they attempt to redirect our focus to terrestrial meaning.

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Peter Singer, for example, says that meaning is to be found in “working for … a ‘transcendent cause,’ that is, a cause that extends beyond the boundaries of the self.”50 We need to tran- scend those boundaries by doing something that is worth doing.51 He takes ethical causes to be paradigmatic (but not the only) examples52 of what is worth doing. All his examples, though, are ones that have meaning from some terrestrial per- spective. He recognizes our cosmic insigni/cance but notes, for example, that “the fact that the most beautiful and enduring of human artefacts will eventually turn into dust is not a reason for denying that its creation was a worthwhile and meaningful task.”53 In other words, it does not matter that our achievements will not last forever.

"is discounting of the cosmic perspective is akin to "omas Nagel’s and subject to the same criticism. His discounting of the cosmic perspective would have force against a view that the only meaning is cosmic meaning and thus that anything that lacks cosmic meaning is meaningless tout court. One can respond to such a view, as Peter Singer has, by saying that some tasks are worthwhile and meaningful even if their meaning will not last forever.

However, this response simply does not engage with those who adopt the more nuanced position I! have outlined. According to this position, many activities and lives have terrestrial meaning, but our lives still lack meaning sub specie aeternitatis. "ose who adopt this position can say to optimists like Professor Singer:!“Yes, we know that many activities are meaningful sub specie com- munitatis and sub specie humanitatis, and we are pleased about that, but we are alarmed that our lives have no cosmic meaning. Nothing you have said allays that concern.”

58 "e Human Predicament

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Consider another analogy. If you are worried about your father’s health, it does not make you less worried about his health if you are told that your mother is entirely healthy. It is obviously good that your mother is healthy. If she were not, you would worry about that too. However, being told that you need not worry about her health does not diminish your worry about his. Similarly, while things would be much worse if our lives lacked any meaning, those who are concerned about the absence of cosmic meaning are not consoled about that by the observation that at least some kinds of terrestrial meaning are attainable.

"e point can be expressed another way. I! may derive some meaning from helping another person, and that person may derive some meaning from helping a third person, but that pro- vides no point to our collective existence. We can still say that human life in general is meaningless sub specie aeternitatis. "ere would be something circular about arguing that the purpose of humanity’s existence is that individual humans should help one another. Moreover, even if an individual human’s life has some terrestrial meaning (perhaps by helping others), it does not fol- low that that individual’s life also has cosmic signi/cance.

Sour grapes and varieties of!meaning worth!wanting

I have argued that cosmic meaning is unattainable. "e /nal opti- mistic response to this is to deny that we should either be seek- ing cosmic meaning or regretting that we do not have it. I!loosely classify moves of this kind as “sour grapes” arguments (although

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those who advance such arguments would of course reject the sour grapes appellation).

"e argument comes in varying forms. One form, o5en only implicit, is that it is not worth worrying about the unattainable, as such worry will not yield any good. "e problem with this, however, is that if it is not worth seeking something that one can- not attain, it can still be appropriate to regret the unattainable. Consider a terminal patient for whom there is no cure. Getting better is not attainable, yet that person may very reasonably regret having a terminal condition.

Perhaps, however, regret is reasonable in such a case because it is possible to imagine an alternative situation in which one were not going to die imminently. It is a scenario in which one never acquired the illness that will soon kill one. Such a scenario may be unattainable in practice, but because it is conceivable, there is some possible alternative state of a0airs that one regrets is not the actual state of a0airs. Regretting the absence of cosmic meaning, it is sometimes argued, is very di0erent from this because there is no conceivable way our lives could have cosmic meaning.

Christopher Belshaw, for example, says that because even “God isn’t ultimate enough” to solve our meaning worries, “we should conclude … that such worries are simply not real.”54 In another deployment of this kind of argument, Guy Kahane asks rhetorically whether “the idea is supposed to be that to be cosmi- cally signi/cant, we need to be moving galaxies around?”55

One problem with this sort of argument is that those advancing it may simply not have settled on what would make life meaning- ful from the most expansive perspective. However, the argument fails even if we assume that there is nothing that could make our lives cosmically meaningful. It fails not because the premise is

60 "e Human Predicament

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false but because a comforting conclusion does not follow. If our lives are irredeemably meaningless sub specie aeternitatis, and no conceivable alternative circumstances could have made things otherwise, it is still the case that our lives are (cosmically) mean- ingless. "e meaninglessness is then so deep a part of the human predicament that it simply could not have been otherwise. "at is terrible news, not good!news.

According to a third version of the sour grapes argument, desire for cosmic meaning suggests some defect in the person who has the desire. For example, Susan Wolf speaks (in passing) of “an irrational obsession with permanence”56 and Guy Kahane suggests that “there is more than a touch of narcissism in this wish for cosmic celebrity”57 and that the desire for grand cosmic signi/cance is “embarrassingly megalomaniac”58— akin to the “madmen pretending to be Napoleon or Jesus.59

"e most plausible candidates for the “megalomaniac” descrip- tion are those who believe that we do have cosmic signi/cance, not those who believe that we do not. But is the desire for such meaning (and the regret that we lack it) narcissistic and megalo- maniacal? We do not typically think that those who want but lack familial or communal meaning are narcissistic or megalomania- cal. "us, it seems that at least part of the explanation why a desire for cosmic meaning is thought to re6ect badly on the desirer is precisely that it is unattainable. However, I!see no reason why we should not regret the absence of some good merely because it is unattainable. A!predicament can be lamented even if it is unavoid- able. Just because we cannot have cosmic meaning does not mean that we should not think it would be good to!have.

Meaning from the cosmic perspective would be good for extensions of the same reasons that meaning from the other

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perspectives is good. People, quite reasonably, want to matter. "ey do not want to be insigni/cant or pointless. Life is tough. It is full of striving and struggle; there is much su0ering and then we die. It is entirely reasonable to want there to be some point to the entire saga. "e bits of terrestrial meaning we can attain are important, for without them, our lives would be not only meaningless but also miserable and unbearable. It would be hard to get up each day and do the things that life neces- sitates in order to continue. One writer has sni0ed at this sug- gestion, saying that the “idea that the natural consequence of /nding one’s life meaningless is to commit suicide is somewhat ridiculous.”60 In fact, however, failed social belonging is, at least according to some, the most important factor in predicting sui- cide.61 Failed social belonging is one consequence of perceiv- ing one’s life to have no meaning from the perspective of some other humans.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived various concentra- tion camps, including Auschwitz, highlighted the importance of meaning— or, more accurately, perceived meaning.62 Writing of his experiences during the Holocaust, he argued that mean- ing was crucial to survival. In his view, there “is nothing in the world … that would so e0ectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one’s life.”63 He says that “Nietzsche’s words ‘He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how’ could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic e0orts regarding prisoners.”64 While the conditions of concentration camp inmates were extreme, he a4rms the more general point that “the striving to /nd a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.”65

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Although we need at least some terrestrial meaning, it is unsurprising that this does not give us everything that it would be good to have. "e meaning we have from various human per- spectives does not give meaning to the entire human enterprise. It does not provide a point to the entire species and its continued existence. If there is no point to the species and each one of us is but a cog in the machinery of a pointless enterprise, then there is a serious de/cit of meaning even if our lives are not without some (terrestrial) meaning. "e terrestrial meaning is good, but the absence of cosmic meaning is!bad.

Conclusion

"ere are some who will characterize my view as “nihilistic.”66 Le5 unquali/ed, that characterization is false. My view of cos- mic meaning is indeed nihilistic. I!think that there is no cosmic meaning. If I!am right about that, then calling me a nihilist about cosmic meaning is entirely appropriate. However, my view is not nihilistic about all meaning because I!believe that there is mean- ing from some perspectives.

Our lives can be meaningful, but only from the limited, ter- restrial perspectives. "ere is a crucial perspective— the cosmic one— from which our lives are irredeemably meaningless. In thinking about meaning in life, two broad kinds of mistakes are made. "ere are those who think that the only relevant mean- ing is what is attainable. "ey ignore our cosmic meaningless- ness or they /nd ways either to discount questions about cosmic meaning or to minimize the importance of cosmic meaningless- ness. "e other kind of mistake is to think that because we are

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cosmically insigni/cant, “nothing matters,” where the implication is that nothing matters from any perspective. If we lack cosmic meaning but have other kinds of meaning, then some things do matter, even though they only matter from some perspectives. It does make a di0erence, for example, whether or not one is adding to the vast amounts of harm on earth, even though that makes no di0erence to the rest of the cosmos.

Life is meaningless, but it also has meaning— or, more accu- rately, meanings. "ere is no such thing as the meaning of life. Many di0erent meanings are possible. One can transcend the self and make a positive mark on the lives of others in myriad ways. "ese include nurturing and teaching the young, caring for the sick, bringing relief to the su0ering, improving society, creating great art or literature, and advancing knowledge.

We are nonetheless warranted in regretting our cosmic insig- ni/cance and the pointlessness of the entire human endeavor.67 As impressed as (some) humans o5en are about the signi/cance of humanity’s presence in the cosmos, our absence would have made absolutely no di0erence to the rest of the universe.68 We serve no purpose in the cosmos and, although our e0orts have some signi/cance here and now, it is seriously limited both spa- tially and temporally.

Even those who think that we ought not to yearn for the greater meaning that is unattainable must recognize the immense tragedy of beings who su0er such existential anxiety over their insigni/cance. "at su0ering is indisputably a part of the human predicament.

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19. Panpsychists may disagree with this, but I!shall not argue against their position!here.

20. "e question itself might be incoherent, depending on exactly how one understands it, but we do not need to consider those complexities here. Even if it is coherent, it just happens not to be the source of existential anxiety.

21. Distinctions between subjectivist and objectivist accounts of meaning in life are common. "ere are subtle di#erences between them, and people are o$en imprecise in their de%nitions. I! use the terms in the speci%c way I!de%ne them!here.

22. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (Amherst NY:! Prometheus Books, 2000),!323.

23. Susan Wolf, “Happiness and Meaning:!Two Aspects of the Good Life,” Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997):! 211; Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why it Matters (Princeton, NJ:! Princeton University Press, 2010),!9.

24. In chapter!7, where I!discuss suicide, I!consider objective and also sub- jective meaninglessness.

25. Or the environment, but I!shall focus on animals!here. 26. Remember here my point that we should not take the notion of “per-

spective” too literally. 27. "e comparison between signi%cance and what is worthy of mention

in a history is to be found in Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,” Nous 48 (2014):!752.

Chapter!3 1. "e same is true, of course, of humanity. Humanity is not an experi-

encing subject. However, humanity, unlike the cosmos, is at least in part an aggregation of experiencing subjects.

2. I!ignore here the contribution of satellites and other debris to space and our!moon.

3. A.J. Ayer, !e Meaning of Life (London:! South Place Ethical Society, 1988),!28.

220 Notes

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4. Garrett "omson, On the Meaning of Life (Belmont, CA:!Wadsworth, 2002),!53– 54.

5. Robert Nozick, “Philosophy and the Meaning of Life,” in Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA:!Belknap, 1981),!586.

6. "is sort of response might have appeal not only to theists but also to those atheists who believe that although our lives have no cosmic meaning, God, if he had existed, could have endowed such a meaning.

7. It has been suggested to me that the circularity could be avoided if altruism is “intrinsically good or meaningful.” Given that “good” is not equivalent to “meaningful” and we are here interested in the latter, let us focus on that. "e claim that altruism is intrinsically meaningful seems confused. To say that altruism is intrinsically meaningful is to say that it has an intrinsic point, purpose, or signi%cance. But surely whatever meaning altruism has must be derived from what it does for the bene%ciary of the altruism. What would be the intrinsic point, pur- pose, or signi%cance of altruism if there were no beings who could be the bene%ciaries (or practitioners)!of!it?

8. "is is not to say that an eternal a$erlife could not make life more meaningful. If it met!all the necessary conditions— including preserv- ing the “self ” and having a desirable quality— it would constitute a valuable transcendence of a temporal limitation, thereby preserving at least some meaning from the ante- mortem life. However, the advan- tage of an a$erlife would exist even if there were an a$erlife but no God who was granting it. Moreover, even if an a$erlife gave meaning to lives once they exist, it could not plausibly be seen to be the purpose of creating those lives in the %rst!place.

9. Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor:" And How I" Got Licked (Berkeley, CA:!University of California Press, 1994),!109.

10. Jenny Teichman makes this point in response to "omas Nagel. She writes:! “How can Tom Nagel know this? Can he just decree that this is so? In actuality he simply infers that life has no external meaning from the fact that he cannot think of such a meaning. But that is a non sequitur”; “Humanism and the Meaning of Life,” Ratio 6 (December 1993):!157.

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11. Ibid.,!158. 12. "ese are beliefs of Scientiology. See William W. Zellner,

Countercultures: A"Sociological Analysis (New!York:!St. Martin’s Press, 1995),!108.

13. An analogue of theodicy, Kimdicy is “the vindication of Kim goodness in view of the existence of!evil.”

14. I!am not claiming that life is appalling for everybody in these countries. "ere may be some— typically elites— for whom the quality of life is comparably better.

15. M.B. Santos, M.R. Clarke, and G.J. Pierce, “Assessing the Importance of Cephalopods in the Diets of Marine Mammals and Other Top Predators:!Problems and Solutions,” Fisheries Research 52 (2001):!121– 139 (see!128).

16. Christopher McGowan, !e Raptor and the Lamb:"Predators and Prey in the Living World (New!York:!Henry Holt and Co., 1997),!34.

17. Archie Carr, So Excellent a Fishe:" A" Natural History of Sea Turtles (Gainesville, FL:!University of Florida Press, 2011 [1967]),!78.

18. Christopher McGowan, !e Raptor and the Lamb:"Predators and Prey in the Living World (New!York:!Henry Holt and Co., 1997),!12– 13.

19. Ibid.,!77– 78. 20. It is o$en noted that if predators did not consume their prey, the prey

animal population would outstrip their environment’s capacity to feed them and they would die slower deaths. However, an omnipo- tent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity could surely have found a less violent, su#ering- laden solution to this problem. One possibility would be sterility when a population grows too!large.

21. "ere are attempts to claim that human self- awareness is what makes it possible for human life to have meaning. For some discussion of this, see "addeus Metz, Meaning in Life (Oxford, UK:! Oxford University Press, 2013), 40– 41. However, even if this is so, the kinds of mean- ing must be terrestrial meaning. Human self- awareness, or human distinctiveness more generally, seems absolutely irrelevant to cosmic meaning (although they certainly are relevant to the sense of cosmic meaninglessness).

222 Notes

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22. See, for example, William Lane Craig, “"e Absurdity of Life with- out God,” in !e Meaning of Life (second edition), ed. E.D. Klemke (New!York:!Oxford University Press, 1999),!40– 56.

23. For example, it is o$en said that, without God, there can be no moral values. However, there is a vast and convincing literature rejecting this suggestion.

24. Stephen Law, “"e Meaning of Life,” !ink 11 (Spring 2012):!30. 25. Ibid. 26. Kurt Baier makes this point. He draws the distinction between causal

and teleological explanations; “"e Meaning of Life,” in !e Meaning of Life (second edition), ed. E.D. Klemke (New!York:!Oxford University Press, 1999), 104– 105.

27. Kurt Baier makes this distinction too. Ibid.,!105. 28. I!say that this is not true of all of us, because many people— by some

estimates, half of all people— were not intentionally created. Instead, they were the unintentional byproducts of sexual intercourse.

29. His summary of the argument is this:! “We possess value, and, if we are alone, nothing else in the universe does. "erefore we are the only thing that has value, and, trivially, possess most value. We’re there- fore of immense cosmic signi%cance”; Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,” Nous 48 (2014):!756.

30. Ibid. 31. Ibid.,!757. 32. For example, he says that “it would be very hard … to %nd authors

who sincerely deny that the prolonged agony and death of numerous innocent humans and other animals in no way matters— makes no dif- ference to value”!(756).

33. He does acknowledge that some “would insist that we should also add living things … even in the absence of sentience” (757), but he does not seem to be embracing that!view.

34. Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,”!761. 35. Ibid., 749– 750. 36. Ibid.,!749.

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37. Ibid., emphasis in original. 38. He does not use this language, but in defending the claim that we pos-

sess value, he makes claims such as the one cited above:!“it would be very hard … to %nd authors who sincerely deny that the prolonged agony and death of numerous innocent humans and other animals in no way matters— makes no di#erence to value” (756). "ese are com- ments about value rather than about what people ought to do, but in saying that the su#ering and death of sentient beings matter, he seems to be saying that these beings matter.

39. "e absence of this concern is attributable not least to the fact that we are not (currently) under threat from hostile or indi#erent extrater- restrial moral agents.

40. "is is also why I! think we should reject Iddo Landau’s clever but ultimately &awed distinction between (a)! “perspective” and (b)! “standards of meaningfulness”; “"e Meaning of Life sub spe- cie aeternitatis,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (December 2011):! 727– 745. He argues that while our actions may be invis- ible from a cosmic perspective, it still matters— has meaning— that we engage in worthwhile pursuits. God or a hypothetical cosmic observer could evaluate an action as meaningful even though it had very little if any e#ect. "is will not work, however, because what seems to be going on here is that God or the hypothetical cosmic observer is in fact adopting a more local perspective, even though Professor Landau is calling it a cosmic perspective. "e mistake is to misunderstand what a cosmic perspective is. If, for example, an astronaut is in space, the family meaning he has does not thereby become cosmic. Similarly, just because God or a hypothetical observer is not on earth, it does not mean that the perspective he adopts of earthly matters is not an earthly!one.

41. Perhaps it will be argued that although earth is teeming with life, humans are the only terrestrial species with sapient capacities. However, even if one thinks that this gives humans some special value, it is still the case that humans would have still greater terrestrial value if

224 Notes

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they were the only sentient beings (or some of a much smaller number of sentient beings) on!earth.

42. Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,”!761. 43. "omas Nagel, “"e Absurd,” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge,

UK:!Cambridge University Press, 1979),!11. 44. Ibid.,!12. 45. Ibid. 46. Kurt Baier advances a similar argument. He says that if life “can be

worthwhile at all, then it can be so even though it be short. And if it is not worthwhile at all, then an eternity of it is simply a nightmare”; “"e Meaning of Life,” in !e Meaning of Life (second edition), ed. E.D. Klemke (New!York:!Oxford University Press, 1999),!128.

47. "omas Nagel, “"e Absurd,” in Mortal Questions,!12. 48. Robert Nozick, “Philosophy and the Meaning of Life,” in Philosophical

Explanations (Cambridge, MA:!Belknap, 1981),!594. 49. See, for example, "addeus Metz, Meaning in Life (Oxford, UK:!Oxford

University Press, 2013). Such authors do not typically draw attention to the narrower focus by labeling it as!such.

50. Peter Singer, How Are We to Live? (Amherst, NY:!Prometheus Books, 1995),!218.

51. Ibid.,!211. 52. See also Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (third edition) (Cambridge,

UK:!Cambridge University Press, 2011),!294. 53. Peter Singer, How Are We to Live?!217. 54. Christopher Belshaw, 10 Good Questions about Life and Death

(Malden, MA:!Blackwell, 2005), 124. Rejecting other possible criteria, he employs the same kind of argument at 112– 113.

55. Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,”!760. 56. Susan Wolf, “Happiness and Meaning:!Two Aspects of the Good Life,”

Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997):!215. 57. Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insigni%cance,”!763. 58. Ibid.,!764. 59. Ibid., 763. Guy Kahane recognizes that “such a verdict would be not

only harsh, but also unfair,” but he does not abandon it entirely.

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60. Tim Oakley, “"e Issue Is Meaninglessness,” Monist 93 (2010):!110. 61. "omas Joiner, Why People Die by Suicide (Cambridge, MA:!Harvard

University Press, 2005), esp. 117– 136. 62. Dr.!Frankl did not distinguish between meaning and perceived mean-

ing, but it is clear that the meaning that keeps people going is perceived meaning.

63. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (third edition) (New! York: Simon & Schuster, 1984),!109.

64. Ibid., 84. He repeats the words approvingly at!109. 65. Ibid.,!104. 66. Thaddeus Metz, “The Meaning of Life,” Oxford Bibliographies

Online, http:// www.oxfordbibliographies.com/ view/ document/ obo- 9780195396577/ obo- 9780195396577- 0070.xml (accessed June 9, 2010).

67. "is formulation is neutral between the regret being “rationally required” and its being “rationally permissible.” "e latter claim is less extensive but su'cient to justify those who are concerned about the absence of cosmic meaning.

68. Our absence actually would very likely have made a positive di#er- ence on earth. See David Benatar, “"e Misanthropic Argument for Anti- Natalism,” in Permissible Progeny? !e Morality of Procreation and Parenting, eds. Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon (New!York:!Oxford University Press, 2015),!34– 64.

Chapter!4 1. I!do not think that “survivors’ guilt” is an exception because that is not

so much a positive good as the evasion of something terrible. However, there may be some exceptions, which is why I!have quali%ed the claim with the word “tend.”

2. "ese %ndings are mentioned by David G. Myers and Ed Diener, “"e Pursuit of Happiness,” Scienti#c American (May 1996):! 70– 72. See also Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, and Willard L. Rodgers, !e Quality of American Life (New! York:! Russell Sage Foundation, 1976),!25.