Two basic types of proposals for elucidating the concept of existential meaning have been made in the literature: 1) monist proposals; 2) family-resemblance proposals. Monist proposals attempt to give one overarching concept to which all competing conceptions of existential meaning answer. Family-resemblance proposals, on the other hand, claim that the question of existential meaning is not exhausted by any one concept of existential meaning; rather, there is a cluster or family of closely-united concepts which, as a whole, exhaust the possibilities of what we mean by ‘existential meaning’, even though no particular one does so on its own. Metz (2014) examines three monist proposals and concludes that no single one entirely captures the concept of existential meaning. At the conclusion of his analysis, he argues that because they each touch on important aspects of meaning, they should be united into a ‘family’ of closely-related concepts. For Metz, only the family – rather than any particular member – does a sufficient job of making the question of existential meaning intelligible. Without going into the details here, I argue in this dissertation that Metz’s embrace of a family-resemblance view is too quick. Certainly, family resemblance may be the only way we can characterize certain concepts, like games (Wittgenstein, 2001). But, as Metz himself acknowledges, if we can find an underlying concept shared by concepts in the ‘family’ of existential meaning, then that would be preferable. In this dissertation, I claim that the three concepts offered by Metz, along with all conceptions/theories considered in this project, share the following concept of existential meaning in common: existential meaning is an appropriate connection between a life and some significant thing(s). I draw this concept mainly from the work of Robert Nozick (1981), with some modifications to account for objections raised by Metz. Nozick thinks meaning arises as a person seeks to connect to external values. I claim that meaning arises as a person forms appropriate (valuable) connections to significant things (value). More simply stated, existential meaning is about valuable connections. Therefore, I call this the ‘Connectivity Concept’ (‘CC’ for short) and offer it as a necessary and sufficient condition of existential meaning: Connectivity Concept (CC): (a) life, L, has existential meaning if and only if L appropriately connects to some significant thing(s). I argue that this concept underlies questions about existential meaning. But the question of existential meaning requires us to specify three things when discussing existential meaning. I call these three things the ‘context’ of the discussion: 1) the L that we have in mind; 2) the ‘significant things’ we have in mind; and, 3) the ‘appropriate connection’ we have in mind. What L ‘means’, then, may change depending on the context of the discussion. I further claim, as an upshot of my thesis, that ambiguity in the question of existential meaning arises precisely insofar as we fail to specify the context of the discussion. Notice that CC contains normative claims about the connection – ‘appropriate’ – and objects of the connection – ‘significant’. These notions will need to be cashed out when discussing meaning. Realizing that we are disagreeing over the context of meaning will keep us from talking past one another when conceptualizing answers to the question. In the context of the discussion, we can think of the ‘appropriate connection’, metaphorically, as a pointing-relation: if a life does in fact have meaning, then that life ‘points’, in the right ways, to significant objects of the connection. This ‘pointing’ is why I have designated the objects as “some significant thing(s)”. Among other things, they are significant in that they are signified by the connection; the subject of meaning becomes a sign of those things in virtue of making the right connection to them. Conceptions specify what these significant things are and the manner in which the subject “successfully points”. We can state the thesis of this dissertation even more strongly: the question of existential meaning is so abstract a question as to be practically meaningless until we are given its context. Otherwise, almost any answer can qualify as legitimate when we ask: “what is the meaning of life?” – even Deep Thought’s answer of ‘forty-two’ in the epigraph of Chapter 1. I take this to be Douglas Adam’s point. Unless we are clearer in asking the question, people’s answers may come as a real surprise to us, precisely because they may assume different things about the question when they ask it. Indeed, because answers to the question often disagree about the subject, appropriate connection, and significant thing(s), it is important that theorists make arguments for why their context for the question is better, i.e. for why their subject, connection, and significant thing(s) should be prioritized. For instance, some might claim that the question of existential meaning is concerned with how a person (subject) causally influences (right connection) other lives (significant things). This question’s context is vastly different from a question which asks how a person (subject) might promote (connection) states of affairs that are the objects of that person’s propositional attitudes (significant things). These contexts are so different that their answers, too, will look drastically different. And this type of disagreement is precisely what we see in the literature. So if these questions share anything at all in common, it must be very abstract indeed. My claim is that what they share in common is CC. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / November 15, 2019. / Axiology, Conceptual Analysis, Existentialism, Meaningfulness, Meaning of Life, Value theory / Includes bibliographical references. / David McNaughton, Professor Directing Dissertation; John Kelsay, University Representative; Mark Lebar, Committee Member; Nathanael Stein, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_752331 |
| Contributors | Brooks, Aaron D. (author), McNaughton, David, 1946- (professor directing dissertation), Kelsay, John, 1953- (university representative), LeBar, Mark (committee member), Stein, Nathanael (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Philosophy (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (179 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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