The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material WorldIf consciousness is "the hard problem" in mind science -- explaining how the amazing private world of consciousness emerges from neuronal activity -- then "the really hard problem," writes Owen Flanagan in this provocative book, is explaining how meaning is possible in the material world. How can we make sense of the magic and mystery of life naturalistically, without an appeal to the supernatural? How do we say truthful and enchanting things about being human if we accept the fact that we are finite material beings living in a material world, or, in Flanagan's description, short-lived pieces of organized cells and tissue? Flanagan's answer is both naturalistic and enchanting. We all wish to live in a meaningful way, to live a life that really matters, to flourish, to achieve eudaimonia -- to be a "happy spirit." Flanagan calls his "empirical-normative" inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing eudaimonics. Eudaimonics, systematic philosophical investigation that is continuous with science, is the naturalist's response to those who say that science has robbed the world of the meaning that fantastical, wishful stories once provided. Flanagan draws on philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, as well as on transformative mindfulness and self-cultivation practices that come from such nontheistic spiritual traditions as Buddhism, Confucianism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, in his quest. He gathers from these disciplines knowledge that will help us understand the nature, causes, and constituents of well-being and advance human flourishing. Eudaimonics can help us find out how to make a difference, how to contribute to the accumulation of good effects -- how to live a meaningful life. |
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... Fitness , Then Flourishing I would like to think I have given an argument that makes plausible two things : ( 1 ) Our natures are a mixed bag from a normative point of view . ( 2 ) Eudaimonia comes , if it does , only if we grow the ...
... fitness imperative and the requirement that it be met first . Scarcity of resources keeps a full 20 percent of humans at present from achieving fitness . Flourishing can't be achieved unless fitness is . The linear order is perhaps ...
... fitness is the orientation we are thrust into the world to achieve . Next comes the magic trick : At every place one Earth , as fitness is achieved ( more likely , as it is being achieved ) , humans begin to strive for meaning and ...
Contents
The Comparative | 37 |
Buddhism and Science | 63 |
Normative Mind Science? Psychology Neuroscience and the Good | 107 |
Copyright | |
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