The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material WorldA noted philosopher proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to solve the "really hard problem": how to live in a meaningful way—how to live a life that really matters—even as a finite material being living in a material world. If 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. |
From inside the book
Results 6-10 of 65
... individuals. Let me explain. 'Psycho-poetics' refers to the creative ways persons attempt to make meaning and sense of things and thereby to live well. A person who lives well, in a way that makes sense and is meaningful, is what the ...
... individual is in some significant way the person constituted by this psycho-poetic performance. Starting at the ... individuals by descending from the abstract to where each lives among the spaces in the Space of MeaningEarly 21st ...
... individual life , and the brain of some artist might allow for something like an expla- nation sketch of why that artist produced the works he or she did . Kay Redfield Jamison ( 1993 ) has done very interesting work on the high inci ...
... individual is related to the world'' (p. 11). It is interesting and instructive that Sellars, circa 1960, sees the manifest image this way, insofar as Gilbert Ryle, writing a decade earlier, read the manifest image as Cartesian to the ...
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
Contents
1 | |
The Comparative Consensus | 37 |
Buddhism and Science | 63 |
4 Normative Mind Science? Psychology Neuroscience and the Good Life | 107 |
5 Neuroscience Happiness and Positive Illusions | 149 |
6 Spirituality Naturalized? A Strong Cat without Claws | 183 |
Notes | 221 |
Bibliography | 265 |
Index | 285 |