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¨Please be sure to do SPOT evaluation for this course.  Will close on Thursday.
¨Fall semester I will be teaching PHIL 2115 (Greek Philosophy) and PHIL 3024: Philosophical
Movements: Philosophy & Literature.
¨Spring semester I will be teaching this course again, and a senior level seminar on Ludwig
Wittgenstein.
¨Consider majoring in Philosophy!

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Greek: Telos
= “purpose”


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Latin: Nihil
= “nothing”


Hamlet:                             “…thinking makes it so.”



1)Pluralistic (meanings)
2)Non-Voluntaristic
3)Non-Platonic

¨Meaningfulness of Language



¨Humpty-Dumpty’s Existentialist view of the meaning of language:






¨Many meanings
¨Meaning is not up to me.
¨Meaning is not independent of us.

¨We can say what the meaning of a word is:
¨“Lacuna”?
¨Can we say what the meaning of a life is?

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¨A life can “have meaning,” or be “meaningful,” without there being something that it means.
¨So, we can’t answer the question: “What is the meaning of life?”
¨Rather: “What kinds of lives are meaningful?”

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1)Enough activities engaged in for their own sake.


1)Enough activities engaged in for their own sake.
2)Enough contribution to something outside itself.


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-Jackie Robinson’s tombstone


1)Enough activities engaged in for their own sake.
2)Enough contribution to something outside itself.
3)Enough intentional structure.

¨Condition 1 makes a life satisfying to me.
¨Condition 2 makes a life valuable to others.
¨Condition 3 makes it be MY life.
¨

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Wow!


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Methusaleh
969 years

What does it mean that you will likely live 30 years beyond your retirement from work?
Not just from an economic standpoint (how will you afford it?) but from a meaning standpoint (what
will you do to maintain a meaningful life well beyond the end of your profession)?
Retirement sounds good for awhile, but then….?

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¨Dualism?
¨God?
¨Immortality?

¨“What kinds of lives are meaningful?”