[lit-ideas] Re: Happiness or Meaning?

Here's something that just bopped into my mailbox—a cfp from the journal MONIST. Their quarterly issues are devoted to papers on a theme. The next one is 

The Meaning of Life!

Deadline: January 2009
Advisory Editor: Quentin Smith (Western Michigan University) <quentin.smith@xxxxxxxxx>
The vagueness and ambiguity of the question ‘Is there a meaning of human life?’ is standardly resolved by reformulations using more precise categories from the philosophy of religion or from moral realism. But are there alternatives to such reformulations? Consider:
(1) Biology: the meaning of human life is to survive and reproduce; because we no longer have to struggle to survive and reproduce, we are no longer in a position to experience this meaning.
(2) Physics: Hawking has argued that the meaning is in principle expressible in terms of a ‘complete unified theory’, which will throw light inter alia on‘the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.’
(3) Psychology: People talk of sensing ‘emptiness’ in depression and ‘fullness’ in joy. Can these metaphors be justified as referring to modes of epistemic access to some mind-independent meaning of human life that is neither religious nor ethical in nature?
(4) Art: Some hold that there are artistic symbols which somehow express the meaning of human life but in a way that is not expressible in linguistic form. Can such a linguistic ineffability theory be philosophically defended?
Are there other approaches to defending a theory of the meaning of human life? Is it possible to articulate a formal structure or account of meaning which all such theories must share? Articles are invited addressing these and related questions in an analytical spirit. 

Robert Paul
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