4329 4307 Introduction and Thesis In her work, The Meanings of Lives, Susan Wolf makes the argument

that a life is meaningful if it is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project or projects of positive value. She believes that we have reason to want to live meaningful lives, because an interest in living a meaningful life is an appropriate response to a fundamental truth. Failure to have such an interest constitutes a failure to acknowledge that truth a failure to acknowledge that we are just tiny and equally real specks in a vast and value-filled universe. Wolfs stance is applicable to a wide audience, but one particular mindset takes issue with it: the skeptic. Some think that, although the skeptic questions what a nonskeptic would claim to know, he will continue to live his life in much the same way as a non-skeptic. However, a skeptical mind will take issue with Wolfs stance he does not know that he has reason to live a meaningful life. Susan Wolfs line of reasoning says that our reason to live a meaningful life comes from our acknowledgement that there is value in the external world around us. By this logic, a skeptics lack of knowledge about the external world and its value leads to his lack of reason to live a meaningful life. In this paper, I will review Wolfs definition of a meaningful life and her logic as to why we all have reason to want to live one. I will also review the definition of skepticism, the difference between knowing and believing, and why a non-skeptic might argue that a skeptic lives life in the same way a non-skeptic does. For my central thesis, I will draw out the observation that the skeptics inability to acknowledge external value in the world disqualifies him from achieving Wolfs definition of a meaningful life. After defending this thesis, I will consider the possible objection that the skeptic can still achieve Wolfs definition of a meaningful life by living in the same way that a non-skeptic lives a meaningful life. I will show that, because the skeptic only believes and does not know he has reason to live a meaningful life, he cannot meet the definition that Wolf lays out. In closing, I will conclude that a skeptic cannot live the meaningful life that Wolf describes.

4329 4307 Exposition In Wolfs effort to describe what makes a life meaningful, she is able to put into words a thorough definition. A meaningful life is one that is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project (or projects) of positive value. What does this mean, and how did she arrive at this definition? She answers these questions by examining a handful of lives that she considers not meaningful. The first case Wolf examines is that of The Blob. He is a person who spends all his time passively on the couch watching television and drinking beer. This person is detached from the world and other people. He has no goals in life and he is not an achiever. This first example leads Wolf to conclude that a meaningful life must be at least actively engaged, unlike The Blob. The second case Wolf examines is that of The Idle Rich. The Idle Rich is someone sitting on a massive fortune, with no need to worry about burning through her money. This person is actively engaged, unlike The Blob. However, she is only engaged in pointless activities which contribute no value to the world. Wolf expands upon her example of The Idle Rich with two other similar lives. One of these two lives is The Alienated Housewife, who contributes to positive projects around the house. However, her heart is not in the work she does she lives almost on a sort of autopilot. The commonality among all three of these lives is that the dominant activity in each of them seems pointless, useless, or empty. Wolf draws from these examples the criterion that a meaningful life also must be accomplishing something of positive value. There is one last case from which Wolf derives her definition. This case involves someone who might be actively engaged in an activity of positive value, but falls short of success in her activity for one reason or another. The Bankrupt Scientist is an example of a person who spends her whole life dedicated to finding a cure for a terrible disease, but discovers the cure one day too late. Other scientists have beaten her to finding this cure. While she spent her life actively pursuing a project of

4329 4307 positive value, she was not successful in aiding the world like she had planned. Cases of lives like that of The Bankrupt Scientist lead Wolf to her final criterion for her definition. A meaningful life must be at least somewhat successful in the positive project it is actively engaged in. One question that might follow next from Wolfs definition is what defines positive value. She deliberately leaves this ambiguous so as to target her definition at as broad an audience as possible. She also goes on to ask that we exclude merely subjective value as a suitable interpretation of the phrase. Her reasoning for this exclusion is that we must recognize that there is value in the universe outside of our own subjective happiness, and a meaningful life would recognize this external value. It is acknowledgement that one is not the center of the universe. An egocentric life does not make this same acknowledgement. But this is only reason why we should exclude subjective happiness from the definition of positive value. Why should we even be bothered at all to try and lead a meaningful life in the first place? We who are interested in living meaningful lives generally think that this interest is a good one to have. We are glad that we want to have meaningful lives, and we would like others to want their own meaningful lives in fact, we tend to find it regrettable for a friend to have not lived a meaningful life. Wolf draws a parallel to this claim that a person should want to live a meaningful life, stating that the closest analogue to it is what Aristotle called eudaimonia. He claimed that a virtuous life is the happiest life, but offered no justification as to why. Instead, he simply dismissed those not willing to accept his assertion as uneducated. Having made this point, Wolf returns to her earlier claim. The question of why one should care about living a meaningful life is equivalent to the question of why one should care that ones life be actively and somewhat successfully engaged in projects of positive value. But why must the projects be of positive value? She again mentions that a meaningful life harmonizes with the value-filled universe in a way that an egocentric life does not. A skeptic is one who questions what most people would claim to know. According to the Justified True Belief view, a skeptics definition of knowledge consists of three criteria: truth, belief, and

4329 4307 sufficient justification. That is, for a skeptic to know some statement is true, that statement must be true in reality. Second, the skeptic must also believe that statement to be true. Herein lays the difference between knowing and believing. The latter is a subset of the former one can believe without knowing. Lastly, the skeptic must have sufficient justification to believe that that statement is true. What constitutes sufficient justification? Sufficient justification requires the ruling out of each and every case in which the statement is false. Such strict requirements for knowledge make it extremely difficult if not impossible for a skeptic to truly know anything about the external world. One specific argument that the skeptic will raise to defend his position on not knowing whether or not there is value in the external world is The Possibility of Error Argument, which claims: For (almost) any belief any person has about the external world, that belief could be mistaken. If a belief could be mistaken, then it is not a case of knowledge. Therefore, (almost) any belief any person has about the external world is not knowledge. This argument rules out almost all a posteriori knowledge that a person might have thought they had. It does not rule out a priori knowledge, such as the knowledge of ones own existence or of mathematics. We often view skeptics as people who lead their lives in the same way that we as non-skeptics do. Despite their lack of knowledge about the external world, they still for the most part follow many of the same habits that we do. Skeptics talk to other people as we do, obey the same laws we do, keep themselves out of harms way as we do, and so on. They appear to exhibit almost entirely the same behavior as non-skeptics, so it is reasonable that we are unable to distinguish any differences in the ways our lives are lived. But despite these striking outward similarities, the contents of skeptics minds differ from ours in significant ways.

4329 4307 Thesis Defense A common view is that skeptics, despite their lack of knowledge, go on and live their lives much in the same way that we do. They display many of the same mannerisms that we do, so it seems like a skeptics inability to know facts about the external world really does not affect them at all. In fact, many skeptics even appear to want to live meaningful lives. But the meaningfulness of ones life is affected by more than just how one acts. Susan Wolf says that living a meaningful life is a way of acknowledging ones non-privileged position in the universe. The issue that skepticism takes with her statement is that a skeptic who wants to live a meaningful life does not necessarily acknowledge his non-privileged position. Acknowledgement of some claim means acceptance of the truth of that claim. The statement that one is in a non-privileged position in life is not a priori knowledge; it is knowledge about the external world, which a skeptic claims not to have. A skeptics desire to want to live a meaningful life might on the surface look similar to our desire for the same type of life, but the skeptics desire is driven by his belief that there is value outside of himself, not his knowledge of it. He chooses to believe in value outside of himself, but as a skeptic he is unable to accept this belief as a certainty because it is not a priori knowledge. Wolfs account of a meaningful life entails that one must accept as a truth the claim that each of us is only a tiny, individual life among a vast world of other equally real lives. Accepting that others are equally real means understanding that others are facing up to the same skeptical thought, and that many of them are able to know what a true skeptic can only believe. The inability to know that there exists external value means any active engagement in projects of objective positive value is hollow in some sense. Though he believes he has reason to engage in such projects, the skeptics heart is not truly in it because he cannot acknowledge external value. These projects only take on meaning if one can acknowledge the value outside of oneself in the universe.

4329 4307 Objections and Replies A possible objection that one might raise in opposition to my thesis is that a skeptic does qualify for Wolfs definition of a meaningful life by actively and somewhat successfully engaging in projects of positive value throughout his life. The objector would claim that meeting these defined criteria satisfies all necessary requirements for living a meaningful life. However, one of these criteria is not truly met, and claiming that it is met by the skeptic completely eludes the main point that Wolf is trying to convey. Each of us is only a tiny, equally real fraction of the total value in the universe. By failing to recognize this statement as a truth, the skeptic fails the criterion of being truly engaged. Like the alienated housewife, the skeptics heart is not in his projects because he cannot know the value to which he is contributing because of this. Summary Over the course of this paper, I have introduced my central thesis that the skeptics inability to recognize value outside of himself in the universe makes him unable to achieve Wolfs definition of a meaningful life. I explained Wolfs definition of a meaningful life, and the process she went through in order to arrive at her definition. I also reviewed the definition of skepticism and the difference between knowing and believing a claim. I described in what sense a skeptic and non-skeptic live similar lives, and in what sense they differ. Next, I defended my thesis by arguing that the skeptic needs to acknowledge external value in the universe rather than just believing in it, in order to live what Susan Wolf defines as a meaningful life. Finally, I recognized the possible counter-argument to my thesis. This objection claimed that a skeptic can lead a meaningful life if he satisfies the criteria of Wolfs definition. I explained that this counter-argument fails to disprove what my thesis claims because a skeptic cannot be truly engaged in the projects of positive value he works on. His heart is just not in it.