Abstract

It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life.

摘要

人们普遍认为，要赋予生命意义，就需要适当类型的代理机构。将此称为代理要求。在哲学文献中，代理要求的主要动机是假设存在一种广泛的前理论直觉，即人类具有表达意义的能力，而动物则没有；这种差异必须归结为他们的代理或缺乏代理。本文旨在通过论证我们的前理论直觉实际上是相反的来削弱代理要求的动机。动物，甚至物体，都可以拥有有意义的生命/存在。这个论点是双重的。首先，我扩展了动物具有赋予物体意义的能力的现有论点。第二，我认为，坚持认为只有人类具有意义的能力会导致更加违反直觉的结果，即根据定义，所有动物和物体都毫无意义的存在。既然我们在理论上相信任何事物都可以是有意义的——即使是那些从定义上来说缺乏能动性的事物——那么我们就有充分的理由对生命意义的能动性要求持怀疑态度。