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The Meaning of Life

Meaning and Purpose

J.J.C. Smart investigates the meaning of purpose.

It can be tempting to suppose that those who agonize about ‘The Meaning of Life’ are the victims of a simple use-mention confusion, that is, confusing a word with what the word refers to. Thus it might be held that the intelligible question was only “What is the meaning of the word ‘life’ ?” In a way we all know the answer to this question since we know how to use the word and in another it raises interesting questions such as “Would you say that a virus or an intelligent robot was alive?” Still not the sort of question to agonize over. However, this interpretation of the question would be too superficial. From about 1300 A.D.

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