PHIL 1200 Lecture Notes - Thomas Nagel, Immanence, Aspirin
14 Mar 2014
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Three bad arguments against an immanent meaning of life. Nagel"s clash of perspectives argument against an immanent meaning of life. Because he very quickly starts using evaluative terms as synonymous with his talk of absurdity. Hence: life is absurd (in nagel"s sense) = life doesn"t matter. = life isn"t worth living = there is no meaning of life = nihilism (in our sense). ) Nihilist"s worry is also correct. P1 if there is an immanent meaning of life, _______________________________________________________ Applied to spatial considerations (size), the argument here would go as follows: C therefore, there is no immanent meaning of life. Thus, this argument also seems question- begging: the instrumental worth argument. To capture the reasoning of this argument succinctly, let"s first introduce a distinction: Given this distinction, we can now represent the reasoning of this third argument as follows: P1 if there is an immanent meaning of life, then life must relate to something immanent that has intrinsic worth.
