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The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity

We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only tr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Persson, Ingmar, Savulescu, Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6597595/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31327930
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09296-0
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author Persson, Ingmar
Savulescu, Julian
author_facet Persson, Ingmar
Savulescu, Julian
author_sort Persson, Ingmar
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description We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we intentionally create while leading them. These inequalities are morally unjustifiable because they are ultimately due to factors beyond our responsibility and control. But from the point of view of eternity these differences in meaningfulness and value dwindle to insignificance, and this offers some consolation for the unjustifiable inequalities.
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spelling pubmed-65975952019-07-18 The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity Persson, Ingmar Savulescu, Julian J Ethics Article We present an analysis of a notion of the meaning of life, according to which our lives have meaning if we spend them intentionally producing what has value for ourselves or others. In this sense our lives can have meaning even if a science-inspired view of the world is correct, and they are only transient phenomena in a vast universe. Our lives are more or less meaningful in this sense due to the difference in value for ourselves and others we intentionally create while leading them. These inequalities are morally unjustifiable because they are ultimately due to factors beyond our responsibility and control. But from the point of view of eternity these differences in meaningfulness and value dwindle to insignificance, and this offers some consolation for the unjustifiable inequalities. Springer Netherlands 2019-06-21 2019 /pmc/articles/PMC6597595/ /pubmed/31327930 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09296-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Persson, Ingmar
Savulescu, Julian
The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title_full The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title_fullStr The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title_full_unstemmed The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title_short The Meaning of Life, Equality and Eternity
title_sort meaning of life, equality and eternity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6597595/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31327930
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09296-0
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