CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE. David Matheson

Transcription

1 Ratio (new series) XXXI 1 March CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE David Matheson Abstract To forestall scepticism about meaning in life as a distinct final value, I sketch a preliminary characterization of meaning as superlative final value in life. I then make the case that this characterization helps us better appreciate a neglected substantive account of meaning, namely, Richard Taylor s creativity account. After laying out the creativity account, I argue that it is not just very compelling, but more compelling under the superlativeness characterization than the most prominent of the recent substantive accounts. I A plausible pluralism admits moral, epistemic, aesthetic, and hedonic final values in life basic varieties of goodness with which individuals can endow their lives, to some degree or other, by performing activities of certain sorts. 1 By performing other-regarding activities of the right sorts, an individual can endow her life with a measure of moral final value. By acquiring or transmitting knowledge in the right way, she can endow her life with some degree of epistemic final value. She can render her life of more aesthetic final value by performing certain artistic activities. She can increase the hedonic final value of her life by doing things she finds pleasurable, things that make her feel happy or fulfilled. As an explanandum in the philosophy of life literature, meaning in life is presented as a distinct final value in life; it is, we are told, yet another non-derivative ingredient or aspect of the good life. 2 One might be sceptical of this, however, in light of the fact that 1 A basic variety of goodness is one that does not supervene entirely on other varieties of goodness. Following Christine Korsgaard in Two Distinctions in Goodness, The Philosophical Review 92 (1983), pp , I prefer final value over the more traditional intrinsic value here, to avoid the suggestion that basic varieties of goodness supervene entirely on non-relational properties. 2 Susan Wolf, Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life, in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., & Jeffrey Paul (eds.), Self-interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p Cf. Thaddeus Metz, Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Pt. I.

2 74 DAVID MATHESON every putative instance of meaning in life (to whatever degree) seems upon little reflection also to be an instance (to a comparable degree) of one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life. By leading the Salt March, Gandhi endowed his life with a good deal of meaning; but he also thereby endowed his life with a good deal of moral final value. By her discoveries in radioactivity, Curie endowed her life with much epistemic final value as well as with much meaning; similarly for Einstein s discovery of special and general relativity. Picasso s artistic activities made his life considerably meaningful, and of considerable aesthetic final value. When we claim that Ella Fitzgerald led a very meaningful life, are we really saying anything more than that her life had a lot of aesthetic and hedonic final value by virtue of her impressive vocal accomplishments? Is the extent to which the skilled home cook s culinary efforts yield meaning in life not just the extent to which they yield one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life? The sceptical worry is that, contrary to the way in which it is presented, meaning in life is not really a distinct final value in life because it reduces without remainder to one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life. To forestall such scepticism, we need a preliminary characterization of meaning in life that not only indicates why it is irreducible to one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life, but also allows for the apparent fact that every instance of it is also an instance of one or more of them. No preliminary characterizationseemstofillthisbillbetterthanthatofmeaningassuperlative final value in life, understood roughly as follows: a final value in life whose realization (to a certain degree) entails not only the realization (to a comparable degree) of one or more of the other final values in life but also the realization of more overall goodness than the realization (to the relevant degree) of the other value or values alone. 3 On this characterization, meaning in life does not reduce to one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life, for the realization of one or more of these plainly does not entail the realization of more overall goodness than 3 For a previous gesture in the direction of this characterization, and discussion of some of the thoughts and associations mentioned below, see my Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value, Journal of Philosophy of Life 5 (2015), pp In his richly rewarding essay, Downshifting and Meaning in Life, Ratio 18 (2005), pp , Neil Levy talks of superlative meaning in life, but he seems thereby to mean something like a considerable degree of meaning in life, rather than meaning (to whatever degree) as superlative final value in life.

3 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 75 itself. And yet this characterization allows for the apparent fact that every instance of meaning in life is also an instance of one or more of these. If, as is plausibly the case, there are no final values in life beyond the superlative, moral, epistemic, aesthetic, and hedonic, then on the superlativeness characterization it will follow that every instance of meaning in life is also an instance of moral or epistemic or aesthetic or hedonic final value in life. The superlativeness characterization has a number of further virtues. As one can expect of any preliminary characterization of an explanandum, it is not obviously inconsistent with any of the major (naturalist or non-naturalist) substantive accounts of the explanandum in question accounts that aim to specify the sort of activity on which meaning in life is based. The superlativeness characterization comports with the traditional association of meaning in life with the summum bonum in life. The characterization makes good sense of why meaning in life is commonly associated with a kind of depth, 4 of why the possession of meaning is perceived as preventing lives from displaying the sort of flatness of which William James so memorably wrote. 5 Superlative final value in life, we may say, yields goodness along an evaluative dimension other than the evaluative dimensions along which the moral, epistemic, aesthetic, and hedonic final values in life yield goodness; compare the way in which spatial depth yields magnitude along a dimension other than the dimensions along which spatial length and width yield magnitude. The superlativeness characterization makes good sense of why meaning in life is frequently associated with a kind of transcendence, for superlative final value in life entails a kind of transcendence an evaluative transcendence beyond the other final values in life. The characterization also accommodates the intuitive thought that lives devoid of meaning can nevertheless be possessed of much final value of other sorts; hence under the characterization meaningless lives can still have a lot of final value, perhaps typically enough to make them well worth living. I think the superlativeness characterization also helps us better appreciate a neglected substantive account of meaning in life, namely, the creativity account that Richard Taylor anticipates in 4 Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p James, What Makes a Life Significant? in Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life s Ideals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [1899] 1983), p. 154.

4 76 DAVID MATHESON his earliest contribution to the topic 6 and explicitly defends in his more mature ones. 7 My central aim in what follows is to show this. To say that the creativity account is neglected in the philosophy of life literature is probably an understatement: beyond an occasional dismissal that makes little attempt at explicating it, 8 the account has received virtually no attention at all from other contributors to the literature. Yet under the superlativeness characterization, I will argue, the account proves to be especially compelling. I will begin in the next section by laying out the creativity account in some detail, as seems warranted by the account s neglect. I will then make the case in Section III that the account is not just compelling, but more compelling under the superlativeness characterization than Susan Wolf s fitting fulfilment account and Thaddeus Metz s fundamentality account the two most prominent recent alternatives to the creativity account. II On the creativity account, meaning in life is based on activity that achieves something important due to the performing individual s original purpose of achieving it. For convenience s sake we may call this meaningfully creative activity. To say that meaningfully creative activity achieves something important is to say that it realizes some final value or other (whether moral, epistemic, aesthetic, or hedonic) either in its very performance by being of 6 Taylor, Good and Evil: A New Direction (New York: Macmillan, 1970), Ch. 18 (pp ). The most popular interpretation of this contribution reads it as proposing a radical form of subjectivism according to which meaning in life is based on nothing more than subjectively preferred or endorsed activity. See, e.g., Judith Jarvis Thomson, Good and Evil: A New Direction, by Richard Taylor, The Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), p. 116; David Wiggins, Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life, in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp ; John Kekes, The Meaning of Life, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 24 (2000), pp. 24 & 27; Thaddeus Metz, Recent Work on the Meaning of Life, Ethics 112 (2002), pp ; Wolf, Meaning in Life, pp ; Laurence James, Activity and the Meaningfulness of Life, The Monist 93 (2010), p. 58; and Christine Vitrano, Meaningful Lives? Ratio 26 (2013), p. 79. I think a proper understanding of the creativity account that Taylor explicitly defends in the more mature contributions casts serious doubt on this interpretation and should cause us to view the early contribution as anticipating the creativity account. 7 Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, in Burton M. Leiser (ed.), Values in Conflict: Life, Liberty, and the Rule of Law (New York: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 3 26; Time and Life s Meaning, The Review of Metaphysics 40 (1987), pp ; and The Meaning of Life, Philosophy Now 24 (1999), pp E.g. Irving Singer, Meaning in Life, Volume I: The Creation of Value (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1992] 2010), pp and Metz, Meaning in Life, pp

5 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 77 some basic goodness or in its consequence by bringing about something of some basic goodness. Thus Taylor writes of such activity that although it need not involve the creation of some object nor yield any result whatever beyond itself, 9 it always achieves something genuinely noble, beautiful, or otherwise lastingly worthwhile, 10 something truly important or great ; 11 it does not merely provide an occasion for renewed labors of the same kind. 12 Creative or not, activity that realizes no final value but is merely lauded (or mistakenly believed to be of some final value) is not meaningfully creative. A man might spend his life creating a tremendous ball of string, as one actually did, or digging a whole in the ground deeper than any ever seen, as Taylor says. But however much others are impressed by the energy and industry of such activity, it is not meaningfully creative because things like that are of no real worth. 13 What makes meaningfully creative activity creative is that it achieves something due to the performing individual s original purpose of achieving it. Creative activity generally achieves something due to the performing individual s original purpose of achieving it: creative activity realizes some feature, that is, because the individual who performs the activity originally intends to realize this feature. Meaningfully creative activity is thus a special subclass of creative activity: meaningfully creative activity realizes some final value because the individual who performs it originally intends to realize this value. The due to or because clause is here to be understood as picking out the primary reason for the realization. There will of course always be a myriad reasons why creative activity realizes whatever feature it does: whenever an activity realizes a feature because the performing individual intends to realize it, the activity realizes that feature partly because of various environmental and social factors, other attitudes of the individual, and so on. But in the relevant primary-reason sense, this is consistent with saying that the activity realizes the feature because the individual who performs it intends to realize that feature. Compare the virtue epistemologist s claim that for a belief to amount to knowledge it Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, p. 25. Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, p. 21. Taylor, Time and Life s Meaning, p Taylor, Good and Evil, p Taylor, The Meaning of Life, p. 14.

6 78 DAVID MATHESON must be true because the believer exercises an intellectual competence. 14 This is not meant to deny the obvious point that a belief is always true partly because of various things other than the believer s exercise of an intellectual competence. It is only meant to indicate that for a belief to qualify as knowledge it must realize truth for the primary reason that the believer exercises an intellectual competence. The description of an individual s purpose or intention as original is meant in turn to indicate something about the primary reason the individual has it: she has it neither because it has been simply imbibed from others, as if by osmosis, 15 nor because it has been imposed from without by others. 16 Otherwise put, as creative activity in general realizes a feature because the performing individual intends to realize this feature and does not intend to realize it because others intend (either themselves or for her) to realize it, so meaningfully creative activity realizes a final value because the performing individual intends to realize this value and does not intend to realize the value because others intend to realize it. Uncreative activity of whatever sort may realize final value, but never because the performing individual originally intends to realize the value. I take a daily stroll mindlessly, for example, and certainly not because I have any intention of realizing some final value by doing so. Even if my strolling realizes a final value I am so naturally graceful in my movements that the strolling realizes an aesthetic final value, say, or it realizes an epistemic final value by clearing my head and causing me to effect inferences of the right sorts it does not do so because I intend, let alone originally intend, to realize the value. The activity is no more creative, hence no more meaningfully creative, than such value-realizing natural events as the formation of a beautiful snowflake that resembles no other, the ingenious construction of the honeycomb, 17 or the survival-conducive activity of various non-human animal species. 18 I stand up publicly for the rights of a disadvantaged social group, but mainly just to imitate you, the first (very admirably) to do so. I may thereby realize some moral final value, but my activity 14 E.g. Ernest Sosa, A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 33ff. 15 Taylor, Time and Life s Meaning, p Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, p Taylor, Time and Life s Meaning, p Taylor, Good and Evil, pp

7 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 79 is not creative, hence not meaningfully creative, for even if we allow that my activity realizes a moral final value because I intend to realize it, the activity does not realize the value because I originally intend to realize it: I intend to realize it because you have previously intended to realize it with your inspiring activity. Or suppose that you, my chef, conceive of the novel preparation of fabulous dish, and demand that I, your sous chef, so prepare it. Although your conceiving of the dish s preparation may be creative creative activity may be of a merely mental sort 19 my preparing the dish to satisfy your demand is not. Even if I intend in response to your demand to realize whatever hedonic or aesthetic final value my culinary activity realizes, I intend this because you intend (for me) to realize this value. That meaningfully creative activity is originally purposeful in this way implies that its realization of final value is the performing individual s own creation, 20 a product of her own creative mind, something which, but for [her] own creative thought and imagination, would never have existed at all. 21 In their brief dismissals of the creativity account, both Irving Singer and Thaddeus Metz assume that activity must be originally purposeful in some stronger sense in order for its realization of final value to be the performing individual s own creation. Singer assumes that the activity must involve a kind of grandiose purpose or intention that somehow pervades the performing individual s life and matters uniquely in it by giving it a distinctive unity. 22 And Metz assumes that the activity must involve some sort of intention that is manifestly not present in such deeply moral activity as tending to the sick by changing bandages, cleaning bedpans, and alleviatingpaininthemannerofmotherteresa. 23 But neither assumption is correct. Call activity that realizes a final value due to the performing individual s having a grandiose intention of the sort Singer describes grandiosely purposeful activity. Call activity that realizes a final value due to the performing individual s having some intention that is manifestly not present in deeply moral activity of the sort Metz describes non-morally purposeful activity. Although the realization of final Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, p. 25. Taylor, The Meaning of Human Existence, p. 21. Taylor, Time and Life s Meaning, p. 681 and The Meaning of Life, p. 14. Singer, Meaning in Life, p Metz, Meaning in Life, p. 212.

8 80 DAVID MATHESON value that comes through grandiosely purposeful activity and nonmorally purposeful activity may count as the performing individual s own creation, the realization of final value that comes through meaningfully creative activity clearly counts as well. The realization of final value that comes through meaningfully creative activity, after all, is due to an intention on the part of the performing individual that does not originate from the intentions of others to realize the value, and that seems clearly sufficient to render the realization of final value the performing individual s own creation, a product of her own mind or imagination. And there is no good reason to suppose that meaningfully creative activity cannot take the form of deeply moral activity of the sort Metz describes. It will be agreed all around that such deeply moral activity realizes a great deal of moral final value. And it surely may realize this value in the requisite, originally purposeful way because the performing individual intends to realize the value and does not intend to realize it because someone else intends (for her) to realize it; 24 to claim otherwise is to suggest, quite counterintuitively, that whenever an individual performs deeply moral activity of the sort Metz describes, she is really just being put up to it by others or doing what others expect or demand of her. In fact there is no good reason to suppose that meaningfully creative activity cannot take the form of everyday activity, however rarely it does: it can, as Taylor puts it, sometimes be found in quite mundane things. 25 Thus consider my doing the laundry 26 as good an example of everyday activity as any, seeing that every salient activity type under which the activity falls (doing one s laundry, cleaning one s personal effects, taking care of one s personal effects, taking care of things, etc.) is such that many activities of that type are regularly performed by many individuals. Not only can this everyday, mundane activity realize some final value (e.g. the aesthetic final value of presenting oneself in an attractive way, the moral final value of looking after one s personal hygiene, 24 Where the performing individual is, like Mother Teresa herself, of strong religious conviction, it may be correct to say that her activity realizes the moral final value because she intends to do what a divine being expects of her. But I regard this as consistent with saying that her activity realizes the value because she intends to realize it and does not intend to realize it because anyone else intends to realize it. For such an individual, after all, intending to do what the divine being expects of her and intending to realize moral final value will presumably be one and the same, and she need not have the intention because some other individual intends to realize the value. 25 Taylor, Time and Life s Meaning, p Cf. Kekes, The Meaning of Life, p. 17.

9 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 81 etc.), it can do so in the requisite originally purposeful way. It may well be that meaningfully creative activity only rarely takes the form of everyday activity, for it may well be that everyday activity typically realizes whatever final value it does due to an unoriginal purpose on the part of the performing individual because she intends to realize this value and intends to realize the value because others intend (for her) to do so (she is imitating their pattern, or doing what others clearly expect of her). Even so, meaningfully creative activity can take the form of everyday activity, provided the performing individual has the right attitude, or original purpose, in performing it. With meaningfully creative activity thus articulated, we may summarize the creativity account as follows: The creativity account Meaning in life is based on meaningfully creative activity. Meaningfully creative activity is activity that achieves something important due to the performing individual s original purpose of achieving it: it is activity that realizes some final value because the performing individual intends to realize this value and does not intend to realize this value because anyone else intends to realize it. 27 III The extent to which a substantive account of meaning in life is compelling under the superlativeness characterization is the extent to which the activity the account specifies as the basis for meaning in life plausibly endows the performing individual s life 27 The more closely an individual s life resembles the (post-condemnation) life of Sisyphus in the traditional myth, the less meaningful it will be according to this account, for Sisyphus s life is the very paradigm of a life devoid of meaningfully creative activity. Sisyphus s life consisted exclusively of activity that realized no final value, and whatever feature or state of affairs this repetitive activity can be said to have realized, the activity did not realize it due to Sisyphus s original purpose of realizing it. It is hardly surprising, then, that Taylor invokes the myth of Sisyphus throughout his contributions as the central image of a life devoid of meaning. Nor is it surprising that Taylor uses incrementally revised versions of the myth throughout his contributions to illustrate aspects of meaning in life a version in which Sisyphus manages to achieve something important (the stones he rolls are assembled at the top of his hill into a beautiful and enduring temple (Good and Evil, p. 259), another in which it is his original purpose to achieve this ( The Meaning of Human Existence, p. 21), and yet another in which he achieves it because it is his original purpose to do so ( Time and Life s Meaning, p. 681 and The Meaning of Life, p. 14).

10 82 DAVID MATHESON with superlative final value. And, given the relevant notion of superlative final value sketched in Section I, the extent to which this activity plausibly endows the performing individual s life with superlative final value will be the extent to which the activity plausibly satisfies the following two conditions: (a) the activity must realize (to some degree) one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life F (b) the activity must realize more overall goodness than the realization (to the relevant degree) of F alone. Thus, the extent to which a substantive account of meaning in life is compelling under the superlativeness characterization will be the extent to which the activity the account specifies as the basis for such meaning plausibly satisfies (a) and (b). As explicated in the previous section, the creativity account is very compelling under the superlativeness characterization, for meaningfully creative activity very plausibly satisfies both of these conditions. Meaningfully creative activity quite plainly satisfies (a): such activity must, as we have seen, realize some measure of moral, epistemic, aesthetic, or hedonic final value in life. And meaningfully creative activity very plausibly satisfies (b) as well, in light of the originally purposeful way in which the activity must realize some measure of moral, epistemic, aesthetic, or hedonic finalvalue inlightofthefactthatitmustrealizesomemoral, epistemic, aesthetic, or hedonic final value due to the original purpose of the performing individual. An activity s realization of some measure of moral, epistemic, aesthetic, or hedonic final value is obviously a good thing; the activity s realization of this value is very plausibly better yet when it is due to the original purpose of the performing individual. Alternatively put, although it is clearly a good thing generally for an activity to achieve something important, it seems clearly better yet, generally, for the activity to achieve this because the performing individual intends in the relevantly original way to achieve it. To recall a virtue-theoretic epistemological analogy, it is an epistemically good thing for a belief to be true, but epistemically better yet for a belief to be true due to the believer s exercise of an intellectual competence. I want now to make the case that the creativity account is not just very compelling under the superlativeness characterization, but more compelling under that characterization than the most prominent, alternative substantive accounts to be found in the recent literature, namely, Wolf s fitting fulfilment account and

11 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 83 Metz s fundamentality account. I will argue that neither the activity that the fitting fulfilment account specifies as the basis for meaning in life, nor the activity that the fundamentality account specifies as the basis for meaning in life satisfies (a) and (b) as plausibly as meaningfully creative activity. On the fitting fulfilment account, meaning in life is based on fittingly fulfilling activity. Fittingly fulfilling activity manifests an attitude of fulfilment on the part of the performing individual, where this attitude has both conative and cognitive aspects: it is a desire-like inclination to perform the activity (a love for or engagement with the activity) that represents the activity as being worthy of performance. 28 Fittingly fulfilling activity moreover manifests this attitude in a fitting way: there is truth in the cognitive aspect of the attitude the activity manifests. In other words, fittingly fulfilling activity must in fact be worthy of performance; it must realize some value that is independent of whatever hedonic (or subjective ) value is realized by the manifestation of the relevant attitude of fulfilment. 29 As Wolf puts it, meaning in life consists in and arises from actively engaging in projects of worth, or arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness, and one is able to do something about it or with it. 30 The fundamentality account, by contrast, eschews emphasis on attitudes of fulfilment and maintains that meaning in life is based on what we may call fundamentality-favouring activity. In performing fundamentality-favouring activity, Metz tells us, an individual employs her reason in favour of fundamental conditions of human existence. 31 The relevant sense of reason is broad, comprehending whatever intuitive facets of intelligence of which human beings are characteristically capable and animals, even higher ones such as chimpanzees, are not ; nevertheless, certain kinds of cognition and intentional action serve as paradigmatic examples. 32 Fundamental conditions of human existence are supposed to be features of human experience that are largely 28 Wolf, Meaning in Life, p Wolf, Meaning in Life, pp. 37 & 127. Wolf is clear (pp. 14ff.) that this hedonic value need not involve (indeed, typically does not involve) simple physical pleasure or fun feelings. 30 Wolf, Meaning in Life, p Metz, Meaning in Life, p Metz, Meaning in Life, p. 223.

12 84 responsible for (presumably, in a structuring-cause sense 33 )many other such features. 34 Examples include being part of a stable, non-oppressive society, having healthy interpersonal relationships, having important scientific knowledge, and appreciating artwork that reflects universal human themes. 35 And, finally, to say that an individual employs her reason in favour of such fundamental conditions is to say that she exercises a facet of her distinctly human intelligence in order either to promote or to protect one or more of these conditions in order, that is, either to realize one or more of these conditions or to remove something that threatens the continued realization of one or more of them. 36 Thus: The fitting fulfilment account Meaning in life is based on fittingly fulfilling activity. Fittingly fulfilling activity is activity wherein the performing individual manifests a fitting attitude of fulfilment a desire-like inclination to perform the activity that truly represents the activity as realizing some value that is independent of whatever hedonic value the manifestation of this inclination realizes. The fundamentality account DAVID MATHESON Meaning in life is based on fundamentality-favouring activity. Fundamentality-favouring activity is activity wherein an individual employs her reason in favour of fundamental conditions of human existence: it is activity wherein an individual exercises some facet of her distinctly human intelligence in order either to promote or to protect a feature of human experience that is responsible for many other such features. On the (charitable) assumption that either the independent value it realizes or the hedonic value it realizes is final, fittingly fulfilling activity clearly satisfies condition (a). But even on this assumption fittingly fulfilling activity does not obviously satisfy condition (b). For all we know about fittingly fulfilling activity on the fitting fulfilment account, such activity may realize one of more of 33 As contrasted with a triggering-cause sense; cf. Fred Dretske, Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), Ch Metz, Meaning in Life, p Metz, Meaning in Life, pp Metz, Meaning in Life, pp

13 CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE 85 the already acknowledged final values in life without realizing any superlative final value in life. To illustrate, consider the characteristic activity of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot an individual who manifests a desire-like inclination to perform an activity (e.g. standing up for the rights of a certain oppressed group), where this inclination truly represents the activity as realizing a moral final value that is independentofwhateverhedonicvaluethemanifestationoftheinclination realizes, but where it is obvious that the individual manifests the inclination just because others (e.g. his parents and the likeminded group of rights-advocates with which they associate) have done so. The characteristic activity of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot is fittingly fulfilling activity, and it realizes one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life: it at least realizes the relevant moral final value, and perhaps a hedonic final value as well. But the characteristic activity of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot does not seem to realize more overall goodness than the realization of one or more of the already acknowledged final value alone; there is nothing about the activity that warrants the claim that, in addition to realizing whatever moral and/or hedonic value it does, it realizes more overall goodness than the realization of that moral and/or hedonic value alone. Similarly, although the activity the fundamentality account specifies as the basis of meaning in life very plausibly satisfies condition (a), it does not plausibly satisfy condition (b). At least where epistemic is construed in a sufficiently broad fashion sufficiently broad to correspond to the broad sense of reason at play in the fundamentality account activity wherein an individual employs her reason in favour of fundamental conditions of human existence very plausibly must realize some epistemic final value in life (perhaps even a very high degree of epistemic final value in life, in light of the sort of thing at which it is aimed); hence fundamentality-favouring activity very plausibly satisfies condition (a). But it does not so plausibly satisfy condition (b). Consider now the characteristic activity of the fundamentalityfavouring moral parrot an individual who, by performing some activity, exercises some facet of his distinctly human intelligence in order to promote or protect a moral feature of human experience that is responsible for many other features of human experience (e.g. respect for the rights of an oppressed group), but where it is clear that he does so just because others (e.g. his parents, the like-minded group of rights-advocates with which they

14 86 DAVID MATHESON associate) have done so. As with the characteristic activity of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot, the characteristic activity of the fundamentality-favouring moral parrot realizes one or more of the already acknowledged final values in life: it plainly realizes an epistemic (in the broad sense) final value. But, again, there is nothing about the activity to warrant the claim that it realizes more overall goodness than the realization of this final value alone. Given the imitative, parrot-like nature of the fundamentality-favouring activity and hence of the exercise of reason it involves it intuitively does not realize more overall goodness than the realization of that epistemic final value alone. Neither the characteristic activity of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot nor the characteristic activity of the fundamentalityfavouring moral parrot will count as meaningfully creative, for even if both of these activities may be said to involve an intention onthepartoftheperformingindividualtorealizeoneormoreof the already acknowledged final values in life, this intention will not be original in the requisite sense: the parrots will have their respective intentions because for the primary reason that someone else intends to realize the value(s) (e.g. the parroted parents or rights-advocates). Otherwise put: while there can be fittingly fulfilled moral parrots and fundamentality-favouring moral parrots, there can be no meaningfully creative moral parrots. The characteristic activities of the fittingly fulfilled moral parrot and the fundamentality-favouring moral parrot do not, accordingly, provide any grounds for doubting that the activity the creativity account specifies as the basis of meaning in life satisfies condition (b). But they do provide grounds for doubting that the activity specified by the fitting fulfilment account, and the activity specified by the fundamentality account, satisfy that condition. IV As a substantive account of meaning in life, then, the creativity accountappearsnotonlyverycompelling,butmorecompelling under the superlativeness characterization than the most prominent of the recent substantive accounts. The creativity account is very compelling under the superlativeness characterization, I have argued, because the activity the account specifies as the basis for meaning in life meaningfully creative activity very plausibly endows the performing individual s life with superlative final

15 value; and this activity very plausibly endows the performing individual s life with superlative final value because it very plausibly satisfies conditions (a) and (b). I have further argued that the creativity account is more compelling under the superlativeness characterization than the most prominent of the recent substantive accounts, on the grounds that neither the activity specified by Wolf s fitting fulfilment account fittingly fulfilling activity nor the activity specified by Metz s fundamentality account fundamentality-favouring activity plausibly satisfies condition (b). Obviously, these arguments will be of little interest to those strongly inclined to reject (something like) the superlativeness characterization. But especially in light of the work that this characterization does in forestalling scepticism about meaning in life as a distinct final value my hope is that few readers will share this inclination. 37 Department of Philosophy Carleton University 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6 Canada david.matheson@carleton.ca CREATIVITY AND MEANING IN LIFE My criticisms of their respective accounts notwithstanding, I am deeply indebted to Wolf s and Metz s published work on meaning in life: no such work beyond Taylor s own has been more influential in how I think about the topic. I am also indebted to Andrew Brook, Bob Ware, Glen Koehn, anonymous referees, and audience members at the 2015 Canadian Philosophical Association meetings for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.