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Introduction and Thesis

In her work, The Meanings of Lives, Susan Wolf makes the argument that a life is meaningful if it

is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project or projects of positive value. She

believes that we have reason to want to live meaningful lives, because an interest in living a meaningful

life is an appropriate response to a fundamental truth. Failure to have such an interest constitutes a

failure to acknowledge that truth – a failure to acknowledge that we are just tiny and equally real specks

in a vast and value-filled universe. Wolf’s stance is applicable to a wide audience, but one particular

mindset takes issue with it: the skeptic. Some think that, although the skeptic questions what a non-

skeptic would claim to know, he will continue to live his life in much the same way as a non-skeptic.

However, a skeptical mind will take issue with Wolf’s stance – he does not know that he has reason to

live a meaningful life. Susan Wolf’s line of reasoning says that our reason to live a meaningful life comes

from our acknowledgement that there is value in the external world around us. By this logic, a skeptic’s

lack of knowledge about the external world and its value leads to his lack of reason to live a meaningful

life.

In this paper, I will review Wolf’s definition of a meaningful life and her logic as to why we all

have reason to want to live one. I will also review the definition of skepticism, the difference between

knowing and believing, and why a non-skeptic might argue that a skeptic lives life in the same way a

non-skeptic does. For my central thesis, I will draw out the observation that the skeptic’s inability to

acknowledge external value in the world disqualifies him from achieving Wolf’s definition of a

meaningful life. After defending this thesis, I will consider the possible objection that the skeptic can still

achieve Wolf’s definition of a meaningful life by living in the same way that a non-skeptic lives a

meaningful life. I will show that, because the skeptic only believes and does not know he has reason to

live a meaningful life, he cannot meet the definition that Wolf lays out. In closing, I will conclude that a

skeptic cannot live the meaningful life that Wolf describes.

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Exposition

In Wolf’s effort to describe what makes a life meaningful, she is able to put into words a

thorough definition. A meaningful life is one that is actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged

in a project (or projects) of positive value. What does this mean, and how did she arrive at this

definition? She answers these questions by examining a handful of lives that she considers not

meaningful.

The first case Wolf examines is that of “The Blob.” He is a person who spends all his time

passively on the couch watching television and drinking beer. This person is detached from the world

and other people. He has no goals in life and he is not an achiever. This first example leads Wolf to

conclude that a meaningful life must be at least actively engaged, unlike The Blob.

The second case Wolf examines is that of “The Idle Rich.” The Idle Rich is someone sitting on a

massive fortune, with no need to worry about burning through her money. This person is actively

engaged, unlike The Blob. However, she is only engaged in pointless activities which contribute no value

to the world. Wolf expands upon her example of The Idle Rich with two other similar lives. One of these

two lives is “The Alienated Housewife,” who contributes to positive projects around the house.

However, her heart is not in the work she does – she lives almost on a sort of autopilot. The

commonality among all three of these lives is that the dominant activity in each of them seems

pointless, useless, or empty. Wolf draws from these examples the criterion that a meaningful life also

must be accomplishing something of positive value.

There is one last case from which Wolf derives her definition. This case involves someone who

might be actively engaged in an activity of positive value, but falls short of success in her activity for one

reason or another. “The Bankrupt Scientist” is an example of a person who spends her whole life

dedicated to finding a cure for a terrible disease, but discovers the cure one day too late. Other

scientists have beaten her to finding this cure. While she spent her life actively pursuing a project of

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positive value, she was not successful in aiding the world like she had planned. Cases of lives like that of

The Bankrupt Scientist lead Wolf to her final criterion for her definition. A meaningful life must be at

least somewhat successful in the positive project it is actively engaged in.

One question that might follow next from Wolf’s definition is what defines positive value. She

deliberately leaves this ambiguous so as to target her definition at as broad an audience as possible. She

also goes on to ask that we exclude merely subjective value as a suitable interpretation of the phrase.

Her reasoning for this exclusion is that we must recognize that there is value in the universe outside of

our own subjective happiness, and a meaningful life would recognize this external value. It is

acknowledgement that one is not the center of the universe. An egocentric life does not make this same

acknowledgement. But this is only reason why we should exclude subjective happiness from the

definition of positive value. Why should we even be bothered at all to try and lead a meaningful life in

the first place? We who are interested in living meaningful lives generally think that this interest is a

good one to have. We are glad that we want to have meaningful lives, and we would like others to want

their own meaningful lives – in fact, we tend to find it regrettable for a friend to have not lived a

meaningful life. Wolf draws a parallel to this claim that a person should want to live a meaningful life,

stating that the closest analogue to it is what Aristotle called eudaimonia. He claimed that a virtuous life

is the happiest life, but offered no justification as to why. Instead, he simply dismissed those not willing

to accept his assertion as uneducated. Having made this point, Wolf returns to her earlier claim. The

question of why one should care about living a meaningful life is equivalent to the question of why one

should care that one’s life be actively and somewhat successfully engaged in projects of positive value.

But why must the projects be of positive value? She again mentions that a meaningful life harmonizes

with the value-filled universe in a way that an egocentric life does not.

A skeptic is one who questions what most people would claim to know. According to the

Justified True Belief view, a skeptic’s definition of knowledge consists of three criteria: truth, belief, and

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sufficient justification. That is, for a skeptic to know some statement is true, that statement must be true

in reality. Second, the skeptic must also believe that statement to be true. Herein lays the difference

between knowing and believing. The latter is a subset of the former – one can believe without knowing.

Lastly, the skeptic must have sufficient justification to believe that that statement is true. What

constitutes “sufficient” justification? Sufficient justification requires the ruling out of each and every

case in which the statement is false. Such strict requirements for knowledge make it extremely difficult if

not impossible for a skeptic to truly know anything about the external world. One specific argument that

the skeptic will raise to defend his position on not knowing whether or not there is value in the external

world is The Possibility of Error Argument, which claims:

For (almost) any belief any person has about the external world, that belief could be mistaken.

If a belief could be mistaken, then it is not a case of knowledge.

Therefore, (almost) any belief any person has about the external world is not knowledge.

This argument rules out almost all a posteriori knowledge that a person might have thought they had. It

does not rule out a priori knowledge, such as the knowledge of one’s own existence or of mathematics.

We often view skeptics as people who lead their lives in the same way that we as non-skeptics

do. Despite their lack of knowledge about the external world, they still for the most part follow many of

the same habits that we do. Skeptics talk to other people as we do, obey the same laws we do, keep

themselves out of harm’s way as we do, and so on. They appear to exhibit almost entirely the same

behavior as non-skeptics, so it is reasonable that we are unable to distinguish any differences in the

ways our lives are lived. But despite these striking outward similarities, the contents of skeptics’ minds

differ from ours in significant ways.

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Thesis Defense

A common view is that skeptics, despite their lack of knowledge, go on and live their lives much

in the same way that we do. They display many of the same mannerisms that we do, so it seems like a

skeptic’s inability to know facts about the external world really does not affect them at all. In fact, many

skeptics even appear to want to live meaningful lives. But the meaningfulness of one’s life is affected by

more than just how one acts. Susan Wolf says that living a meaningful life is a way of acknowledging

one’s non-privileged position in the universe. The issue that skepticism takes with her statement is that

a skeptic who wants to live a meaningful life does not necessarily acknowledge his non-privileged

position. Acknowledgement of some claim means acceptance of the truth of that claim. The statement

that one is in a non-privileged position in life is not a priori knowledge; it is knowledge about the

external world, which a skeptic claims not to have. A skeptic’s desire to want to live a meaningful life

might on the surface look similar to our desire for the same type of life, but the skeptic’s desire is driven

by his belief that there is value outside of himself, not his knowledge of it. He chooses to believe in value

outside of himself, but as a skeptic he is unable to accept this belief as a certainty because it is not a

priori knowledge.

Wolf’s account of a meaningful life entails that one must accept as a truth the claim that each of

us is only a tiny, individual life among a vast world of other equally real lives. Accepting that others are

equally real means understanding that others are facing up to the same skeptical thought, and that

many of them are able to know what a true skeptic can only believe. The inability to know that there

exists external value means any active engagement in projects of objective positive value is “hollow” in

some sense. Though he believes he has reason to engage in such projects, the skeptic’s heart is not truly

in it because he cannot acknowledge external value. These projects only take on meaning if one can

acknowledge the value outside of oneself in the universe.

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Objections and Replies

A possible objection that one might raise in opposition to my thesis is that a skeptic does qualify

for Wolf’s definition of a meaningful life by actively and somewhat successfully engaging in projects of

positive value throughout his life. The objector would claim that meeting these defined criteria satisfies

all necessary requirements for living a meaningful life. However, one of these criteria is not truly met,

and claiming that it is met by the skeptic completely eludes the main point that Wolf is trying to convey.

Each of us is only a tiny, equally real fraction of the total value in the universe. By failing to recognize this

statement as a truth, the skeptic fails the criterion of being truly engaged. Like the alienated housewife,

the skeptic’s heart is not in his projects because he cannot know the value to which he is contributing

because of this.

Summary

Over the course of this paper, I have introduced my central thesis that the skeptic’s inability to

recognize value outside of himself in the universe makes him unable to achieve Wolf’s definition of a

meaningful life. I explained Wolf’s definition of a meaningful life, and the process she went through in

order to arrive at her definition. I also reviewed the definition of skepticism and the difference between

knowing and believing a claim. I described in what sense a skeptic and non-skeptic live similar lives, and

in what sense they differ. Next, I defended my thesis by arguing that the skeptic needs to acknowledge

external value in the universe rather than just believing in it, in order to live what Susan Wolf defines as

a meaningful life. Finally, I recognized the possible counter-argument to my thesis. This objection

claimed that a skeptic can lead a meaningful life if he satisfies the criteria of Wolf’s definition. I

explained that this counter-argument fails to disprove what my thesis claims because a skeptic cannot

be truly engaged in the projects of positive value he works on. His heart is just not in it.

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