The Relevance of Neuroscience to Meaning in Life

One can distinguish three answers to the question of whether neuroscience is relevant to meaning in life. Neuro-neutral: Neuroscience is irrelevant to questions about meaning in life so it can be safely ignored. Neuro-negative: Neuroscience is relevant to meaning in life only as a warning about how meaning can be distorted or destroyed by excessive attention to scientific findings about the mind. Neuro-positive: Neuroscience has findings that contribute to philosophical understanding of meaning in life and to guiding people about how to have meaningful lives. This chapter defends the neuro-positive view after critiquing the two alternatives. It shows how neuroscience helps to answer questions about the meaning of meaningfulness, the characteristics of meaningful lives, the objectivity of life’s meaning, strategies for obtaining meaning, and changes in life’s meaning that occur with aging.