Introduction

Within mind science, the hard problem is to explain how mind is possible in a material world. How could the amazing private world of my consciousness emerge out of neuronal activity? This problem is hard. But it is even harder to explain how meaning is possible in this material world. Nearly everyone accepts that consciousness exists. Many wonder whether meaning does, even could, exist. Consciousness is. It happens, it is there. It ows like a stream while I live, and how it ows, how it connects to itself, is what makes me who I am. Meaning, if there is such a thing, is a matter of whether and how things add up in the greater scheme of things. Meaning, unlike consciousness, is not simply a puzzling feature of the way things are. Whether there is or can be such a thing as meaning is a more complicated matter than what there is. Unlike consciousness, meaning isnt a matter of what there is or isnt. Meaning, if there is such a thing, involves more than what there is. Minimally it involves a truthful assessment of what living a nite human life adds up to. How is consciousness possible? How does subjectivity emerge from objective biological features of the nervous system? What is the function of consciousness? What does it do, and how much? How, when, and why did consciousness evolve in certain animal lineages? What does living as a self-aware social mammal mean or add up to? How does living a conscious embodied life matter, add up to anythinganything at all? I have come to think that how to make sense of living meaningfully is the hardest question. Consciousness exists. There is no doubt that we are conscious creatures. Indeed, consciousness has the effect in the case of humans of enabling us to ask such questions as What makes life meaningful? What does my life, or any human life for that matter, add up to?

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and Why and how, in the greater scheme of things, does any human life matter? Consciousness exists, and if we accept Darwins theory it probably serves a biological function. But whether meaning exists is controversial. We tell stories about what it is to live a meaningful life. But it is not clear that any of these stories give us insight, let alone an answer, to the question of what a truly meaningful life is or might be. We can imagine respectable answers to the rst two questions emerging from the mind sciences and evolutionary biology, respectively. The question of meaning, if it has a good answer, seems to require more resources than these sciences. In fact, many will say that the mind sciences and evolutionary biology are part of the problem, not part of the solution to the problem of meaning. These sciences presuppose that we are nite biological beings living in a material world. If there is meaning, it must be a kind suited to us, a certain kind of conscious mammal who lives three score years and ten and then is gone. Gone forever. In order to address the really hard problem, let alone begin to answer it, I nd it necessary to widen the scope of disciplines involved in the inquiry to include not only all mind sciences and evolutionary biology but also Western and Eastern philosophy, political theory, the history of religion, and what is nowadays called positive psychology. Anthropology, sociology, and economics are also major contributors to this exercise in eudaimonics, the attempt to say something naturalistic and systematic about what makes for human ourishing and that gives life meaningif, that is, anything does. We are conscious social animals. There is little doubt about that. How consciousness emerges from our biology is puzzling. But the really hard problemin the sense that it is existentially pressingis that it might be true that we are conscious beings who seek to live meaningfully, but that there is nothing that could make this aspiration real, nothing more than a wish that comes with being a conscious social animal. Maybe worrying about real meaning is the source of the angst. Perhaps we bring to the table fantasies rather than realistic expectations about what real or genuine meaning would be. It is hard to know. How does a naturalist make sense of the meaning, magic, and mystery of life? How does one say truthful and enchanting things about being human? It is not clear. Here I make an attempt to explain how we can make sense and meaning of our lives given that we are material beings liv-

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ing in a material world. The picture I propose is naturalistic and enchanting. Or so I hope. When I was a wee boy abounding with skeptical religious thoughts, I comforted myself with the notion that Godif he existedwould not punish me for seeking the truth. I no longer believe in God, at least not the kind of God that I was taught to believe in. But I maintain the idea that we humans should not suffer from the truth. Some friends say I seek a way to make the truth consoling, to make a bitter pill palatable. Perhaps. There are worse things than being truthful and consoling. But I dont like the bitter pill analogy. Bitter taste is relational; that is, a bitter taste is not in the world. In that respect taste is like meaning. It may be that we are hard-wired to nd certain avors bitter. The analogy breaks down because there are no brain budslike taste budsthat are automatically set to nd certain truths about our predicament depressing or disenchanting. So I say. We can adopt different legitimate attitudes toward the truth about our nature and our predicament. I recommend optimistic realism. Joyful optimistic realism. Life can be precious and funny. And one doesnt need to embrace fantastical storiesunbecoming to historically mature beings about our nature and prospects to make it so. All Saints Day (November 1), 2006