Whether a life is worth living is not empirical. It always means is my life worth living to me. Thus it is an existential question, which can only be determined by me examining my life. Thus if my life is not examined by me, it is not worth living. — Landru Guide Us

I like the way you frame this, but I think that you make an obvious oversight here. It is not just an existential question, but more specifically it is an entirely subjective question, which is the only reason that the "to me" element matters. Can we not also ask from my point of view if your life is worth living? Or from the point of view of society in general? When Socrates said "an unexamined life is not worth living", I think that is rightly interpreted as a general statement, not a personal existential statement. Is it inherently false because of that?

Surely, according to most currently held western moral formulations, an individual should have a significant say in the value of their own life, but is there a particular reason that we should assume that their say should be absolute or necessary?

I don't understand the distinction you're making, RN.

Existential questions aren't subjective per se; rather analysis of an issue as "subjective" is only possible because we have existential structures. Not to put too fine a point on it, but invocations of the subject is on a different level than I'm discussing. Or to put it another way, I'm denying the subjective-objective dialogue is useful to this issue. Happy to discuss why in more detail, but basically it assumes existential meaning (the examined life) is derivative of that dialogue, while I argue the opposite is the case.

I don't understand the distinction you're making, RN. — Landru Guide Us

I am saying that people regularly make category errors when speaking about morality, by ignoring the grammatical implications of a point of view. By saying that your life is worth living "to you", you are clarifying which grammatical point of view you are referring to. What you are failing to do, insofar as I can see, is justifying why that should be the primary or only point of view by which it is appropriate to consider whether your life is worth living. The fact that it is an existential question is both obvious and uninteresting to me. It's irrelevant to what I'm trying to ask you about.

I don't know how you haven't just made my point. If you don't want to examine your life, that's your business and I'm not trying to convince you to do otherwise. But by the very fact that you find such an examination uninteresting and obvious means that you don't care about the meaning of your life. And so, you can't argue to me that your life is worth living.

If you now turn around and protest, that your life is meaningful to you, then you must admit that you examined it, and hence have made my point again.

You have it all wrong, almost backwards, in my view.

There is no need to examine my life and evaluate it as being worth living, I merely have to feel that it is worth living for it to be, by definition, worth living.

I have no doubt at all that there are very many people who think very little about their lives, who are of a naturally upbeat disposition, and who if asked, despite the fact they never think about it, but just based on their immediate feeling for their life, would say "Of course my life is worth living". If you wanted to say that despite their feeling their lives are not worth living, then it begs the question 'Not worth living for who?'

For a person to live a life worth living, it has to be worth living for that person, not for some third-party observer (who does not and cannot live that life), and that requires self-examination. — Landru Guide Us

I agree - a life does not require examination to be worth living.

First, one may hold that a life, as a unique existence, is inherently worth existing whether the person is capable (yet, or ever) of a deliberate self-examination or not.

Second, a life may be spent in many ways that do not allow for much time (or any time) for examination. For instance, the peasant couple tilling their land, tilling their lord's land, raising their children, fulfilling their unchosen and chosen obligations--living their lives as well as they could--were the foundation of the medieval (and later) society. I would not think that these two people who had no leisure until they were worn out and near death that "Unexamined, your lives were not worth living."

Many die too soon. This was true in the past, and it is still true today. People do die early. 19, say. They had not lived their life yet as adult agents. Are their lives to be dismissed as "not worth living"?

Claiming that "the unexamined life is not worth living" is easy to do, and it's easy to assume that the results will be favorable to one's reputation. Presumably, the examination process one should do is systematic and thorough. It's a bit elitist--and wasn't the source of this axiom the philosophical elite we like to mark as the anchor of the western intellectual tradition? The overworked, harried, tired, suffering person, pausing briefly to wonder how they can keep going on, and concluding that they just have to keep going on, because others' lives are dependent on their continued labor, may have done all the self-examination they have time to do.

I have, over the years, spent quite a bit of time examining my life. I had the necessary leisure, the inclination, the preparation, and the motivation (like, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, to be; why I wasn't happy; whether what I wanted was worth wanting, and so on). It wasn't a waste of time, certainly. But introspection and "the inward life" is just my game. Some people are so disposed and a lot of people are not. Those who are not, and don't spend a lot of time in self-examination, are not perforce living inferior lives.

There is no need to examine my life and evaluate it as being worth living, I merely have to feel that it is worth living for it to be, by definition, worth living. — John

Then you've examined your life, however cursorily. Your feelings are about your life, are they not? And you've examined them to determine that they tell you that your life is worth living, correct? If you haven't, then what are you talking about?

This all sounds like the examined life to me, simply characterized after the fact as not examined.

Sure, I have examined my life and I know that the feelings I already had prior to that examination were what determined whether life was good or not prior to that examination.

I am able to extrapolate from examination of my own and others' lives the knowledge that people are able to, and routinely do, feel that life is good or bad without needing to reflect philosophically on the issue.

If you can "feel life is worth living" without examining your life, then you should be able to feel that it isn't worth living without examining your life. So how would you ever tell the difference without examining your life? Sounds like the difference doesn't matter to you.

↪Bitter Crank This all sounds like the examined life to me, simply characterized after the fact as not examined. — Landru Guide Us

Yes. MY life has been examined. Yes, there are lives that are worth living which have not been examined, either by 'feeling' ok about it or by taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Life Examination Inventory.

Look, it's perfectly alright if lives worth living have not been examined. We don't HAVE to prove some long-dead Greek correct.

So you can't preflectively tell the difference between generally feeling good and generally feeling bad?

So you can't preflectively tell the difference between generally feeling good and generally feeling bad? — John

You didn't say "generally." You said, about your life. So how do you tell the difference and what does it entail, if it's about your life? I can't imagine this doesn't require examining your life, if only in the sense of whether a future life is something to look forward to or not.

You don't have an immediate general feeling about your life?

You don't have an immediate general feeling about your life? — John

Not even sure what you're asking or what it entails.

I do care about my life, which means I've examined it and my future or past or present are issues for me. You seem to be talking about an issueless life. Ironically, even that requires examination.

Are you seriously claiming that before you began examining your life you had no general feeling that your life was good or bad or indifferent?

Are you seriously claiming that before you cared about your life and where it was going, you had a general feeling that you cared about your life and where it was going?

Time travel emotions?

No, I don't think that that is what he is claiming, nor what he has implied. Caring about life is that feeling. And this feeling can exist prior to self-examination. Examining can result in realisation, and when it does, that means that there is something there prior to the realisation: that which is to be realised. In this case, a feeling. The examination is irrelevant, except in terms of awareness. One can gain a greater level of awareness or certainty through examination, but this is always awareness or certainty of something; something already there, like the worth of one's life, or a feeling.

In short, you've got it backwards.

And what does caring about life entail? Come on, you can say it.

Sapientia has already answered this misunderstanding in a way that should clear up your ongoing confusion, but just in case...yes, I am claiming that before I was self-reflexively aware that I cared about my life and where it was going that I cared about it and where it was going.

I would say that most people care about their lives and where they are going, even if many of those are mired in dysfunctionality and cannot get their shit together. If you want to say that therefore most people live examined lives (i.e. do philosophy), then you have so broadened the notion of 'examined life' and 'doing philosophy' as to render them indistinguishable from 'unexamined life' and 'not doing philosophy'.

Evidently, not what you think it does. You can assert otherwise until the cows come home, but that won't make it so.

Yes. MY life has been examined. Yes, there are lives that are worth living which have not been examined, either by 'feeling' ok about it or by taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Life Examination Inventory. — Bitter Crank

You have shifted categories.

One involve evaluating your life. The other evaluating somebody else's. The latter is not at issue in this topic and is not and cannot be the same type of examination. The former is existential. The latter is a form of empirical knowledge accrued by apply a standard (of your own).

Obviously these two can diverge, and do diverge, which is why only the former is relevant here. What do you care whether I or somebody else evaluates your life as not worthwhile, if you think it is - and vice versa. If you think your life isn't worth living, no amount of empirical data provided by me will change that. Your examination of your life is not empirical.

↪Landru Guide Us Evidently, not what you think it does. You can assert otherwise until the cows come home, but that won't make it so. — Sapientia

I think you're stymied. Now, what does the feeling that your life is worth living entail? Describe it without examination of said life.

If you think the feeling cannot exist without being described then you are, quite simply, wrong. Phenomenology and modern neuroscience both bear this out. I suggest you might benefit from reading some Damasio; I would start with Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens.

Some bases for the claim that the unexamined life is worth living…

1. Theological

God created man, and in the act of creation something ‘in his own image’ consecrated his life as worth living and invested it with meaning. (At least to some extent, this would apply to all creation, since god created the cosmos and as I understand the concept, would not make something of no value or no meaning.) All lives are, by design, worth living.

The secular version of this involves sort of “a creation” by nature, sort of. God is replaced by the mechanisms of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, climate, evolution, and all that. dIn the end we arrive on the stage, but without a blessing, without grace. We are just one more species (granted, an exceptional creature.

2. Economic

Wealth is distributed unevenly, and some individuals have a plethora, and some have a dearth of resources. Those with little must devote themselves to acquiring the minimum means of life, which is likely to require most of or all their energy and time. Time is as much a good as materiel. Free time is a luxury. In a hard scrabble life, education is a luxury as well.

A wealthy person can afford Spode china, rare Swiss watches, art by masters, mansions, and all sorts of good things. A poor person can not afford these goods. We would not judge a life as inferior if it lacked material luxuries (or would we?) and we should not judge a life as inferior if it lacks the temporal luxury of free leisure and education which also requires time away from survival activities (or would we?).

Social

Trough literacy, education, and leisure, some people have the opportunity to both examine their lives and to develop standards by which to conduct an examination. Should we expect the school drop outs who are barely literate, extremely stressed by their life circumstances, possibly drugged or drunk, screwed too often and in too many ways, to have the wherewithal to examine their lives? And if not, should that life be considered not worth living? Being handed a horrible life from infancy foreword is a misfortune, not a failure.

Psychological

Resources and leisure are needed to develop luxury skills. Those who are required to perform maximum effort to survive will not have left-over resources and leisure to engage in the luxury of leisurely self-examination. Where does a person without resources obtain the idea and the standards for a self examination that would, supposedly, make their life worthwhile?

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is not programmed into our genes, ready to be expressed at any moment and instigate an auto-inventory. We acquire the concept and the standards through study. No study, no acquisition.

Practical

Billions of people use all of their energy, time, and talents to raise their families and to give their children whatever advantages they can. Sending children to school in countries where education is not free requires still more labor and time. In case of drought, floods, frost, plant disease, crop failure, unemployment, epidemics, etc. the difficult task of support and furthering one’s children’s lives become still more difficult and demanding. Even if the parent is capable of self examination by acquired standards, they may decide that they simply can not pause for the extravagance of thinking about life’s worth.

Neither the examined life nor the unexamined life is elitist. Rather, people do what they are able to do. Some have time, some don’t. Some have resources, some don’t. Some have a social circle in which self-examination may be fruitfully discussed, some don’t. The majority of people on earth, will probably not live an examined life.

Examine your life if you want, if you can, if you have the time, if you have some idea of “how” to examine your existence, and what to do about it if you are not satisfied. Otherwise, don’t. Just carry on the best you can, and maybe the opportunnity will present itself later on.

You know, Landru, "elitism" is kind of a slur around here. It's one of several weasel words we bounce around.

I think you're stymied. Now, what does the feeling that your life is worth living entail? Describe it without examination of said life. — Landru Guide Us

That would be a pointless exercise. Like John said, the feeling that my life is worth living doesn't depend on my describing it - even if doing so does imply an examination. And in any case, I have not denied that I have examined my life. Quite the contrary. So what exactly are you trying to prove? I have in fact pointed out that I prefer a life of examination, hence my interest in philosophy. But I've also pointed out that the leap to a general claim is unwarranted.

Sure it does. That's the difference between the ontic and the ontological.

Like John said, the feeling that my life is worth living doesn't depend on my describing it... — Sapientia

Sure it does. — Landru Guide Us

That's evidently false, in spite of your proclaimed surety. How absurd to claim that a feeling depends on a description of it, meaning that you can't have one without the other.

That's the difference between the ontic and the ontological. — Landru Guide Us

What are you talking about? Put it plainly or not at all. I don't want to jump to the conclusion that you're merely echoing an obscure Heideggerian phrase of faux significance in a context in which it is out of place, but you have been unwilling to explain yourself clearly, in a manner in which I can readily grasp, and I simply don't care enough to study Heideggerese.

After carefully reviewing everyone's statements, and after extensive research and reflection, I have arrived at an answer to the question Is my happiness more important than your happiness?

Yes.