What does this picture imply about our effort to understand the realities of life or answer our perennial problems?
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Answer:
Depending on whom one asks, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is either the most profound question of human existence or else nothing more than a nonsensical request built on conceptual confusion, much like, “What does the color red taste like?” or “What is heavier than the heaviest object?” Ask a non-philosopher, “What do philosophers discuss?” and a likely answer will be, “The meaning of life.” Ask the same question of a philosopher within the analytic tradition, and you will rarely get this answer. The sources of suspicion about the question within analytic philosophy, especially in earlier periods, are varied. First, the question of life’s meaning is conceptually challenging because of terms like “the” “meaning” and “life,” and especially given the grammatical form in which they are arranged. Second, it is often asked with transcendent, spiritual, or religious assumptions at the fore about what the world “should” be like in order for there to be a meaning of life. In so far as the question is entangled with such ideas, the worry is that even if the concept of a meaning of life is coherent, there likely is not one.