Peter Caws

It is argued that the search for meaning in life or in the universe as a whole is misguided, and rests on a confusion between significance and the signiferous systems that make it possible. The expectation that such global meanings are attainable and the belief that they are necessary exert, it is claimed, a damaging effect on the appreciation of more limited episodes of meaningful activity. Philosophy should therefore expose them as delusions, at,the same time pursuing the analysis of meaning in the more limited contexts to which this view necessarily restricts it.