According to many philosophers, “the meaning of life” refers to our cosmic purpose, the activity that we were created by God or a purposive universe to perform. If there is no God or teleology, there is no such thing as the meaning of life. But this need not be the last word on the matter. In this paper, I ask what the benefits provided by a cosmic purpose are, and go on to argue that thinking of our lives in a particular way—in terms of a unified life narrative—can supply us with many of those benefits. We might lose little if there is no such thing as the meaning of life, since there is still something that can provide much of what is valuable about it.

中文翻译：

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意义、目的和叙述


根据许多哲学家的说法，“生命的意义”是指我们的宇宙目的，即我们被上帝创造来执行的活动，或者是一个有目的的宇宙。如果没有上帝或目的论，就没有生命的意义。但这不一定是关于这个问题的最终决定。在这篇文章中，我询问了宇宙目的提供的好处是什么，并继续论证以特定的方式思考我们的生活——根据统一的生活叙述——可以为我们提供许多这些好处。如果没有生命的意义这样的东西，我们可能会失去很少，因为仍然有一些东西可以提供它的许多有价值的东西。