Is There a Social Construction of the Rules?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Is there some worry that things begin to seem less meaningful to us if the rules are obviously sociallycons ed? Like, if we're just making up rules of games in order for us to play them, does that make us less fulfilled somehow? And i can sort of guess the answer, butasking the question in a leading way. This is kind of a wider debate ind the philosophy on the meaning of life,. Do you need some kind of external narrative or structure in which your life is situated in order for it to have meaning? Or do we embrace the more radical, existentile view, whics that we get to choose what the meaning is?

Humans build machines, in part, to relieve themselves from the burden of work on difficult, repetitive tasks. And yet, despite the fact that machines are everywhere, most of us are still working pretty hard. But maybe that’s about to change. Futurists like John Danaher believe that society is finally on the brink of making a transition to a world in which work would be optional, rather than mandatory — and he thinks that’s a very good thing. It will take some adjusting, personally as well as economically, but he envisions a future in which human creativity and artistic impulse can flourish in a world free of the demands of working for a living. We talk about what that would entail, whether it’s realistic, and what comes next.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

John Danaher received an LLM degree from Trinity College Dublin and a Ph.D. from University College, Cork. He is currently Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research is situated at the overlap of legal studies and philosophy, and frequently involves questions of technology, automation, and the future. He is the coeditor of Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications, and author of the recent book Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World Without Work. He writes frequently for publications such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Irish Times, and is the host of his own podcast, Philosophical Disquisitions.