Provided

Karen Bennett

On April 25, philosopher Karen Bennett will have 50 minutes at One Day University in New York City to tackle the "Big Question": "Why Are We Here? How Philosophers Think About the Meaning of Life."

"I'm doing this because it sounds like fun, and also because it's a kind of outreach both for Cornell and for philosophy," said Bennett, associate professor of philosophy. "As a discipline, we're not as good as we should be at speaking in a publically accessible way about philosophically interesting topics. This topic is one that people obviously find interesting."

Mulling the questions about a meaningful life occurs less often than one might think among philosophers, said Bennett, who often uses humor in her lectures ("How could you not?" she asked).

Yet the topic "serves as a good introduction to how philosophers think about things. I'm going to make the point that people are often very misled about what philosophers do. They're often surprised that I'm a young woman; we don't all have beards and togas ... some people have that whole image of a guru sitting on a mountaintop dispensing the meaning of life. And that's not what philosophers do at all. And that certainly is not what I'm going to do in this talk."

What Bennett will do is "try to articulate what the question is. It's kind of tricky. What's the meaning of life is not the same as the question, How can I be happy? And it's not the same as the question, Why shouldn't I kill myself right now? I'm going to look at the different approaches you can take."

Bennett plans to discuss religious answers to the meaning of life and the existence of a deity; pursuing goals of objective value; doing things we subjectively find to be of value; and how "it's important that we're the only kind of creature who asks this question at all."

She said she will focus on kinds of answers to the question and cite various historical figures as she leads her audience to draw their own conclusions and think critically. "I'll try to shape the questions, distinguish certain questions from others, raise problems for certain approaches to various views. For example, I'm going to be suggesting that the religious answers have -- even assuming the existence of a god -- more in common with secular answers than people usually think. I'm certainly not going to say, Here is the answer."

Excepting freshmen, it is unusual for Bennett to address a lay audience. In her own work, among other things, she examines the nature of objects, causation and the mind-body problem. Bennett said everyone thinks of philosophical questions every day -- Is there a god? Do I have free will? How do I know anything? -- but notes that her profession tends to focus on narrow questions of an often arcane nature that baffle non-philosophers.

"That's what happens when you focus on particular questions for a long time," Bennett said, "but it is kind of a shame. I'm looking forward to talking to a lay audience. They themselves can engage the big, hard, critical questions -- and make progress on them. I think it's going to be fun."

One Day University periodically presents daylong events comprising eight lectures from leading professors at the nation's top schools. Alumni can attend a day of lectures, including Bennett's, for less than half the usual price by entering the coupon code Cornell89 at http://www.onedayu.com.