Answered: Essential Questions
What is the” Geographic Model of Meaning in Life”?
A: It’s a conceptual framework proposing that life’s meaning is not fixed but emerges as individuals explore their lives with different attitudes and emotional states—much like navigating a terrain by touch.
Q: How does this model differ from conventional intellectual theories?
A: Rather than debating whether meaning is subjective or objective, the model views meaning as a dynamic experience shaped by our emotional engagement with life, treating both joyful and tragic experiences as part of the same meaningful landscape.
Q: Why does feeling play for a significant part in this idea?
A: Mood acts as a perceptual lens, influencing how we interpret experiences and whether they feel meaningful or empty—essentially guiding the way we uncover life’s worth in real time.
Summary: A novel intellectual theory suggests that the meaning of life is anything we experience as we move through life with various personal bents, rather than something dynamic. This idea, which is referred to as the” Geographic Model of Meaning in Life,” analogizes our search for meaning to a deaf person using a cane to explore room; meaning emerges from that inquiry.
How we encounter and perceive life, and how we perceive it affects the “geography” of meaning in the present. The design fuses philosophy, psychology, and psychology, providing a provocative new understanding of how life is lived.
Important Information:
- Exploratory Framework: How we emotionally and physically examine meaning in life is shaped by how we define meaning.
- Integrated Activities: Both positive and negative experiences influence the meaning of life.
- The design combines both philosophical and psychological theories of significance.
Origin: Waseda University
Psychological and theoretical research has long established that a person’s personal moods and emotions have a substantial impact on their perception of what “meaning in life” is.
According to scientist Matthew Ratcliffe, a person’s mood plays a significant role in how they perceive the meaning of life. It powerfully influences how one perceives their surroundings.
Additionally, empirical studies have been conducted in philosophy to examine how feelings affects the perception of life’s significance. Phänomenology has also revealed that the lived, first-person knowledge of the brain has a significant impact on how we perceive the world.
Ideas like affordance, call, and enactivism have been suggested in other fields. These ideas examine how people actual interactions with the outside influence and shape how people perceive and comprehend their surroundings.
In a recent research, Professor Masahiro Morioka of the University of Human Sciences at Waseda University attempted to apply that same mechanism to both the perception of “meaning in living” and the view of the outside world.
On June 4, 2025, the results of this study were published website in Philosophia.
The purpose of the current research is to investigate the definition of “meaning in living.” Researchers have frequently argued whether meaning in life is purely personal, meaning that life has meaning if a person believes it does, or that it is imperative, meaning that life has meaning regardless of what a person believes, or a combination of the two.
However, this study dispels those discussions and otherwise examines how a person’s “meaning in life” develops as they try to live their life and the life they are trying to survive, as well as how that meaning is felt by the person.
The research proposes an active  investigation type in addition to the geophysical model of meaning in life. This model applies the perception of life’s meaning to the way that people explore their lives, along with particular commitments and attitudes, produce different responses.
These messages may be based on actual or potential life events. In other words, life’s worth manifests as a type of different geographical configuration that shapes human experience, both positively and negatively.
This study suggests that we should define “meaning in existence” as a set of physical characteristics that reflect the individual’s life experiences and outlooks.
The important description, in Morioka’s words, is that the entire set of patterns of lived experiences of the worthfulness of living a lifestyle are activated by my motion of questioning into my career in the here and now, and this activity is comparable to a blind person’s motion of probing her way with a cane.
This investigation can be conducted using different attitudes or commitments to life, such as those that are good, bad, unwilling, and so on. According to the behaviour or commitments I make when I look into my life, the worthiness of my life is experienced different.
This work explores “meaning in life as a perceptual experience of that complex geography” as part of the same experiential landscape and marks a paradigm shift in many ways.
This change was made possible by incorporating phenomenological methodology into the life’s meaning philosophy, which could act as a bridge between psychology and philosophy, facilitating more fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration.
Notably, psychology has created both quantitative and qualitative scales to gauge how people perceive their lives as meaningful. Although these existing approaches vary widely, the “geographic model” proposed in this study approaches the understanding of life’s meaning from a completely different perspective. It might provide new psychological and related knowledge.
With eyes fixed on the future, Morioka says,” My next goal is to integrate this study with other ongoing approaches to life’s meaning, namely, the solipsistic approach to meaning in life and the liberation and recollection approach.
I want to establish a new, systematic framework within the philosophy of life’s purpose through this integration.
About this news from psychology and neurophilosophy
Author: Armand Aponte
Source: Waseda University
Contact: Armand Aponte – Waseda University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Open access to original research
Masahiro Morioka’s” A Phänomenological Approach to the Philosophy of Meaning in Life” is a phenomenological study. Philosophia
Abstract
A Phenomenological Approach to the Life Philosophy of Meaning
In this essay, I introduce the philosophical discussion of meaning in life to the phenomenological concepts affordance and enaction.
I examine how our sense of meaning in life is influenced by our attitude or commitment to life.
If a person is determined to survive, her life may appear a little hopeful in times of hardship, but if she plunges into the depths of despair, her life may seem unimportant and worthless.
This demonstrates that a person’s lived experience of the worth of living, as seen from within, significantly alters in accordance with the person’s attitude or commitment to her life in the present.
I extend this line of analysis to other possible sources of meaning in life and propose that the entire patterns of such experiences should be viewed as a form of subjective geography.
Through this investigation, I want to show what kind of contribution phenomenology can make to the study of meaning in life.
