2018-11-26
Update (13 Oct 2019):
One thing I should point out. My view on morality has changed / become more nuanced. I'm not against morality, only consistent moral codes and that also only as a personal philosophy. Law is required to be consistent, but humans can't be and they shouldn't pretend they can.
People are happiest when their morality most closely mirrors their natural tendencies for empathy, which vary from person to person. So I'm fine with both morality and immorality. But why act "naturally"? Because we are human and trapped in human bodies. We can do no better than what makes us happy. If you dislike that, well, there's the call of the void :p
If you want to believe in ideals bigger orore noble than that, that's your wish but I will see them as unnecessary and not as smart until you take into account that you have these ideals only to keep yourself happy. If you do account for this, do whatever you wish.
Philosophy attempts to find consistent theories and explanations, but if you wanna be a living contradiction, not even realising that you contradict yourself in thought it word or action, that's your wish and I can't argue against it (except maybe saying it isn't stable for smart people and you won't be happy forever). But if you're stupid and it works, I can't argue against it. I can't argue that all people must try to be smart.
P.s. I could use better, more nuanced language if spend more time on this, but I'm lazy for now. You'll get a better picture of my philosophy if we talk directly.
Original post:
Note: Sorry I'm editing this post a lot. I'm just trying figure out the best way to say what I want to say.
Oooooh .. this will take a while.
A gateway question to philosophy that I often ask people is what would you do if a genie gave you a wish (or three wishes). Hopefully the answer I hear is infinite wishes. If not I remind them that infinite wishes is also an option. Instead of stopping at that as one normally expects, I ask what would you do now with your infinite wishes?
You could solve poverty. You could live a life of wealth since money can always be wished for. You could teleport to travel. You could create universes of your own with properties you desire. You could alter people's minds. You're god basically. The choice blindness associated with becoming all-powerful is not something most people (including me) are prepared for.
That being said, I'll move on to an attempt at describing my philosophies, value systems etc. Emphasis is on stating and explaining my beliefs rather than publishing complete arguments for them. Also I'm writing more with common people in mind, rather than hard-core philosophers, since they're who I come into contact with on a daily basis. Plus I'm a common person too in that regard; most of my knowledge on philosophy comes just from browsing wikipedia :P
If you have some interest in any of what I'm talking about, you should write to me - we could discuss stuff.
I'll start by saying that I'm generally scientifically minded, and look at philosophy from a scientific angle as well.
The scientific procedure is basically starting with a hypothesis, devising an experiment to prove the hypothesis, actually conducting the experiment and then inferring from the results. IMHO philosophy has pretty much come to denote the study of those hypotheses for which we are unable to devise an experiment for yet.
For instance, "can we reach the stars?" would have been a philosophical question until we understood astronomy. "Can we be broken down into small indivisible particles?" would have been philosophy until we discovered atoms, and consequently subatomic particles and the quantum realm. In the same way questions like "do we possess free will?" or "is the universe deterministic?" might very well have scientific answers in the coming years. For instance the question of free will might be partially solved (or at the very least, defined in better terms) once we have a better understanding of the human brain, whilst determinism will become more and more solved as our understanding of the laws of physics improves.
I am an atheist, I don't believe in any of the existing religions because of lack of scientific evidence. There are a number of psychological factors why religion continues to be prevalent inspite of this lack of evidence. I do feel it is possible however that religion will largely disappear in the next 50-100 years. And that people are becoming smarter, more well-informed and more self-aware with each passing generation.
Here's an attempt at a summary for the rest of the post
Nothing is fundamental. What we value is partly programmed into our human minds and partly our choice. Hence I'm quite accepting of people with different values than mine (as a consequence of different internal programming), as long as they are rational about how those internal values translate into a worldview and how that worldview translates into actions in everyday life.
I believe it is possible for (non-human) rational agents to exist that have complete different values from us.
I personally happen to place high value on rationality (and by extension, consistency of one's worldview) though I agree this is by no means fundamental either.
I do not believe in morals as fundamental (moral nihilism). And this is somewhere I know I probably differ with a large number of (non-philosophic) people.
To some extent morals are something we've gained as an evolutionary advantage. A species survives better if its individuals take into account not just their individual needs but the needs of the group as a whole. Animals have this sense too. At what point in the evolutionary heirarchy does a tendency to protect one's fellow individuals turn into an emotion called empathy, I don't know. I don't know how emotional monkeys are. Or dogs or cows or fish or bees.
I see nothing fundamentally wrong in being empathetic or not being so. I'm generally someone who does not empathise easily, and see nothing wrong in it. Nor do I see anything wrong in someone who is empathetic.
I only see inconsistencies in the idea of following a sense of morality that exceeds your natural tendencies for empathy. Wherein you decide that you should follow some uniform moral code. Why follow such a code?
I have looked at various such moral principles and found a lot of duplicity in all of them. Some of these are:
I agree my arguments aren't perfect or complete, but I'd much rather discuss this in person since then I don't have to make guesses about where exactly your philosophy differs from mine and what would be the best way of making you understand my philosophy.
I had some good discussion on this on Reddit, you could check it out here.
I tend to do that which makes me happy. I'm essentially hedonistic, utilitarian even. I value other people's happiness only so long as their happiness has an impact on my happiness.
But I don't see hedonism as a choice, rather it's a natural consequence of possessing a human body and brain. And hence applies to pretty much everyone.
I agree that we do have some control over what makes us happy. But certainly not complete control.
I am a strong (existential) nihilist in the sense that I believe that all attempts at finding a meaning or purpose to life are pointless. I'll go so far as to say the we don't even understand why we're looking for it (as in why do we think we will feel more 'whole' if we had a purpose). If your purpose is just something you feel like doing or something you're passionate about, then of course there is always something we feel like doing. If you're sitting on a chair for too long, you feel like getting up. And what you're passionate about is somewhat intrinsic and somewhat entirely your choice. So yeah existentialism holds water too, then, I guess? Evolution has ensured that we procreate, could we say it is our "purpose" to procreate? I guess not, since evolution is a process, not a rational agent.
Maybe you're hoping that some God created us and gave us an objective "your purpose in life is to do X". Would that satisfy you?
I'm willing to ask radical questions and actually mean them. For instance I see nothing inherently wrong in someone who murders people if the net result is that he/she is happier after the murder. #
I don't see anything inherently wrong in consuming drugs to make oneself happy. Okay I do have problems with specific drugs that have scientific evidence to show the people using them are not really happy anymore. But I have nothing against the hypothetical concept of a drug that makes you happy in general.
A question I've recently spent time thinking about is, does the future outweigh the present? And no, I don't see any reason why it should, on the contrary we tend to see the present as what's most important. Consequently I see nothing wrong in suicidal people actually committing suicide as opposed to taking the effort to improve their mood and maybe leading happy lives in the future.
Perhaps that just means I am non-conformist in my thinking. But I am willing to admit that I'm conforming to society just the same. We all are. And that's because we're happiest when we do so (conform to social rules).
I'll also say that I'm often driven by a pursuit of the truth. But this is just a fact, it's not necessarily something I pride myself on and I don't mind if it ceases to be true in the future. You could say I pride myself on my capacity for truth-seeking, rather than what I actually use it for.
The world is infinitely more complex than our capacity to understand it, and to a sufficiently intelligent agent we'd just look like what bees or germs look like to us. If anything, the idea that one day we could reach a state where we understood everything possible about ourselves and the world around it seems somewhat hard to imagine. There likely will always be questions (for example right now it could be the hard problem of consciousness) that show to us how little we understand about important matters.
All of science and philosophy is driven by a desire to know the truth. But we can never reach the truth, we can only get closer and closer, yet be infinitely far away. Hence I do not place a fundamental value on the pursuit of truth either.
A possible metric to determine how close we are to the truth could to be ask, how intelligent must an agent be to able to see the contradictions implied by the theories we believe in. But then that requires a definition of intelligence, so it doesn't really answer the question. I'm yet to be convinced one way or the other on whether it is possible to define 'intelligence' in such a way that it becomes some sort of a linear scale against which all rational agents can be graded upon. And here when I say intelligence I mean some sort of general intelligence (g factor maybe?) that transcends the capabilities of any specific kind of intelligence.
A very important point that I've only recently noticed about us as humans is the enormous value we tend to place on consistent thinking and actions. Whether or not our personal worldview is self-contradictory matters even more to us than whether it is the 'right' worldview or whether it conforms with the worldview of others.
But my experience is that keeping our thoughts and actions consistent with some arbitrary laws that we conceptualise in our minds, is impossible. (Related: the stuff I wrote on moral nihilism) And this is because we have only partial control over what does and doesn't matter to us. The rest is predetermined by the hardwirings of the human mind, which have nothing to do with any rational laws and are all about survival right here and right now.
Hence I display a natural resistance towards the idea of any sort of laws or code as part of my worldview.
P.S. Yes I've had a couple of existential crises but I've gotten over them. I'm a nihilist, an existentialist and/or an absurdist now depending on the way you wanna look at it.
P.S.2 When I say I do not place a fundamental value on X, that does not mean I place no value in X. It just means I do not lead a life devoted to X alone or believe that X cannot be contradicted.
P.S.2 Someone asked me to add my political opinion here so ... BJP sucks. Congress sucks too, but a bit less. AAP might be a bit better but at this point I seriously don't care.
I have problems with democracy as a concept. I believe a meritocracy would be better. The common people could be perhaps given a dead's man switch to dissolve the government if things go amiss, but they most certainly are not the best people to decide who are the best people to rule them. And giving them just 2 or 3 or even 10 options that have been preselected by a party or equally random process is just stupid. If you want to have democracy, at the very least eradicate the concept of political parties.
I also have some issue with the economic system we have, but I agree it's not an easy job coming up with a suitable alternative. And pretty much an impossible task convincing the world to adopt it.
Disclaimer: That doesn't mean I'm likely to commit serious crimes such as murder, and I have sound reasons, the most important of which is I don't have much to gain from it. I don't naturally hate people, so it's not like killing someone is going to make me happy. Nor do I find myself stuck in unsatisfactory situations where killing someone is the only way out. I also lack the know-how/capability to get away with it. Also it will lead to poorer relations with other moralists.
And as I've already mentioned, I empathise less than the average person - that doesn't mean I'm incapable of empathising with people (including strangers).
This huge disclaimer is primarily to convince stronger moralists that I'm not a psycho and can still function normally in a society, if I state it in simpler terms.
Enter email or phone number to subscribe. You will receive atmost one update per month
Enter comment