I follow Clearer Thinking by Spencer Greenberg, who is clearly a rationalist, but I especially enjoy his nuanced views. A while ago he published a blog on Rarely noticed choices that shape your debates. This blog is deeply philosophical, because in order to improve your debates you have to figure out exactly what your underlying definitions are, including your axiomatic beliefs about basically everything. I encourage you to read the blog and maybe sign up for the newsletter, I enjoy getting bits of nuanced rationality in my inbox.
Turns out that for every discussion that includes a 'definition' (God, love, science, conciousness) you have to first figure out which choices you (unconciously) made about that definition. Otherwise, you'll just talk past each other. To dive further there's a Learn Your Philosophical Beliefs survey. Here I want to document my own thoughts as I filled out these survey questions, especially the ones where I struggle.
Question #1: Do abstract objects exist?
The full question: Philosophers debate whether abstract objects exist – things like numbers. They are not physical objects, but some argue they are also more than just a thought or idea in people's minds. They are supposed to be a third kind of thing that is neither physical nor mental.
Clear NO for me. I'm not a platonist. Math is something minds do. Numbers do not exist outside of minds. Though it seems most people disagree, abstract objects like numbers do exist separately.
I'm even a non-dualist about physical objects, somewhat described in my empty math post. While I believe there's physical matter/energy/stuff, the universe itself does not carve itself into separate objects. The physical universe doesn't care about the difference between atoms inside an apple or outside (it doesnt even care about our definition of atoms). It's our mind that evolved the ability to classify sensate patterns into objects; our mind creates the duality between a thing (apple) and the rest of the universe (¬apple).
Note that this question actually asks whether you believe there's more than the physical and mental. I don't believe that either.
Question #2: Is beauty subjective?
Clear YES for me. Most people seem to agree.
Question #3: Is there an external world?
We have three options here:
The universe is a physical reality that we can know through science and observation.
We cannot know anything about reality, not even that it is in the mind.
The universe we know about is entirely contained with the mind.
I struggle with this one. I think on a day-to-day basis I unconciously accept there is a physical reality. But when I think about it, clearly all our empirical science is based on our own subjective perception, which is in our mind. We cannot 'objectively' deduce there's anything outside our minds, so I lean towards answer 3. However, since we use neuro-science to deduce we even have minds (or brains actually), and we cannot know that for sure, that means we cannot even know for sure we have minds, so we know nothing, so option 2. Unless you simply name all our sensations and experiences as 'mind', simply as a definition, then we are back at option 3. Yet I still think those sensations that enter our mind (what we see and hear) come from an external reality, even if we can never fully prove that. So I guess I am still chosing option 1, that does seem to be my belief, I am still a kind of materialist/physicalist. Though I am happy to say that somehow the entire universe is able to host conciousness in a way we do not understand yet. Maybe there's a field of conciousness or awareness, or electromagnetism somehow has awareness as a fundamental property, I don't know. Which would make me somekind of idealist physicalist, which is a contradiction in terms. Yeah I went with option 1 in the end; there is a physical reality outside our minds. I feel like that's a belief I have beyond my ability to rationalize it.
Question #4: Free will?
Again 3 options:
Determinism is true, so we don't have free will.
We have free will, so determinism must be false.
We can still have free will even if determinism is true.
Gosh, I think most of my thoughts and 'choices' are made by my subconcious, a vast collection of various processes, which just dumps these thoughts into my conciousness for some reason. That percieved conciousness is more like a senate or corporate board where all little factions of my mind come together. Do 'I' still make a few real choices there? Do any of my subconcious process make any real choices?
Looking at it from the other side; is determinism true? Is the physical universe deterministic? Do 'I' get to decide on the outcome of any wave function collapses? Tricky tricky.
I am going with option 1. Seems most people go with 3.
Question #5: God
Typically I just equate God with Universe and be done with it. Apparently this is Spinoza's view, a form of pantheism. God is the very fabric of reality, which is what created us and governs us. But the question defines god as an "all-powerful deity, or multiple deities, worshipped as the creator or ruler of the universe, or as rulers of particular forces of nature or ancestral principles." By that definition I do not believe a god exists.
Question #6: Knowledge. How to use the word "knows"?
When I claim I "know" something, what am I saying? Can the thing I "know" change depending on context? Or is it somehow constant? Well I am going with impermanence here, there's nothing constant. Thoughts and experiences come and go, I cannot truly "know" that they are constant even if I sometimes feel like the same thing re-appears. So I am going with the answer that what I "know" changes from context to context.
Question #7: Laws of nature
Are laws of nature just descriptions of patterns that we have observed, or are they more, some kind of deep principles that govern nature and create those patterns that we observe and predict. Newton's laws of motion, Mendel's laws, and the ideal gas laws. I think most of these are mere patterns. Maybe there is some kind of deep underlying quantum foam from which all laws emerge, but I don't think these laws themselves are fundamental. They're like abstract objects in our mind.
Apparently I am now a Humean, a follower of David Hume.
Question #8: Meta-ethics
What is morality? Can something truly be right or wrong? Nah, I think it's a cultural convention or personal belief. It's yet another abstract object.
I do believe morality is important, I am not some nihilist. I just think we, all sentient beings in this universe, decide what is good for us. Not the universe itself or some abstract third thing.
Hmm, unless we don't have free will? Then whatever determines our morality could be considered the cause of (our feelings of) right and wrong. Well I still think that morality lives only inside our minds, free will or not, so it's ours. I'm sticking with my answer: "Morality is a matter of social convention or personal belief".
Question #9: Mind
Is the mind in the brain, all captured by physics? Or is the mind some non-physical additional to the brain?
While it might be very complex, I still believe it's part of physics, or else physics as a field is currently incomplete and we have yet to discover how exactly we can reach qualia with physics. I'm staying a physicalist for now.
Question #10: Moral Judgement
Similar to #8, statements about morality are subjective.
Question #11: Newcomb's problem
Box A
Question #12: Normative ethics. How ought we act?
Yeah... preferably we could all be consequentialists, but I go with virtue ethics (doing what a good/wise/virtuous person would do).
Question #13: Which kind of society is most preferable?
Sticking to Egalitarian: "A society that put special emphasis on ensuring that everyone has equal basic rights and opportunities, so any inequality reflects differences in work or ability".
While I think there's benefits to focusing on the community as a whole (Communitarian) or having a government that inferes little (Libertarian), I prefer the option above.
Question #14: What is the purpose of science?
Going with "Science is a helpful tool for making predictions and developing new technologies, and it also brings us closer to knowing the ultimate truth of reality."
The alternative answer was that it doesn't bring us closer to the "ultimate truth". Given that I do believe there is some external world we can learn about, even if the knowledge in our minds is not absolute, we still improve this knowledge. We can debate whether there is an "ultimate" truth.
Question #15: Teletransporter
Ah the famous question: if it existed, would you use a teletransporter?
This is fun, because I think you die, but that's fine, we die all the time, there's no moment-to-moment constant "you". It's only the illusion of continuity that counts as "you". So is it safe? Or do we die? Both!
I'll go with the "this is a safe way for you to teleport" answer.
Question #16: What is truth?
While I think there are many views on the truth, and our 'true' experience might be non-dual, I still think that the truth is that which succesfully represents reality.
The other option is to say 'true' doesn't add anything to statements. 'Earth is round' is equal to 'it's true that Earth is round', but that's only true if we "know" the earth is round. If someone says "Earth is a flat disk", then that's further from reality. 'Earth is round' is less wrong (yet not capturing everything we "know" and observed about Earth).
The third option states that truth is defined in terms of what can be known, which might depend on social/historical/perspectival/pragmatic factors. I mean, sure, what we know depends on context, but given that I believe there's an external reality, we can either describe that reality better or worse (independent of those other factors).
Question #17: Can there be a p-zombie?
Is conciousness/awareness seperate from behavior? Could you have an entity with completely human behavior, yet no concious experience? I think information processing is separate from our qualia somehow. I think you can mimick a human being with pure information processing. I think we are running that experiment with the current AI models. Though I cannot know whether silicon intelligence has no qualia.
I'm still going with the possiblity of p-zombies.
Did I learn anything? It seems I struggle mostly with questions around mind and reality. I don't really "know" what mind is, what is this experience really, what am "I", do "I" have free will? According to advanced meditators that's an upgrade over being certain "you" exist separate from the external world and are some impermanent entity until you die. That just causes pointless suffering. So let's consider my confusion a good thing for now.