Personal Philosophical Labels

Earlier this month I participated in a panel discussion on the nature of God and faith titled “Faith Meets Doubt”. There were three two-person “teams” of Christians, Atheists, and Muslims; I was one of the atheists. In preparation for the discussion, and to clarify my position to the other teams, I wrote an explanation for some labels I had given myself: “gnostic atheist” and “mystic physicalist”. Here, below, is that explanation, slightly edited. Please feel free to critique.

Gnostic Atheist

I am a gnostic atheist, or strong atheist. By that I mean that I believe that the gods that most people refer to when they say “God” do not exist. So, I am an atheist, meaning I don’t have a belief in a god or gods, and I’m gnostic, meaning further that I know (or have a practical knowledge) that gods do not exist. I’ll explain more deeply. When someone asks me if I believe in “God”, and I’m feeling like having a conversation, the first thing I’m likely to say is “what is your definition of `God’?” I’ve heard many definitions of the word “God” and I’ve witnessed abuse of the word due to unclear and conflicting definitions. So in normal conversation, when a relatively clear definition of “God” is not provided, I see the word “God” as an ill-defined, loaded, and distracting word. This is essentially what’s called the igtheist or ignostic position, where the question “Does God exist?” is taken as meaningless. But let’s suppose a definition is provided.

If your definition of “God” is sufficiently weak or simple, for example, if you define “God” to be the causal force that initiated the Big Bang, then I’ll say “Well, that seems like a reasonable belief, but I think you’re abusing the word `God’.” I’ll say that because a person with a very weak definition of “God” usually turns right around and starts applying other unstated assumptions about “God” such as it is also an emotional being that loves you, or influences you somehow. Even if the person does not apply these kinds of unstated assumptions, I do not see the point of calling the “causal force that initiated the Big Bang” by the name “God”. I would expect that force, if it existed, to be physical anyway, so there only seem to be ulterior emotional reasons to want to call it “God”. I therefore reject these definitions.

If your definition of “God” is complicated (and probably involves hundreds of pages of complicated text such as with the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim gods), then from my personal experience and education, including religious and spiritual questing, I believe your god does not exist in the same practical sense that I believe that the Greek and Roman gods don’t exist, nature spirits and fairies don’t exist, and Santa Claus does not exist. I see that people are influenced by religions and superstitions such as astrology for complicated psychological and social reasons that simultaneously benefit and harm them, but I don’t see that any of them have good reasons for their beliefs. I see these gods as superstition, and believe they don’t exist.

In my most philosophical moods and conversations, I reveal that I do not have full faith in either my reason or my perception, and I will never feel I have absolute knowledge since I will always have doubt. Coming from this extremely philosophical position, there are many possible ways that I could be fooled by elaborate cosmic hoaxes that hide the presence of traditional gods from me. Or gods may be things that are very subtle to detect. But it would be silly for me to remain agnostic about the gods that people use in their practical and political lives and their interactions with me. Only in the most impractical philosophical settings am I an agnostic atheist; otherwise I am gnostic — I have practical knowledge that “God” does not exist.

Mystic Physicalist

The term “mystic physicalist” seems to be a fairly good description of my philosophical point of view, although I’ve never used it before this event and the word “mystic” is probably not exactly the word I want to use. “Mystic” describes my attitude and “physicalist” describes my beliefs, or working assumptions. Although “mystic” has spiritual and occult connotations, I am not spiritual and do not believe in spirits, souls, supernatural powers or agencies, or unseen planes of existence. I think they’re possible but extremely unlikely, at least as they are usually understood.

By “mystic” I mean that I retain an awed sense of mystery, whatever my interpretation of reality. I have, and enjoy having and seek out, deep and meaningful experiences, and my mind is blown by the inherent mysteries and paradoxes in questions of existence. I tend to seek out experiences that I think may induce these inspired emotions, and I might resemble more traditional mystics when I meditate in nature or, on rare occasions, do something like take psychedelic mushrooms. These emotions and activities have been important to me in my search for what is true, real, and meaningful.

Some of my experiences would be called religious or spiritual by people of faith, and I called them religious and spiritual when I was younger and theistic, but now I don’t. Now I put as few assumptions and interpretations as possible on these experiences. For instance, when I am in nature and feel in awe and thankful to be alive, I don’t feel thankful to anyone, I simply feel deeply thankful, and that’s true whether or not there are spirits or beings to be thankful to. On the multiple occasions when I was being saved as a Christian, I thought I felt the unconditional love of a god, but now I realize I was feeling love and other emotions in a complicated social and psychological interaction. I still value those “saving” experiences as deep and cathartic and part of my philosophical journey. So I have a mystic’s appreciation for “direct experience of reality” but without the occult interpretations of those experiences.

By “physicalist” I essentially mean that I believe that everything is physical. Unbasically, I mean that I base all of my practical decisions on the assumption that everything is made of physical energy, or matter, that obeys mathematical physical laws and there are no beings or personal forces that interupt that pattern. These are basic assumptions of science, and I believe science has shown again and again that these are the most productive and reliable assumptions about reality. So, again, I don’t believe I have a soul, and when my body dies I expect to be destroyed forever, unless technology advances far enough to be able to replicate the workings of a brain electronically or biologically.

Therefore, by “mystic physicalist” I basically mean I’m an awestruck, mystified, atheist scientist.

“Life” and “you”

This is a response to a post about Zen and Ego Persistence by cspice. In these posts we’re using thought experiments to improve our understanding of what we mean by “life” when we claim we want to maximize our subjective life quality.

Life

As long as we’re being this philosophical, we must also remember that we, or just me (the solipsistic me), could be a brain in a vat or something similar, in which case science as we know it is an illusion and genes may not really be the thing providing us with our desire for self-preservation. With this thought in mind, perhaps the only thing we can be certain about is our emotional feelings and we cannot comment on their origins. But let’s make the assumption that science has generally provided us with accurate information about the workings of our universe.

What is a life (in the context of maximizing subjective life quality)? I’ll define a life as a spatially localized dynamic pattern of perception, memory, and consciousness that seems to have significant continuity but may have temporal gaps. Some simple extreme cases that strain this definition are people with split or multiple personalities (who may be living multiple lives) or people who get amnesia (and essentially live a new life). One could conceive of similar straining cases such as people with implanted memories of events that never happened, and these people, like those with amnesia, may be living different lives before and after the implant(s). If the false memories are removed (and any missing real memories replaced), the person could go back to their original life.

A life apparently arises from one or possibly multiple patterns of matter. I say possibly multiple patterns of matter because it’s conceivable that identical lives could be lived via biological “wetware” of a human body and brain in the apparently real world and via electronic hardware in a programmed, simulated world. (Science would, in that last circumstance, be telling us about the programming of the hardware.) We need no assumption of souls, spirits, or some kind of aetherial mind that is the root perceptive device and seat of consciousness. Of course, it might be possible that there is a physics of the soul, and some subtle physical process does direct the interactions of souls with matter, but there is no evidence of this.

How can we define the continuation of a life, which is essential for the concept of a single life? The main trickiness comes in from the phrase “seems to have significant continuity” in the definition of life. Dreams could potentially provide great discontinuity and could resemble death and rebirth processes (which are taken into account with mention of “temporal gaps”). Some people have drastic changes in their life, and sometimes even claim to be “born again” into a new life. I don’t think we can get rid of the ambiguity of these kinds of possibilities. However, I think the phrase “spatially localized” addresses some of your concerns, cspice. You’ve shown that there’s another trickiness: a body can multiply via Star Trek style teleportation technology. (This teleportation is a kind of voluntary death and rejuvination process or simply a replication process, since any number of copies could be produced and the original possibly left extant.) Under my interpretation of a spatially localized life, this means that multiple lives can be produced from one life and can have identical pasts. So one life can “continue” into many separate lives.

Here’s another thought to consider: Say a person is teleported into two bodies (and the original is destroyed) and these two bodies then live in two bubbles in the universe where it just so happens that all events that occur in these two spatially separated bubbles are identical (or indistinguishable), including the brain states of the two bodies. There may be minor differences between the two bodies due to random quantum processes. Then, after some time, the two bodies are destroyed via teleportation technology and the information is averaged (so the effects of the random processes are averaged) and information is used to make one body again. Under my interpretation, one person became two different (although indistinguishable) people, and then became one person again. (If the events in the bubbles were significantly different, then the final person would be a totally new and different person.) So one person can continue into multiple people and continue back into one person again.

Also, there is a possible inverse-replication scenario. Let’s say there are several people with different lives. Over time there is a slow-acting amnesia effect. Slowly, it just so happens that these peoples’ lives become more and more similar. Finally once their lives are indistinguishable, they are all destroyed and turned into one person. So multiple lives can merge and continue on as one life.

If all of this teleportation stuff is possible, that causes difficulties with the idea of souls, spirits, and metaphysical minds. If a person is multiplied, would only one of the resultant people have a soul, or would the soul split up somehow? J. K. Rowling has given us some metaphysics in Harry Potter to ponder on these ideas.

So, what is it that you’re preserving when you want to preserve your life? It could be a life that has a shared past or future with other lives, but, at least locally in time and space, it is uniquely yours. …But I suppose I am avoiding the possibility of perception, memory, and consciousness on large space and time scales. Let’s continue to avoid that for now.

Life Preservation

Now, why should a life, or a person with a life, want to continue and keep itself alive (or at least ready-to-be-rejuvinated-in-the-future)? Emotionally, I think it all comes down to the desire for pleasure. Pleasure can take many flavors and forms such as contentment, joyousness, and ecstasy, and it is often associated with meeting physical needs. The gutteral groping to quench desire always wants more, or will want more in the future. We know we will be hungry again, and other desires will arise. We love to fulfill those desires and look forward to those times of pleasure when they are fulfilled. Death or discontinuation of self is an impediment to the satisfaction of desire, so it is avoided.

That was the emotional reason, but what’s the physical reason? I think this leads to your question, cspice. What do our genes do to us? I think our genes allow for many different psychological states. Most of those states seem to include a strong sense of self-preservation, and that makes sense given the evolutionary advantage for such mental states. I think our genetically provided sense of self-preservation includes the emotional desire for pleasure. And why do our genes provide this? Let’s just say the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe made it so.

Other desires (such as the desire to end suffering) can override the desire for (future) pleasure and cause someone to kill itself. Or someone who decreases, suppresses, or eliminates its desire could potentially override the genetically provided sense of self-preservation.

Should we fear death? Just as I think there is no inherent or objective meaning or purpose to life, I think there is no inherent or objective reason to fear death. It is an emotional reaction to fear death. But I know I desire pleasure and at least partially diminishing my fear of death brings me greater pleasure (or less fear), so I’ve determined that I shouldn’t fear death too much. I retain my fear insofar as it preserves my life (pleasure) and doesn’t cause me too much suffering. Many philosophical thoughts can help a person to reduce their fear of death, including this “mind swapping” idea of yours, cspice, although I should comment on it.

I don’t think a “consciousness” by itself could be considered a person or self with life. I think consciousness is a property of a thinking, perceptive device. But let’s say a “consciousness” is an independent thinking, perceptive device (that, perhaps, does not have any emotion or sense of self-preservation) and can travel from mind to mind. I would have to consider this kind of consciousness to be a self having life, although I’d probably want to call it something else since “consciousness” would apparently be conscious of itself. And let’s say minds, being essentially the physical activity of a brain and body that have emotions and instincts, can somehow influence a consciousness and temporarily overpower its memory of previously occupied minds. I guess we could then call the mind-consciousness system an “ego” (although I’m not sure if Freud would approve of this use), and “ego-persistence” would, in fact, be a trick on the consciousness perpetrated by the gene-influenced mind. In fact, I think the mind (or mind-body system) would get along fine without consciousness, and mind-persistence would not be a trick but a reality. (Mind-persistence might be alternately called sensory extrapolation and prediction.) The mind would still fear death attempt to preserve itself.

You

Depending on your experience, and how you feel about things or your state of mind, you may believe that this consciousness-self is more fundamentally “you” than your emotional-mind-self. But as things stand for me right now, my mind takes precedence. Speaking from the philosophical standpoint where all I know are my emotions (as I stated in the first paragraph), whether they are tricks or not, I don’t have to question the origin of my desire for pleasure. However, my definition of life does not require emotions; one could live an emotionless life. I detect a flaw in my argument… but I’ll post anyway!

Really, though, who are “you”? Who am I? I think it’s time to meditate.

As a last side note, cspice, I think your description for Zen Buddhism applies more to Taoism. I would say Zen Buddhism is more about the practice of meditation and the enlightenment or new perspective you gain from the physical activity and practice (rather than from a doctrine or logical argument). But the form of the enlightenment or new perspective may not be what you expect it to be from the outset; the new perspective may be a lot like the old perspective. Maybe you’ll just like to meditate more.

Real Life in Unreality

I believe, as cspice elaborates in his article on Hierarchy of Value, that experiences, both personal and interpersonal, are of ultimate value.  We must not forget that our life experiences encompass more than actual real events.  Reading a book or watching a movie can allow you to experience things you would never come across in reality.  Music, it seems, can sometimes act almost as a drug and send one into a state disconnected from reality.  Also, our dreams can provide some worthwhile experiences.  Note that while the objects and events in books or dreams are nonphysical and unreal, the internal experiences gained are real and potent, at least on an emotional level.

I have recently resumed my attempts to induce lucid dreaming, which is dreaming where one is aware that one is dreaming.  If you realize you are dreaming, you can then realize that you have control over what happens in your dream and take control, to whatever degree you allow yourself or want to take control.  (I was reminded of this interest of mine when I visited Wayne Schmidt’s website and saw his lucid dreaming page, after viewing his excellent explanation of plasma displays.  I read the book by Dr. LaBerge that he refers to.)  I am trying to induce lucidity by making it a habit to ask myself whether I’m dreaming or not and by increasing my memory retention of dreams by keeping a dream journal.

Since we naturally have experiences both in reality and unreality, we should experiment with our unreal lifestyle as well as our real lifestyle.  There may be a valuable interaction between the two that can maximize total (real and unreal) expected life quality.  For instance, in your dream life you may be able to tap into your more creative side to acquire ideas for your real life, or you may be able to confront real psychological issues in your dreams.  There are several reasons why experiences in reality carry more value overall than those in unreality, but there is potentially great value in the real experiences in unreality.

A Principled, Inspired Academy

This idea appeals to me much more than the reality of graduate school:

Imagine a small community of students who are really enthusiastic about learning physics, mathematics, and technological fields, where the learning is self-motivated and self-directed.  Momentum and synergy would build in an environment where each person wants to inspire and be inspired as well as to challenge and be challenged.  The goals of each student may be different — some may want to learn a marketable skill, some may want to become an inventor and market their inventions, others may want to publish research and become marketable as a researcher, or they might simply want to discover how the universe works — but all will have an insatiable curiosity.  The interaction among the students would lead to some collaboration, interweaving, and interdependence of projects, but each student would work at its own pace and on its own terms.  However, the pace would be accelerated due to the academy’s high priority of quality pedagogy providing real, fundamental understanding.  The students themselves would create the in-house teaching material, improving it as time goes on and using it to teach each other.  Funding for each student would come from

1. the student’s own finances (students could work at a nearby business for low-pay and part-time to leave time for research); and
2. donations to

• the academy in general
• a fund for a particular project (that the student happens to be working on)
• a fund of a research team (of which the student is a member)
• the student’s personal research fund.

The academy would not accept money obtained through coercive means, such as taxes.

Spiciness of Life

What is a “spicy lifestyle”? Who are “spicy lifestylers”? What is “spicy lifestyling”? Here’s an answer from the perspective of this spicy lifestyler. Basically, a spicy lifestyle is a lifestyle lead by a freedom-loving individual who is not religiously dogmatic and who tries to maximize their life-quality through reasoned methods. The “spicy” part indicates the high quality of life and the “style” encompasses the other properties, including the deliberate “stylings” that improve life-quality. So a “spicy lifestyle” is not simply a “spicy” lifestyle or a “spicily styled” life.

More specifically, a spicy lifestyler values freedom for itself and for others, so that it avoids the initiation of force against anyone, except perhaps children in certain cases. As this is a key feature of political libertarianism, a spicy lifestyler may lean towards libertarianism, such as I do. Insofar as anything (especially religion) defies reason and skepticism, a spicy lifestyler will avoid or oppose that thing. In my case, this tendency has lead to agnostic atheism.

A spicy lifestyler consciously tailors, and repeatedly tailors and retailors using reasoned methods, its lifestyle to maximize expected total subjective life-quality. Judgement of life-quality is up to the individual, who may have its own psychological and biochemical peculiarities, and hence this judgement is subjective. If one could measure and graph (subjective) life-quality over a lifetime, maximizing total life-quality would mean maximizing the area under the curve to gain the greatest “total quality”. However, one can only view one’s whole life just before death, so one has to predict future life-quality and act in the present to create what one expects will yield the greatest total life-quality. One hopes that this will actually maximize total subjective life-quality.

There are many factors that make prediction of future life-quality difficult. Judgement of life-quality is partially determined by one’s values, which may not be under the influence of one’s conscious activities and which may change throughout one’s lifetime. Also, instantaneous life-quality is not only determined by the instantaneous reality but is also determined by one’s perception of the past and the future and, in particular, feelings (regret, satisfaction, dread, etc.) regarding past life-quality and expected future life-quality. Predicting total life-quality is even more difficult because one does not know how long life will last.

Some people may enjoy life-threatening or self-destructive behaviors, so they may put more weight on increasing life-quality at a young age. This behavior is reasonable if they expect that they will be sufficiently satisfied with their lifestyle choices when they are older. This will yield a higher total life-quality. Similarly, people may simply value having a few extreme experiences in life to the detriment of other experiences, avoiding a constant-quality, “hum drum” life. Also, people might try to arrange events so as not to die at an extremely low point in life-quality. Awareness of these desires and acting upon them throughout life can increase total life-quality.

Note that one does not necessarily maximize one’s own expected life-quality at the expense of others, since life-quality includes effects due to interpersonal matters as well as strictly personal matters. If I value and enjoy helping other people, maximizing life-quality may include engaging in humanitarian projects throughout life. Also note that excessive worry and effort over improving life-quality can work against the effort if one does not recognize the excess. But that is the goal. A spicy lifestyler continually tries to maximize expected total subjective life-quality in order to maximize total subjective life-quality.

For a person such as myself who is not all that enamored with spicy food, the phrase “spicy lifestyle” is not apt for all areas of life, but it does convey the basic idea of a high-quality lifestyle with personality and brevity. Also, although “spicy” usually conveys excitement and stimulation, we mean for it to convey a broader range of qualities, including fulfillment and contentment. A “spicy lifestyle” exhibits well-timed sweetness, bitterness, spiciness, and lack of seasoning, according to the preferences of the individual.

A reasonable spicy lifestyler will come to the conclusion that associating with people of similar style and life-goals may greatly further its pursuits. So coming up with the term “spicy lifestyle” and organizing a group of self-proclaimed “spicy lifestylers” is only natural.