Mission Statement

To better understand the world through kindness, persistence, and curiosity in order to improve it.

Philosophy

This section is meant to briefly outline key elements of the philosophy with which I view the world. My thoughts here are in a continual work in-progress and will undoubtedly need to be revised. This is a draft…

Ontology

Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Peirce, Bishop Berkeley, and others provide arguments that materialism cannot be proven. As all I have access to are my perceptions and a proof of materialism would require me to go beyond those perceptions, I am unable to make progress here. In more modern terms, I cannot prove that I am not in a computer simulation. As proofs of necessity for materialism or idealism (or others) seem unlikely to come about, I instead assume a materialist framework from a pragmatic perspective. Whether I live in a computer simulation, am the figment of some being, or not ultimately does not matter. I do not have access to that ‘other’ level. I must make decisions in the context I am in and those decisions always have had consequences, so I want to make the best decisions in my context. When I return to my office after the weekend, I expect all my items to be in the places I left them (I am surprised when they move, but it always seems to have a causal explanation).

My strong preference for a materialist framework came about after reading Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge. While Berkeley had the opposite intention in his work, my preference comes about from the following thoughts after reading his work:

• Conflict resolution under materialism seems possible (i.e., we can argue over an external object, independent of us). Berkeley relies on the existence of a deity to organize perceptions to cohere between different minds. Without intervention of such a deity, it is unclear how we can resolve conflicts (if we both just have perceptions, then neither of us is wrong and both are right). By having an external world that we perceive, we then have a reference point to make progress on resolving disagreements. How (and whether) those disagreements can be solved is another issue entirely, but materialism offers an opportunity.
• Scientific progress appears to be better justified under a materialist framework. If all that is is perceptions, then I’m not sure what science or observations hopes to capture. If we instead are viewing an external world through (distorted) perceptions, then it seems like science has something it can say. The success of science seems to give the adoption of materialism weight.

Regarding human consciousness, I find the emergent property explanation to be convincing. So, animal consciousness and machine consciousness are also accepted as possible.

Epistemology

I find epistemological anarchism, or ‘anything goes’ appealing to allow myself (and others) flexibility in scientific progress.

While I choose to adopt a materialist viewpoint as stated in the previous section, I recognize this is a singular assumption one can make regarding their ontology. I could have instead chosen an idealist viewpoint. Such an opposing view may allow scientific progress not otherwise possible (I do not find this to be likely, hence my materialist preference, but I am open to being wrong).

Moral Philosophy

Morally, I adopt a utilitarian framework. Deriving maxims (without error for all eternity) seems hopeless to me (as even Kant couldn’t), especially since it seems easy to get trapped in the ‘morality of your time’.