Philosophy

Philosophy or Truth?

A philosophy can be thought of as a belief or take on life of what you really are. 

The truth is actually what you really are.

A philosophy can change, or come and go and be present in your mind, or not.

The truth is present and permanent.

A philosophy is thought, and is entangled with language.

Truth needs no interpreter and is the expression of life itself.

Philosophy is Good

Philosophy is good, but not as good as physics. Philosophy helps to interpret and understand and apply a theory to your life. But the truth can be discovered and understood without philosophy. By using only physics.

Physics explains how everything is, moment to moment. How everything interacts. At the deepest quantum level and up to the human level, including the level of consciousness.

The one theory covers all, yet there is still a vast amount of space for wonder and exploration.

On the Rails

Determinism means this thought and the next are determined, along with the feeling they’re not. Free will is determined to be experienced but is not true. This revelation is also determined.

We can only enjoy the freedom of being firmly on the rails. There is no opening, anywhere, for a freely willed thought to get into the train of determined thoughts. No chance for an ‘objective’ look at the situation.

God is Dead

God has died slowly over the last few hundred years and so there is no outside or otherworldly authority to provide truth or meaning or verification. We only get what we can see and study for ourselves. And humans have done a wonderful job of it, creating a natural philosophy of science that requires no supernatural components. Nothing is said, written, thought or experienced except here on earth. We are us, and this is it.

Beliefs

All species evolve without having or needing beliefs. Bacteria,worms, apes, neanderthals and us.

Beliefs can even be opposite to the truth of the world or universe (e.g. religions and astrology) and humans happily keep on evolving. Some false beliefs like religions can be beneficial to the believer in terms of aggression control, cooperation and comforting stories of heaven etc.

Choosing a Philosophy

There is only one truth - and that is what is actually happening. Science is the only game in town as it gets better and more accurate at pinpointing how things work, and thus what is happening.

In “choosing” a philosophy the only useful criterion is truth. Untrue philosophies can appear more comforting or more exciting or moral but being untrue makes them useless (almost). 

“Almost“, because comforting mythologies have helped humans feel purposeful, bonded, and secure throughout history. In this way they have been useful, and even selected for by evolution to improve survival and reproduction.

But in searching for the “right” philosophy of life  it makes sense to know how the universe operates, and follow that.

Science has provided us with evidence and logical explanations for subatomic particles and galaxies and ourselves. There is no evidence that disproves science and even though not all is known, there is overwhelming evidence that science is correct in its description of the universe and the natural world. Science isn’t really a philosophy or one among many “truths”, it is evidence based truth. So why not pick science (the human endeavor to find truth) as your belief system and explore the mysteries of your life using mankind’s centuries of concerted investigation.

Philosophy or fact?

Is determinism a philosophy or a fact?

It’s not a philosophy among other philosophies, because you get to determinism by studying the facts of science.

Our universe consists of particles that obey the laws of physics. Particle behaviour dictated by physical law is all there is. Everything that happens on whatever scale, micro or macro, is particles obeying laws. All matter, every moment, is determined.

This is scientific fact, not philosophy.

What is Real?

If the self is an illusion. If the “I”, the individual entity as a subjective consciousness, is a ploy of evolution, then what is real?

My subjective self is the only thing that experiences anything. My mind,me, is what observes. So if that is an illusion by natural selection, evolved for survival and replication then it is maybe (or definitely) not what it seems. It is a false entity. Yet as far as thinking or observing anything, it is all there is.

So then you could ask the false entity that thinks it thinks. Ask what is real then? Is the external world real? Is matter real? Is language and communication real? And in what way?

In another way?. Real in some other way than what we think?

Philosophers, lots of them, agree that there is no free will or decision making, or even free thinking. This isn’t possible. Then they go on philosophising, discussing and arguing as if they have cleverly thought out opinions. Is this all happening on some plane of reality that we fail to see? It’s as if we have hit on a real truth that is unexperienceable.  The thing that would see, and wants to see this truth, is the very thing that isn’t true! Doesn’t exist. Unless we can move to some other level of insight that experiences this reality directly, or through a non-self, or hopefully by fully absorbing the stance and consequences of this approach. This scientific reality - determinism, full stop!

Everything is the result of a cause and is already over. Yet in the case of an enquiring mind, it tries to see its mistake. It gropes for the truth that its existence prevents. Free will cannot hope to ‘discover it is not free. It can hope to do things, but that hope, that feeling, that thought is already a determined event.

Feeling free will is determined. That is the problem.

Feeling free will is already determined.

Truth as Philosophy

Searching for the truth

Searching for meaning

Searching for an understanding of biological processes including thought

Not only does this searching provide insights and answers from time to time, but also fosters a detachment from the intense involvement in trying to get what I want, and steer life in my direction.

Carrying out a search for understanding can let me see life’s difficulties as not so important in the larger scale of reality.

In a Determined World

Talking and thinking about free will is just as determined as everything else. Feeling and saying we have free will and  making choices is determined.

We can be compatibilists and argue and believe that determinism and free will are compatible. But this is also totally determined.

Determined particles come first, and they can and do morph into conscious feelings of choosing and making decisions.

Putting people in jail for their decisions and actions is determined, and declaring that they couldn’t have done otherwise is determined.

A raging debate between determinists, compatibilists and indeterminists is determined at the particle level and therefore at every other level.

In a Nutshell

Determinism is not really a philosophy.

There are a certain number of particles.

Each of them moves according to the physical laws of the universe.

That’s it!

You can discuss or philosophise about what this means, but the state of, but it does mean that the state of the universe is determined at every moment.

That, in a nutshell, is what science has discovered.

Not a Philosophy.

Determinism  isn’t a philosophy derived from argument and ideas. It is the result of scientific research. Research in general. Not research to prove determinism. Given the vast list of research results, determinism is what appears as the universal mechanism.

The physical world (everything) occurs in the way it does, and this can only be described as determined (by physical law).

When you consider the consequences of this description it leaves no room to challenge determinism. But it does leave plenty of room to consider the consequences of determinism.

And this considering going on is equally determined.