Philosophy
Apr. 14th, 2009 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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muse_academy, today.
1. What is the meaning of life?
There *is* no meaning to life. Life simply exists. As well ask "what is the meaning of stars?" or "what is the meaning of carbon dioxide?"
The meaning your *own* life may have will vary depending on your circumstances and your feelings on the matter, but there is no overarching "meaning" to life.
2. What is?
The set of that which is not null.
3. Why is there something rather than nothing?
Because.
Seriously, this is a question? The multiverse exists, therefore there is something. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be around to complain about it. There is something rather than nothing because for this question to exist there has to be.
4. What is truth?
There's an objective reality that is not affected by the influence of sentient beings... and then there's everything that *is* influenced by sentient beings. As soon as consciousness enters the picture, objective truth becomes impossible. I mean, yes, I can objectively say that stars conduct fusion, but I cannot objectively say that you are a pathetic, primitive specimen of an underevolved species, because to make such value judgements requires the influence of sentience. As soon as sentience is involved, everyone has an opinion. Your opinion is that I am an over-powered sarcastic asshole, my opinion is that you are hardly even worth helping to evolve to the next stage of your existence. The thing is, though, that objectively, I'm a lot more powerful than you, so objectively, my opinion matters *much* more than yours does.
Thus, truth is whatever the sufficiently powerful say it is. If you want your truth to be accepted as *the* truth, you need to be louder than other people with their truths.
5. Why is the world the way it is?
That is a very complex question that I doubt you have the intellect to grasp, but I will *attempt* to simplify it for you.
The purpose of life is to live, and life generally lives at the expense of other life. So selfishness and greed are traits that promote living, and power gravitates. To him that hath much, much shall be given; the meek don't inherit any more of the earth than the six-foot-deep hole in it they get planted in, usually much earlier than the strong. There's no fairness; predators single out the weak to take what they need from, and the universe kicks you when you're down.
However, intelligence requires cooperation, and it requires love. This is because unless a being is immortal, intelligence is useless to it if it is solitary. There isn't enough time in a mortal lifespan to learn everything; you need to learn it from those who learned it before you. And the only intelligent species whose young know everything they need to know when they're born are manufactured -- androids, the Jem'Hadar, for that matter my own kind before we started reproducing the long way. Intelligence is for learning new things and making new connections; if you're born knowing everything you have no need to be smart. So species that are intelligent and not immortal *must* create helpless, ignorant young and teach them... and because the way of the universe is for the strong to feed on the weak, a powerful force must work to make sure the adults a. don't eat the kids and b. teach them and guide them. That force is love. And beings who can generalize their love outward from their children to embrace others of their species develop better abilities to cooperate, which leads to them learning more and faster, which leads to greater success as an intelligent species.
I realize that those who know me are waiting for the punch line, now that I've said love is as powerful a force in the development of sentience as selfishness. Sorry. There's no punch line. It's true. Love is a terrible weakness, a destructive force that leads you to avoid doing the thing that protects and preserves your *own* life so that you can protect and preserve someone *else's*. Love drags you down and makes you weak. Love also allows you to work cooperatively in groups to accomplish things that with your mayfly lifespans and your nigh-impotent, puny bodies, you would never be able to accomplish alone. It's both. When sentient beings become too selfish, their ability to cooperate falls apart and separately, they are far far weaker than they were together. When they become too loving... the predators come and exploit that love, feed on it for their own needs.
And that is why the world is the way it is. All sentient beings must find a balance between love and selfishness, as a society, or their society will be destroyed.
6. Where do we come from?
Who's "we"? I know where *I* come from. For that matter I know where you come from too, because I'm as close to omniscient as you're ever going to meet. But somehow I don't think "the random collision of acids in a primordial soup of chemicals" is the answer you're looking for here.
7. Who are we?
Again, who's "we"? There really aren't too many categories that encompass both me and other sentient beings.
8. Where are we going to?
Okay, that one I can answer. You are going to change. As am I. As is everything. Eventually the universe will wind down like a clockwork mouse, the energies of the big bang finally petering out, but before that happens life will defy entropy by becoming more complex, more ordered, containing more energy and channelling it more efficiently... but entropy has a trick up its sleeve. Complete order is as much death as complete chaos. When you ossify, when you harden and resist change, you're dead. Life is change and transformation, an endless battle against both order and chaos, a dynamic balance that constantly must swing from one side to the other because perfect equilibrium is still another word for stasis and stasis is death.
You will change. The only question is, change into what? And that depends entirely on what you are and what you choose to learn and do during the time that you exist. If you're lucky -- and you work at it -- you evolve higher intelligence, greater power, less vulnerability, longer lifespans -- but then what do you do with *that?* That is a question I'm still working on.
9. What is the purpose of it all?
The purpose of life is to live. That's all there is. And since most organisms don't live forever, the way life accomplishes living is to create more life to keep living after it is dead.
The purpose of *consciousness*, and intelligence, and the things that those with consciousness and intelligence create... that's a different story. There is no purpose to consciousness or intelligence aside from the fact that they are emergent properties of sufficiently complex organisms that permit said organisms to live longer under many circumstances... but the purpose that consciousness can *make* for itself is as valid as that one is. Since there are more consciousnesses in the multiverse than anyone can easily count, even me, there are an innumerately huge number of purposes for consciousness.
10. Is there a God?
With a capital letter? Implying a conscious creator of all reality?
No. Sorry to disappoint you. Reality occured randomly.
There are *gods*, small g -- beings so much more powerful than other beings that the other beings, superstitious weaklings that they are, decide to worship them. I should know, I am one. But I didn't create the universe, and neither did anyone else, and even if someone *did*, so what? Why would that make them the boss of me, or of you for that matter? If I'm smart enough to know that desiring the slavish obedience and adulation of lesser life forms is the act of a pathetic loser who can't get an entity at his own level to pay him enough attention, why would the supposed creator of all reality be dumber than I am? I already don't listen to the beings that created me and I *know* they exist, so why would I feel a compulsion to listen to or obey the creator of all reality?
If there is some entity responsible for creating reality... and I have had experiences that made me think that maybe, just possibly, there might be something to that, and maybe my belief that the universe exists out of random chaos might not be all there is to it... even *if* that turned out to be true, such a being would have absolutely no interest whatsoever in what version of a holy book mortal species follow in their worship rites, or whether said mortal entities consume certain types of meat, and *especially* they wouldn't care who you mortals have sex with. How parochial can you get? Such a being would not be your daddy, personally interested in your welfare and in smiting those who talk back to Him. It would be as far removed from anything your primitive minds could understand as the universe itself in all its complexity is. So for all intents and purposes there may as well be no God, not as you understand it, even if there is a sentience that created reality. Anything that is vastly more powerful than you, has a personal interest in your existence, performs miracles at your behest (or doesn't, but shows up to say no at least), and wants you to love or adore or praise it, is a being like me, except with a lot less self-esteem than I have.
11. What is good and what is evil?
Labels. And about as meaningful as the one on your soup can that says "New! Improved Flavor!"
There is behavior that conforms to your moral principles, whatever they may be, and behavior that doesn't. There is behavior you like, and behavior you don't like. There is behavior that hurts you and behavior that helps you. There is behavior that conforms to *a* principle, and behavior that simply does whatever feels good at the time. But there is no such thing as "good" or "evil."
I do have moral principles I believe in, but I don't make the mistake of believing they are universal, or universally honored. I don't need to; I'm powerful enough to enforce my own morality on others if I felt like it, so I don't require the luxury of believing that I'm objectively correct. Recall that power makes truth, after all. Although, since I believe that stupidity is a cardinal sin, it would be exhausting work to try to enforce my morality on others, as stupidity is about as common as hydrogen in the universe.
12. Do we have a "free will"?
That depends on how you define free will.
Say your friend really, really loves dogs. So you find this cute little stray puppy and the alternatives are, give it to the pound or give it to your friend. Is your friend going to say "no"? Almost certainly not. *Could* your friend say "no"? Absolutely. *Will* she? No, because she loves dogs, so it would be uncharacteristic of her to refuse to take in a dog in need. Does that mean she doesn't have free will when it comes to dogs?
No one is capable of committing *all* possible acts. That's where the entire concept of characteristic or uncharacteristic behavior comes in. If you tell your dad "I got an A!" and he takes out a gun and shoots you, you're not going to assume that his free will led him to choose to do that (well, unless you have a very weird relationship with your dad); you are probably going to assume that something is influencing him, taking *away* his free will. Maybe he's insane or on drugs. If your species is telepathically sensitive and aware of it, you might think he's being mind controlled. Maybe he's not really your dad. But the idea that he'd shoot you for getting a good grade on a test is so ridiculously uncharacteristic (for most people's fathers, anyway) that you don't for a moment assume free will is in action here. Therefore you already understand that free will is constrained by your nature. Your personality, if you will. I *can* repair the atmosphere of Kadmos IV and make luffy bread fall from the sky to feed the starving inhabitants, but anyone who knows me knows that this is an awfully unlikely choice for me to make. Do I lack the free will to do so, or am I freely choosing to make the idiots starve to death unless they figure out how to repair the pollution that they themselves caused and allow plants to grow on their world again?
Now, I'm pretty unpredictable most of the time. But most mortals are much less complicated than I am. And because I am telepathic, and can study everything a mortal has done in the past and what they thought about it when they did it, and because I am vastly smarter than most mortals, I can almost always predict what a given mortal will do if I care enough to try. Does that mean they aren't freely choosing to do it? No, it means that they are the sum of their nature, their experiences and their personality, and it is possible based on a sufficient understanding of that to predict what they will do. If I materialize on the bridge of a Klingon ship, the Klingons will point their weapons at me. It doesn't matter who they are or what they've done in their lives, they're going to do that, because they're Klingons. *Maybe*, if they know who I am, they might refrain... but probably not. Does that mean they don't have free choice? Certainly not; they could freely choose not to point a weapon at me, but they *won't*, because they're Klingons and that's what they do.
So yes, you have free will, and the fact that I already know what you're going to do before you do it just means I'm smarter than you, not that you didn't freely choose to do it.
muse_academy, today.1. What is the meaning of life?
There *is* no meaning to life. Life simply exists. As well ask "what is the meaning of stars?" or "what is the meaning of carbon dioxide?"
The meaning your *own* life may have will vary depending on your circumstances and your feelings on the matter, but there is no overarching "meaning" to life.
2. What is?
The set of that which is not null.
3. Why is there something rather than nothing?
Because.
Seriously, this is a question? The multiverse exists, therefore there is something. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be around to complain about it. There is something rather than nothing because for this question to exist there has to be.
4. What is truth?
There's an objective reality that is not affected by the influence of sentient beings... and then there's everything that *is* influenced by sentient beings. As soon as consciousness enters the picture, objective truth becomes impossible. I mean, yes, I can objectively say that stars conduct fusion, but I cannot objectively say that you are a pathetic, primitive specimen of an underevolved species, because to make such value judgements requires the influence of sentience. As soon as sentience is involved, everyone has an opinion. Your opinion is that I am an over-powered sarcastic asshole, my opinion is that you are hardly even worth helping to evolve to the next stage of your existence. The thing is, though, that objectively, I'm a lot more powerful than you, so objectively, my opinion matters *much* more than yours does.
Thus, truth is whatever the sufficiently powerful say it is. If you want your truth to be accepted as *the* truth, you need to be louder than other people with their truths.
5. Why is the world the way it is?
That is a very complex question that I doubt you have the intellect to grasp, but I will *attempt* to simplify it for you.
The purpose of life is to live, and life generally lives at the expense of other life. So selfishness and greed are traits that promote living, and power gravitates. To him that hath much, much shall be given; the meek don't inherit any more of the earth than the six-foot-deep hole in it they get planted in, usually much earlier than the strong. There's no fairness; predators single out the weak to take what they need from, and the universe kicks you when you're down.
However, intelligence requires cooperation, and it requires love. This is because unless a being is immortal, intelligence is useless to it if it is solitary. There isn't enough time in a mortal lifespan to learn everything; you need to learn it from those who learned it before you. And the only intelligent species whose young know everything they need to know when they're born are manufactured -- androids, the Jem'Hadar, for that matter my own kind before we started reproducing the long way. Intelligence is for learning new things and making new connections; if you're born knowing everything you have no need to be smart. So species that are intelligent and not immortal *must* create helpless, ignorant young and teach them... and because the way of the universe is for the strong to feed on the weak, a powerful force must work to make sure the adults a. don't eat the kids and b. teach them and guide them. That force is love. And beings who can generalize their love outward from their children to embrace others of their species develop better abilities to cooperate, which leads to them learning more and faster, which leads to greater success as an intelligent species.
I realize that those who know me are waiting for the punch line, now that I've said love is as powerful a force in the development of sentience as selfishness. Sorry. There's no punch line. It's true. Love is a terrible weakness, a destructive force that leads you to avoid doing the thing that protects and preserves your *own* life so that you can protect and preserve someone *else's*. Love drags you down and makes you weak. Love also allows you to work cooperatively in groups to accomplish things that with your mayfly lifespans and your nigh-impotent, puny bodies, you would never be able to accomplish alone. It's both. When sentient beings become too selfish, their ability to cooperate falls apart and separately, they are far far weaker than they were together. When they become too loving... the predators come and exploit that love, feed on it for their own needs.
And that is why the world is the way it is. All sentient beings must find a balance between love and selfishness, as a society, or their society will be destroyed.
6. Where do we come from?
Who's "we"? I know where *I* come from. For that matter I know where you come from too, because I'm as close to omniscient as you're ever going to meet. But somehow I don't think "the random collision of acids in a primordial soup of chemicals" is the answer you're looking for here.
7. Who are we?
Again, who's "we"? There really aren't too many categories that encompass both me and other sentient beings.
8. Where are we going to?
Okay, that one I can answer. You are going to change. As am I. As is everything. Eventually the universe will wind down like a clockwork mouse, the energies of the big bang finally petering out, but before that happens life will defy entropy by becoming more complex, more ordered, containing more energy and channelling it more efficiently... but entropy has a trick up its sleeve. Complete order is as much death as complete chaos. When you ossify, when you harden and resist change, you're dead. Life is change and transformation, an endless battle against both order and chaos, a dynamic balance that constantly must swing from one side to the other because perfect equilibrium is still another word for stasis and stasis is death.
You will change. The only question is, change into what? And that depends entirely on what you are and what you choose to learn and do during the time that you exist. If you're lucky -- and you work at it -- you evolve higher intelligence, greater power, less vulnerability, longer lifespans -- but then what do you do with *that?* That is a question I'm still working on.
9. What is the purpose of it all?
The purpose of life is to live. That's all there is. And since most organisms don't live forever, the way life accomplishes living is to create more life to keep living after it is dead.
The purpose of *consciousness*, and intelligence, and the things that those with consciousness and intelligence create... that's a different story. There is no purpose to consciousness or intelligence aside from the fact that they are emergent properties of sufficiently complex organisms that permit said organisms to live longer under many circumstances... but the purpose that consciousness can *make* for itself is as valid as that one is. Since there are more consciousnesses in the multiverse than anyone can easily count, even me, there are an innumerately huge number of purposes for consciousness.
10. Is there a God?
With a capital letter? Implying a conscious creator of all reality?
No. Sorry to disappoint you. Reality occured randomly.
There are *gods*, small g -- beings so much more powerful than other beings that the other beings, superstitious weaklings that they are, decide to worship them. I should know, I am one. But I didn't create the universe, and neither did anyone else, and even if someone *did*, so what? Why would that make them the boss of me, or of you for that matter? If I'm smart enough to know that desiring the slavish obedience and adulation of lesser life forms is the act of a pathetic loser who can't get an entity at his own level to pay him enough attention, why would the supposed creator of all reality be dumber than I am? I already don't listen to the beings that created me and I *know* they exist, so why would I feel a compulsion to listen to or obey the creator of all reality?
If there is some entity responsible for creating reality... and I have had experiences that made me think that maybe, just possibly, there might be something to that, and maybe my belief that the universe exists out of random chaos might not be all there is to it... even *if* that turned out to be true, such a being would have absolutely no interest whatsoever in what version of a holy book mortal species follow in their worship rites, or whether said mortal entities consume certain types of meat, and *especially* they wouldn't care who you mortals have sex with. How parochial can you get? Such a being would not be your daddy, personally interested in your welfare and in smiting those who talk back to Him. It would be as far removed from anything your primitive minds could understand as the universe itself in all its complexity is. So for all intents and purposes there may as well be no God, not as you understand it, even if there is a sentience that created reality. Anything that is vastly more powerful than you, has a personal interest in your existence, performs miracles at your behest (or doesn't, but shows up to say no at least), and wants you to love or adore or praise it, is a being like me, except with a lot less self-esteem than I have.
11. What is good and what is evil?
Labels. And about as meaningful as the one on your soup can that says "New! Improved Flavor!"
There is behavior that conforms to your moral principles, whatever they may be, and behavior that doesn't. There is behavior you like, and behavior you don't like. There is behavior that hurts you and behavior that helps you. There is behavior that conforms to *a* principle, and behavior that simply does whatever feels good at the time. But there is no such thing as "good" or "evil."
I do have moral principles I believe in, but I don't make the mistake of believing they are universal, or universally honored. I don't need to; I'm powerful enough to enforce my own morality on others if I felt like it, so I don't require the luxury of believing that I'm objectively correct. Recall that power makes truth, after all. Although, since I believe that stupidity is a cardinal sin, it would be exhausting work to try to enforce my morality on others, as stupidity is about as common as hydrogen in the universe.
12. Do we have a "free will"?
That depends on how you define free will.
Say your friend really, really loves dogs. So you find this cute little stray puppy and the alternatives are, give it to the pound or give it to your friend. Is your friend going to say "no"? Almost certainly not. *Could* your friend say "no"? Absolutely. *Will* she? No, because she loves dogs, so it would be uncharacteristic of her to refuse to take in a dog in need. Does that mean she doesn't have free will when it comes to dogs?
No one is capable of committing *all* possible acts. That's where the entire concept of characteristic or uncharacteristic behavior comes in. If you tell your dad "I got an A!" and he takes out a gun and shoots you, you're not going to assume that his free will led him to choose to do that (well, unless you have a very weird relationship with your dad); you are probably going to assume that something is influencing him, taking *away* his free will. Maybe he's insane or on drugs. If your species is telepathically sensitive and aware of it, you might think he's being mind controlled. Maybe he's not really your dad. But the idea that he'd shoot you for getting a good grade on a test is so ridiculously uncharacteristic (for most people's fathers, anyway) that you don't for a moment assume free will is in action here. Therefore you already understand that free will is constrained by your nature. Your personality, if you will. I *can* repair the atmosphere of Kadmos IV and make luffy bread fall from the sky to feed the starving inhabitants, but anyone who knows me knows that this is an awfully unlikely choice for me to make. Do I lack the free will to do so, or am I freely choosing to make the idiots starve to death unless they figure out how to repair the pollution that they themselves caused and allow plants to grow on their world again?
Now, I'm pretty unpredictable most of the time. But most mortals are much less complicated than I am. And because I am telepathic, and can study everything a mortal has done in the past and what they thought about it when they did it, and because I am vastly smarter than most mortals, I can almost always predict what a given mortal will do if I care enough to try. Does that mean they aren't freely choosing to do it? No, it means that they are the sum of their nature, their experiences and their personality, and it is possible based on a sufficient understanding of that to predict what they will do. If I materialize on the bridge of a Klingon ship, the Klingons will point their weapons at me. It doesn't matter who they are or what they've done in their lives, they're going to do that, because they're Klingons. *Maybe*, if they know who I am, they might refrain... but probably not. Does that mean they don't have free choice? Certainly not; they could freely choose not to point a weapon at me, but they *won't*, because they're Klingons and that's what they do.
So yes, you have free will, and the fact that I already know what you're going to do before you do it just means I'm smarter than you, not that you didn't freely choose to do it.