The Thrill of the Unknown

How quickly we get bored with what we understand.  The unknown and the confusing is what truly attracts us and keeps us engaged.

Think about when you first started a new activity such as a job or your first day of college.  Fast forward three months later.  That same job or class is completely different in terms of how you think about the people, the space, and how you interpret every experience.  The original nervousness, excitement, and enthusiasm are gone – everything has become routine and digested.

                When we first meet somebody that we’re attracted to, much of the excitement is contained in the fact that we don’t know who they are and what they will do.  Anything seems possible.  Once we get to know them, we will never feel the same way because we now understand how they operate.

                This is the difficulty in finding a job or relationship that works.  A creative job, such as being an artist, is always inconsistent and wildly unpredictable.  But the possibility of creating something new and interesting makes it worthwhile.  Routine jobs bring the benefit of predictability and clear cut goals, but it’s hard to stay continually interested in anything where you can predict what will happen in advance.  Same with relationships.  The predictable relationship is satisfying in its dependability but rarely emotionally riveting.

                Why do we like the unknown?  Because, as stated before, anything is possible.  When anything is possible, there is always the hope of a transcendent experience.  Routine behavior rarely brings up such feelings.  When I think back on my most memorable experiences, they were almost always unforeseen.  Plans and routines create massive limitations, but they also create stability.

                The concept of balance seems to be a recurring theme on this blog.  How do you create a life framework that is generally reliable but leaves ample room for unknown, transcendent experiences?

Skins

                If you’re lucky, you have never seen the television show Skins, MTV’s attempt at a show about “teen life.”  The show claims to be an accurate prediction of what teen life is really like, yet the show manages to contain zero events or characters that bare any resemblance to reality. 

                The problem with shows such as Skins is that anybody can understand what social role each person plays within ten seconds of watching.  Instead of having multifaceted characters with complex motivations, each person is defined by a singular motivation i.e. a girl they can’t have, a desire to fit in, an attempt to be a sports star, etc.  Not only is this style of writing disingenuous, it’s terribly uninteresting. 

                Teen shows and movies make it seem as if life is defined by singular, seminal moments such as prom, a first date, a championship sporting event, etc.  But this is generally false.  Seinfeld realized that life is defined by the ordinary events that make up our everyday lives.  Portraying the subtleties of a dinner party or having coffee with a friend is far more interesting and meaningful than extremely dramatic events.  Until teen shows such as Skins attempt to capture “everydayness,” they will always be cliché and boring.  This is because portraying normal events requires nuanced, well-rounded characters while extreme events tend to create archetypes instead of real humans.  

Do Push Your Luck

                Anyone who gambles understands the concept of hot and cold streaks.  When gambling on games such as blackjack, we often get an intuitive feeling that the cards are going to fall our way.  When this happens, good gamblers take advantage of the opportunity and start doubling or tripling their bets.  Conversely, we often get the opposite feeling that the table has gone “cold” and start betting less or leave the table completely.

                Life works in a similar fashion.  When things start going our way, we need to seize the opportunity and start being bold and aggressive in all aspects of our lives.  Good things tend to come in groups – a “hot streak” can permeate every phase of our existence.  When things start going poorly, we need to stop, quit being bold and aggressive, and re-analyze the various courses of action in our lives.  Things have gone “cold.” 

                Slow and steady does not win the race of life.  Gamblers who bet the same amount of money regardless of the situation almost never win; they just slowly lose their money little by little.  In life, we must be willing to go out of our comfort zone and try new things when it “feels” right. 

                Interestingly, long-term balance in life is not found in consistently neutral behavior.  Balance is found through the yin and yang of boldness when things are going well and being able to pull back and reanalyze when necessary.  Those who are consistently betting high and trying to ride out every hot streak are doomed to fail.  But those who always play it safe will never actually achieve high goals.  

Aesthetic Relativism?

*I’m indebted to the philosopher David Hume for some of these ideas.

                When we discuss works of art or culinary dishes, we generally accept that people’s preferences are subjective.  I may love a movie that you hate.  Neither of us is objectively right – it is merely our preference.  But we also feel that some works of art are objectively better than others.  It seems that The Shawkshank Redemption is objectively better than any Pauly Shore movie.  This is more than a mere preference.  How do we reconcile these two viewpoints?

                From the perspective of one’s experience, it seems absurd to say a given piece of art is objectively better than another.  Whatever the individual experiences when encountering the art is purely subjective and neither right nor wrong. 

                But it seems that some people are in a better position to judge the actual quality of a piece of art for a variety of reasons.  An expert on 17^th century French painting is in a far better position to judge the quality of a Sebastien Bourdon painting than I am.  The art critic, by virtue of his knowledge, can compare and contrast a piece and understand how it fits into the medium.  A wine critic may have better taste buds and a much wider range of wine experience than the average person.  Therefore, he or she can better judge the objective quality of a wine.  Things such as knowledge, experience, and sensory capacity put certain individuals in a better position to objectively judge the quality of a piece of art. 

                As I listen to more music, watch more movies, and better build up my sensory and critical capacity, the way I experience pieces of art changes.  I am better able to tell the actual quality of something.

                In essence, the critical distinction I am trying to make is between our individual subjective experiences and the ability to objectively analyze the quality of something.  It is idiotic to argue with the way somebody experiences a piece of art.  Experience is subjective and relative – however it felt to the individual is how it felt.  But certain people, as a result of their knowledge and sensory capacity in a given field, such as critics, are often in a better position to determine the actual objective quality of something.  For example, if I have only seen two movies in my life, and I’m partially blind and deaf, it can be objectively said that I am in a worse position to judge the actual quality of a given movie than, say, Roger Ebert.  

Vote or Die

               I didn’t vote in the most recent election.  When I told Puff Daddy, he shot me.

Money, Time, and Tradeoffs

                Every dollar we earn supplies us with an increasing number of options and opportunities.  This is because money can be exchanged for almost anything material or physical.  In essence, an increase in money equals an expansion of freedom and time (all else being equal).  For example, a millionaire can always choose to live like a hobo, while a hobo cannot choose to live like a millionaire. 

                Problematically, earning money almost always involves a massive limitation on our time and freedom.  For most people, a large percentage of their waking life is spent doing a job they don’t enjoy because they need money for a variety of reasons. 

                We want money to maximize our free-time, but we sacrifice our free-time to earn money.

                The real question is: where is the equilibrium point between having enough money to have a multitude of options (by sacrificing your freedom to earn money) and having plenty of time to enjoy life but limited options (because you haven’t earned enough money through work). 

                Many people have not found a logical balance.  They have so blindly pursued money that they have sacrificed nearly all their time (and freedom) in the process.  What is the point of earning money if you don’t have the free-time to properly enjoy the options it supplies? 

                To achieve an optimum balance, one should begin by determining how much money they need to live a basic, modern lifestyle (rent, food, gas, etc.).  After that point, every extra hour of work should be analyzed in terms of whether the money earned is worth the sacrifice of freedom.  While this may seem obvious on a conceptual level, it appears very few apply this logic to their own lives.

                Granted, most jobs do not allow one to determine how many hours they will work – it’s either a large amount of hours or none at all.  But life is always a series of tradeoffs, and massive changes may be needed to put our lives in order.  I think most of us would be happier working less and earning less, but this sort of decision requires us to accept that many people around us will have more “things.”  We will not be able to keep with the Jones’s anymore.  Although this may be terrifying for many of us, ultimately it will be more freeing.  We expect to own all these possessions because we see them all around us, not because we actually need them.  Once we independently determine what we actually need, we will no longer be endlessly working to fulfill a never-ending void.

Peter Van Inwagen’s Refutation of the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts (DAUP)

This post will probably be of little interest to those who don’t care about metaphysical issues in modern analytic philosophy i.e. nearly everyone.  But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about modal logic and essentialism, and I wanted to draw out one of Peter Van Inwagen’s  interesting arguments about objects, parts, and continuity through space and time for those that are interested.

In a famous essay, Peter Van Inwagen argues that the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts (DAUP) is false because it commits one to accepting Mereological Near-Essentialism.  What is DAUP?  The general view of DAUP states that there is an object corresponding to any part of a material object, no matter how one cuts it up.  In other words, this doctrine is stating that any region of space of a material object can be divided up into a part and that the part constitutes a material object. 

For example, any part of the Egyptian pyramids or John Coltrane’s saxophone could be divided into a part, no matter how random or arbitrary, and the part would be a material object in and of itself.  On the face of it, DAUP appears to be obvious and intuitively true.  We can speak of and point out all the different possible parts of an object and consider them as objects in and of themselves. 

It seems clear that a small chunk of the top of an Egyptian pyramid, or any other part of the pyramid for that matter, can be pointed out and considered a material object.  Furthermore, DAUP seems to coincide well with the intuitive view of universalism.  Universalism, in the metaphysical sense in which I am using it, states that trying to draw a distinction between what parts of an object are arbitrary (and not to be considered material objects of their own right) and what parts of an object are not would have no clear justification. 

While it is true that some parts of an object may be more interesting than others and someone’s leg may seem more interesting as a ‘part’ than three square inches of their right thigh, this doesn’t mean that DAUP is false.  If anything, to say that certain parts of the Egyptian pyramids are material objects while other parts are not would seem dubious and unwarranted.  While certain portions of an Egyptian pyramid may seem more logical to consider as a part, this doesn’t preclude seemingly more random parts from being material objects. 

Additionally, our intuitions about what happens when we break a material object appear to be in line with DAUP.  If one randomly breaks a graham cracker into two pieces, it seems unlikely, one would argue, the two separate pieces of graham cracker just came into existence.  The parts of graham cracker existed as material objects before the break took place. 

Because of the intuitive power in favor of DAUP and universalism, arguments against DAUP must be very strong to be given serious consideration.  Since Van Inwagen argues that DAUP is false, even though DAUP has much intuitive plausibility, Van Inwagen’s argument against DAUP can be viewed as an argument and/or a puzzle to be explained.  If DAUP is false, then universalism is also false, and giving up these views would not be easy for most people.

To argue against the truth of DAUP, Van Inwagen states that a commitment to DAUP leads to Mereological Essentialism and since Mereological Essentialism is plainly false (on the face of it), DAUP must also be false.  What is Mereological Essentialism?  In short, the thesis of Mereological Essentialism is the view that an object has all of its parts essentially.  If an object has parts, it always and necessarily has these parts according to Mereological Essentialism.  In Van Inwagen’s argument against DAUP, he claims that his argument shows that DAUP leads to a weaker version of Mereological Essentialism which he calls Mereological Near-Essentialism. 

The difference between Mereological Essentialism and Mereological Near-Essentialism, the view Van Inwagen argues DAUP entails, is that Mereological Essentialism contends that if a part is removed from an object it ceases to exist in all cases.  Mereological Near-Essentialism allows for a part to replace a part that was removed so as to allow the object to continue to exist.  The reason Van Inwagen believes that his reductio ad absurdum will be successful, even though all it does is show that DAUP leads to Mereological Near-Essentialism, is that he believes Mereological Near-Essentialism is clearly false.  Furthermore, Van Inwagen must believe that the clear falsity of Mereological Near-Essentialism is more compelling than the intuitive power in favor of DAUP. 

There are very persuasive reasons to think that the thesis of Mereological Near-Essentialism is in fact false.  For example, if Mereological Near-Essentialism is true, virtually no objects persist through time.  Organisms and objects are constantly losing atoms and parts.  If an object must have all of its parts essentially and cannot survive the loss of even the tiniest or most seemingly irrelevant part, then according to Mereological Near-Essentialism, it no longer exists. 

This clearly goes against our basic intuitions.  If one were to lose an arm in a car accident, no one (or at least most people) would say that one is a new person after losing that appendage.  It doesn’t seem to be the case that an arm is so essential that the loss of it results in a person ceasing to exist.  It appears clear that they still exist, whether with their arm or not. 

On a side note, it is interesting that one of the most compelling arguments in favor of DAUP and universalism is that they are loose, casual doctrines.  DAUP appears intuitively compelling because one feels it would be too strict and arbitrary to declare that some parts of an object are in fact parts while others are not.  But if Van Inwagen is right, and DAUP commits one to Mereological Near-Essentialism, a commitment to DAUP does not leave one with a liberal doctrine but instead forces one into an extremely strict view about objects and their persistence through time.

Van Inwagen is not saying that objects don’t have any parts at all; he is arguing that objects don’t have arbitrary parts.  Van Inwagen, because he gives a reductio ad absurdum to show that DAUP is false, begins by assuming that DAUP is true and also asks us to assume that Mereological Near-Essentialism is false. 

Here’s Van Inwagen’s argument, in short: Imagine there is an object O, with a part P, at time 1, and that the object O could survive the loss of part P.  According to DAUP, there can be an object which is the difference between O and P at time 1.  This object, which is the difference between O and P at time 1, will be referred to as O-minus.  O-minus and O are clearly different objects.  They occupy different regions of space, have different parts, and are numerically diverse. 

Now, at time 2, imagine that O has lost part P, but because Mereological Near-Essentialism is false, O exists and survived the loss of part P.  At time 2, O-minus still exists and its’ qualities are the same as they were at time 1.  But now, at time 2, as a result of O losing part P, O and O-minus are material objects wholly in the same place at the same time, sharing all the same properties, and composed of all the same parts. 

Van Inwagen argues O and O-minus, which were once distinct material objects at time 1, are now the same thing at time 2.  Van Inwagen believes that the idea of two different objects coinciding in the exact same place at the exact same time with all the same properties makes no sense whatsoever.  So DAUP, which allows for any part of an object to be an object itself, leaves us with this seeming contradiction; O and O-minus, which were once distinct objects, are now the same. 

Van Inwagen concludes that O-minus doesn’t exist and not every part of an object can be divided into an object.  Van Inwagen’s argument, which assumes Mereological Near-Essentialism to be false and DAUP to be true, shows that the conjunction of these views leads to a contradiction.  If one accepts Mereological Near-Essentialism, one can argue that when O lost part P it went out of existence so there is no seeming contradiction.  However, as pointed out before, Van Inwagen and many others find this view of Mereological Near-Essentialism untenable.  Therefore DAUP entails Mereological Near-Essentialism, and since Mereological Near-Essentialism is false, DAUP must also be false.

Goals, Confidence, and Personal Evolution

                For most people, the goal of life is to be happy.  Ideally, one would be happy, ethical, and productive.  The trouble is: how does one become happy?  And, is happiness merely a natural disposition, or can one “will” themselves to be happy?

                If one seeks to be happy in the long term, seeking short term pleasures will almost never work.  Prolonged happiness is a state of mind, not an individual experience.

                Happiness is closely tied with confidence.  When one is genuinely confident in themselves, they will generally be happy.  How does one gain confidence?  Confidence comes through goal accomplishment – one needs to set long and short-term goals that are not too hard, but not too easy, and then repeatedly accomplish these goals.  This will create actual confidence.

                Problematically, most of our time is spent pursuing goals, not accomplishing goals.  So we need to not only set and accomplish the right goals, but we need to find goals in which we will enjoy the process of striving for those goals.  Otherwise, we are either in pain striving for goals we don't have or bored because we are not striving for something.

                Therefore, we need to set a number of goals in which we enjoy the process, and then balance the goals against each other to make sure we are spreading ourselves adequately in every area of life (physically, mentally, spiritually, economically, etc.).  This is not easy.  A further wrench in the equation is that as we grow older, accomplish goals, and have more life experiences, the goals we desire change and the relative enjoyment we get from striving for certain goals will evolve.  This is why life will always be complicated and shifting. 

Depressed people tend to look at this situation and see it as a never-ending game that can’t be won.  But this perspective need not be taken.  The dynamic nature of goal setting and personal evolution is what makes life always interesting – and leaves virtually an infinite amount of room for growth and fulfillment.  Our perspectives shape our reality, and thus shape our experience. 

                The next question becomes: can we control our attitudes and perspectives?  And, if so, how?  That question is for another day...  

Epistemological Confusion

                When people debate nearly any philosophical, religious, or political subject, a point often raised is an epistemological one.  The line of reasoning is generally stated as follows: 1. We can never truly know anything with 100% percent certainty.  2. Therefore, nobody can ever say something is true or not. 

                This line of argumentation is generally brought up by somebody who is losing an argument, so they throw out this epistemological “catch-all” to change the direction of the argument.

                The problem with this line of reasoning is it is based on the false notion that if we don’t know something with 100% certainty, we don’t know any truth at all.  This criterion for truth is far too demanding.  Truth is always a probability game. 

    Some things are far more likely than others, and we are always analyzing the truth of something based on the facts we are given.  For example, in all likelihood my parents are my biological parents, but there is always the possibility they are not, even if I was to take a DNA test.   The logical mistake people often make from here is that since something is not certain, it is now equally likely that my parents are (or are not) my biological parents.  This makes no sense; we must always analyze things in terms of relative likelihood.

    This epistemological confusion is constantly used in religious contexts.  People often say things such as “you don’t know for sure Jesus isn’t the son of God” or “you don’t for sure Xenu the Robot isn’t real.”  From this they conclude that all religious beliefs are equally valid.

    It is certainly true that you can never know something with 100% certainty, but religious questions, like all questions, need to be weighed against empirical and rational realities.  I can never be completely positive that Greek mythology isn’t the correct understanding of divinity, but there is virtually no basis for such viewpoints.  Therefore, in all likelihood it is not true.  Similar (and more thorough) analysis can be applied to most religious viewpoints.

                In similar fashion, many have argued that humans cannot grasp truth about objects because the linguistic symbols and conventions humans utilize are not based on adequate awareness of objects.  They claim we merely have awareness of the mental or representative states of objects and not adequate awareness of objects themselves (because of sensory and intellectual limitations).  The path between an individual and an object, which moves from object to perception to concept to linguistic symbol, dilutes our awareness of the object in and of itself and undercuts our ability to find actual truth.

    I grant that humans cannot directly access all possible perceptions and interpretations of an object, but it is not clear why this is a problem or why as a result humans cannot be adequately aware of objects or discover any truth about objects.  This criterion for truth is far too extreme – it claims we either have complete truth and awareness of an object or none at all.  Representative states are imperfect, but they also give humans a way of knowing and understanding all sorts of things about an object.  And although sensory data and representative states can be deceiving at times, and there is a sequential path between objects, perceptions, concepts, and words, this path still gives humans a form of awareness that has proven itself extremely valuable for learning highly probable truth about the world over time. 

Post 1

Like everyone else in the world, I’ve decided to start a blog.  I figured I might as well start recording my thoughts on various topics in some sort of written form.  Even if no one reads it, at least I will have a written record to look back on.

This blog will mainly concern my thoughts on various topics from a macro-perspective.  Namely, philosophy, sports, economics, psychology, etc.  I guess will see how the subject matter evolves over time.

I hope to update this blog at least once a week.  It appears most blogs start off with tons of posts and then quickly trail off.  Hopefully that will not be the case.

Feel free to comment on any topic.  Hopefully some topics will create a consistent discussion thread, especially those of a more philosophical nature.