Dec 10 2023

My Belief System

A friend and I recently exchanged one-page descriptions of our respective belief systems. Here’s mine:

What is my worldview, my guiding principles for making life decisions?

A proper worldview includes elements of testing and continuing refinement since both individuals and the world are constantly changing, so is not static, but represents continual seeking to avoid dogmatism. The assumed goal of a worldview is to optimize personal and societal flourishing.

Three broad streams from which one can draw perspectives to inform a worldview are: personal experience, other human experiences across both time and space, and rational thought and related systems such as science. Although we commonly hold views in all these areas with great certainty, they are all in fact filled with fundamental unknowns. Thus, the challenge is to have a rational worldview despite the uncertainties.

My approach is to seek shared threads in these streams, to identify threads that exist across human experience and wisdom, that resonate with personal experience, and that also cohere with our best understanding of the world. My belief is that, while this can help eliminate irrational worldviews, there is too much uncertainty to define a single correct one.

One thing that exists across these is the universality of moral value systems, the recognition that there is good and evil, even though there is little agreement of what goes into each. This includes recognition of the fundamentally selfish basis of all life, the sense of this creation being broken in some sense, and the awareness that there are better possibilities. While it does seem that human society is advancing beyond this selfish bias, there is an inevitable tension with this intrinsic nature, making the only foreseeable solution a sort of mechanized, rule-driven society.

We recognize that a better way exists (love) that inverts the natural self-focused nature into one that is fundamentally self-less, in which we are agents of self-giving rather than self-getting. Imagine an existence in which everyone has this nature, perhaps all creation has shifted to this perspective. A simple model like this makes the end goal clear but is clearly not attainable without a transformation of humanity, possibly all creation.

Another thing that is consistently part of human experience through all cultures is a belief in some reality beyond the material. This often includes the existence of a transcendent agent that can interact with our physical reality, having created it, and interacts with humans who were created and reflect that transcendent nature. An implication of this is the idea of a cosmic purpose or direction, which typically shows up in the form of epic journey narratives, art and the awareness of beauty, the ideals of technological advance, and so on.

This implication links the two observations of morality and transcendence in that, while the first (recognition of brokenness) reveals the futility of achieving an ideal state in this world, the existence of something more than this world provides hope of a solution. The existence of an initial creator that is still involved in the ongoing improvement of the human condition provides hope of a re-creation into a final, unbroken state. Hope in a worldview is the best we can do because of the limits of knowledge.

This hope of a solution is best presented in the Christian narrative, in which the creator has described love as the ultimate reality but has given us the option of whether or not to recognize and accept it. The incarnation demonstrated the extended reality and has started the process of bringing this reality through changed hearts, which we see working out through human history, and the resurrection demonstrated the reality of re-creation. Our own transformation and re-creation, to participate in this hope, happens with God’s involvement. We are not alone.

Nov 12 2023

Secular Bias

Religious people are commonly thought to be biased towards believing things that cannot be proven, that must be taken on faith. Often, the idea of faith is taken to mean that there is no evidence at all. When this perspective involves science, the result is sometimes pseudo science – things that sound scientific but are actually implausible or even incorrect.

There is often also an implicit assumption that non-religious people do not have such biases, and that secular reasoning is more rational. However, it’s clear that isn’t always the case, since all people are subject to various biases and some examples from history illustrate this particular case.

It turns out that throughout history, new ideas have been put forth that stretch existing perspectives in ways that sometimes look like religion. It seems like this is more common when the discoveries are at the edge of known science. That makes sense, because ideas that truly extend our understanding are likely to look unusual. So if that unusual characteristic looks supernatural in some way, then it is easily dismissed out of hand by secular thinking.

For example, floods swept across the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age. These are called the Missoula Floods. When they were first proposed, they went against the prevailing perspective that geologic processes were generally uniform over time, not catastrophic. In addition, the catastrophic nature of the proposed floods seemed similar to the Biblical flood narrative, and this association made acceptance of the proposal even harder for some people.

Similarly, when astronomical observations began to indicate that the universe was expanding and scientists realized this implied that it had a beginning, the Big Bang model was developed. However, many did not like that proposal, and instead promoted a steady state expansion. One of the difficulties that some people had with accepting the Big Bang model was that it was too close to the idea of a Biblical creation. In addition, the concept of a beginning to space and time raised the uncomfortable (and almost metaphysical) question about what might exist outside of our spacetime reality.

Even Einstein, when struggling with some of the strange ideas related to quantum physics, referred to them as “spooky action at a distance”, as if even the appearance of something supernatural was reason to suspect it.

In all these cases, the new ideas turned out to be right, but the bias of secular thinking caused some scientists to reject them.

A new area where similarly biased thinking may be happening is with research into the nature of consciousness. This is definitely a topic that is at the edge of known science, so it is very possible that new ideas may be needed. However, because consciousness seems to be immaterial, some of the emerging ideas seem to involve metaphysics even though they have nothing to do with religion or anything supernatural.

For example, some researchers use the term “soul” as a shorthand way of representing this seemingly immaterial aspect of consciousness, even when they are not talking about anything supernatural.

The danger, of course, is that some researchers will dismiss such ideas because of a potential link to religion, just like in the previous examples. However, while those examples took time to have significant societal impact, the need for us to understand consciousness may be coming faster with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The development of AI is beginning to raise a number of questions that would benefit from, maybe even require, a better understanding of consciousness. At some point, we will want to assess whether the things we are creating are conscious, how they relate to humans, whether they should be treated as people, and even how they might affect us as conscious beings ourselves.

Robust understanding of these things could guide the development and deployment of AI, but since we don’t currently have such understanding, AI is progressing in an unguided manner. Whether this turns out to be a problem remains to be seen, but in the race between developing and understanding AI, especially given the serious implications, it seems prudent to leave open all avenues of investigation without slowing things down due to unfounded biases.

Oct 5 2023

Eternal Hopes

In an earlier post, we looked at what it might be like to express our beliefs as hopes, at least those beliefs about which we cannot be certain.

We don’t have a complete understanding of reality since science is still incomplete, and yet we need to make choices about such things to guide our lives. We often treat these as firmly held beliefs based on rational thinking, but the reality is that we’re believing in things that we can’t know are true, yet we still expect with confidence to be the case. In other words, we hope these things are true.

We’ve looked at several examples of common beliefs to see what it looks like to express them as hopes, by comparing statements that could reasonably be made by atheists and Christians. These examples were the meaning of life and the hard problem of consciousness. In both cases, it seemed that expressing one’s beliefs about those topics as hope recognized the uncertainty that still exists. It also revealed a possible benefit in that such language may help defuse the often confrontational nature of conversations in these spaces.

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Sep 30 2023

To Be Open-Minded About Consciousness

One of the basic ideas of this blog is that our understanding of reality is still incomplete, so that even though we need to live according to some beliefs, it’s probably best to realize that they can be described as hopes instead of settled facts.

An example of this sort of limited knowledge is the challenge of understanding consciousness, and in particular, how it relates to material reality. In other words, is consciousness strictly a result of physical, material processes, or does it result from something outside of these?

Many believe that the material is all there is, that the brain (generally neuroscience) is sufficient for explaining everything we observe about the mind, including the nature of consciousness and self-awareness.

Others believe that there probably is something more than just physical substance involved, that even if the brain is necessary for everything we observe about the mind, the material brain is still not sufficient to explain everything.

Such views involve assertions about the relationship between the physical and immaterial aspects of reality, and perhaps whether immaterial things even exist. Of course, this is not the only place such questions have come up.

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Aug 25 2023

Hope in Mind

In the previous post, we looked at what it might be like to express our beliefs as hopes, at least those beliefs about which we cannot be certain.

We don’t have a complete understanding about the nature of reality – the meaning of life, the possibility of afterlife, the nature of human consciousness, and so on. As it stands right now, our best scientific, rational understanding of these topics is incomplete. Despite this uncertainty, we all make choices about these things in how we let them guide our lives, and we often treat these as firmly held beliefs.

The result is that we’re believing in things that we can’t know are true, but we still expect with confidence to be the case. In other words, we hope these things are true.

In the previous post, we looked at an example to see how this works. That example was about the meaning of life. For another example, consider the “hard problem” of consciousness. It is considered a hard problem because we still know so little about it and it is so different from all other physical things that the path to better understanding is not at all clear.

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Aug 3 2023

Hope

Earlier posts describe one of the key ideas on this blog, that we don’t know enough to be certain of metaphysical truths. That means we have to make a choice about what to believe, and that choice is going to have some level of uncertainty.

Another way of describing this uncertainty is to say that our beliefs about metaphysical truths are really hopes – they represent what we hope is true, such that we act in agreement with that hope.

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Jul 14 2023

Picturing the Unique Nature of Consciousness

In the previous essay, I discussed the possibility that the brain is necessary to consciousness but that it is not sufficient. In other words, that there seems to be something needed beyond our current understanding of the physical. History, however, shows that science has often been challenged with such paradigm shifts.

Sometimes metaphors can help us see beyond such biases and preconceptions, so in this essay we’ll consider a picture that may illustrate why consciousness is so unique, and why it’s too early to start limiting options for explaining it.

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Jun 23 2023

Sufficient Reality

The nature of consciousness is generally considered to be a big mystery. Is it the result of only physical, material processes, or is there something immaterial involved? Many experiments show a strong relationship between material and mental processes and a common viewpoint is that these correlations indicate that the material processes cause the mental processes. In other words, there is an implicit assumption that material processes are sufficient for generating the mind, that nothing else is needed beyond the material.

Of course, it’s well known that correlations do not mean causation – just because two items seem highly related, that does not mean that one must be causing the other. One reason for this is that the same thing can occur when one item is necessary for the system to function, even if it is not sufficient.

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Jun 5 2023

Human Identity and the Uncertainties of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently a hot topic that’s being talked about in many media outlets as it continues to roll out. It still remains to be seen whether this activity will begin to cool off, as often happens with new technologies, or truly start to transform society.

Even a brief look at the ways that AI is being used makes it clear that there are enormous possibilities for both good and evil. This is certainly true in the short term, because people will find both good and evil things to do with it like we do with virtually all new tools.

There are even greater uncertainties in the long term, however, when we will start to deal with things like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which may be able to solve problems that humans cannot, and machine agency and consciousness, which will raise the possibility of AIs acting on their own in ways that may not be good for humanity.

A common theme across all these possibilities is the great uncertainty about what will happen. One of the sources of this uncertainty is the level of mystery in our understanding of how both machine and human intelligence works. It’s common to hear how current AI developers are surprised at the things that their creations are able to do. This uncertainty is mirrored by the amount that we still don’t understand about the human mind, which is often the primary model for designing these systems.

Consciousness, for example, still remains a great mystery even though all humans experience it. Despite this universal experience, and many different investigations, it still isn’t clear whether consciousness can be fully explained with strict materialism. This has resulted in a growing number of researchers proposing additions beyond the current materialist models that enable consciousness. They do this in ways that avoid having to resort to the supernatural, yet still point to something beyond the physical.

In other words, there seems to be a persistent metaphysical aspect to consciousness that has not yet been explained. Our lack of understanding of consciousness extends to its most fundamental nature, illustrating our lack of understanding of the nature of reality itself.

While such immaterial viewpoints are actively rejected by many researchers, it’s also well-known that there is a deep human need for the metaphysical, for transcendence. So while there is still this uncertainty regarding the mind, we need a story that allows us to remain human in this way, that allows us to accept the personal experience of self as something real and not just a tricky behavior of matter.

We need to keep open the possibility of a fundamental difference between humans and machines.

Apr 20 2023

Complex Motives

Discussions of the weakness of religion sometimes end up attempting to address God’s motives with questions that start with an observation about God’s character, then question that observation based on what is seen in the world.

These challenges often take the form of: “Why would a loving God allow…?” or something similar.

The idea being that the characteristic in question, in this case a loving nature, is incompatible with what we see in the world around us.

One of the common responses to this from Christians is essentially that God’s ways are unfathomable to us, so we should not expect to understand why some things happen. However, this approach is often rejected, being seen as something of a copout – avoiding the question altogether rather than addressing it.

However, note how reasonable this answer seems when talking about human behavior. It’s well known that we need to be careful when trying to understand someone else’s motives because there are so many factors we don’t know.

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