May 1, 2021, 12:39 AM
So, I think starting with an axiom of "minimize suffering" as a good place to start building a new value system. I think there is a danger in this axiom that can lead you down a slippery slope to antinatalism though. I think the danger is in only seeing the universe through the lens of suffering - it's reductive and inaccurate since that isn't all that exists. Love, beauty, connection, cooperation, pleasure, joy, all these things are possible in the universe as well. A slightly more robust maxim might be to try to maximize the good (and minimize the bad) [utilitarianism] without violating the rights of the innocent by too much in the process [deontology].
I am obsessed with studying philosophy to try to improve my understanding of a superior value system. I started with listening to Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris and have slowly built a synthesis from their perspectives and then went further into neuroscience, philosophy, and evolutionary impacts on morality.
Here is a list of some important concepts that were pivotal for me to learn how to completely move past Mormonism into Atheism - 1. Euthyphro's Dilemma - goodness is not by divine command but is a phenomenon separate from God, and therefore we can judge potential gods against a preexisting standard of goodness.
2. Objective truth vs subjective truth; the fact-values dichotomy; Hume's guillotine; it's - a fallacy to say that there are "commandments"/ "shoulds"/"oughts" without having a subjective ought as the foundational axiomatic principle. Even if God commands you to do something, it isn't an objective truth that you should do it, obedience is based on a subjective axiom that you should obey God, etc. But if God is evil, then perhaps you shouldn't obey him? Depends on the subjective analysis of God.
3. Moral Game Theory - Human universals represent optimal game theory strategies for playing the evolutionary game. Ubiquitous religious principles are not evidence of a divine moral truth, but rather an objective game theory truths that certain behaviors like "don't murder" make your society fare better evolutionarily.
4. Virtue Ethics - Aristotle's virtue ethics are helpful to see if you are possessed by any extreme principles. Virtue is found in the middle between two vices on the two extremes. This tripolar paradigm is helpful for people leaving the religiously bipolar moral territory of good/evil dichotomy because it gives them a more robust perspective and increase empathy for two different sides of an issue.
5. Moralistic Synthesism - Per my rudimentary nascent analysis, it seems like deontological ethics are used by people possessed by the extreme absolutist perspectives of their ideology or religion. Utilitarianism seems like the place to go after leaving an extreme perspective. But then I think deontology has it's purposes and needs to be synthesized back into utilitarianism.
6. Epistemology - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence; finding the truth by dialectic synthesis that involves actively fighting your biases.
7. Epistemic Humility - Descartes "I think therefore I am" exercise gave us an example of solipsistic epistemic humility and extreme skepticism. Remember that skepticism can poke holes in anything. You should be humble enough to remember that you could be wrong in the way you have gathered your knowledge. In a sense, knowledge is never perfect because we are epistemically finite creatures. Our best chance at knowledge is to combine deduction, induction and abduction into a useful harmony and go with the system of explanations that seems to have the highest probability.
8. Neurological Explanations - The brain is most likely 100 times more amazing than you give it credit for. That which you might assume was revelation from God is probably just a brain spasm. The experience with Satan - also a brain spasm. Good/bad luck is not evidence of the supernatural. There is a lot of bias in how we look at the world. Remember that for every instance of good luck that seemed like a spiritual experience, there are many instances of failure to get spiritual experiences. If the success rate of the spiritual is the same as coincidence, then you don't have evidence of anything other than a coincidence.
9. Free Will - are most likely false because the word "free" implies there is a spirit in your brain pulling levers that violate physics. If free will doesn't exist, then spirits don't exist and moral accountability principles like repentance and damnation are false. If you think you have free will, explain to the neuroscientist which part of the brain is operating freely as opposed to following the clockwork of physics. The freedom of movement of the electron in quantum physics is most likely not good enough to justify free will because the scope of freedom of an electron is confined to the volume of the atom. Brain clockwork doesn't operate at the level of the atom but at the level of the synapses. You need to find evidence that synapses have freedom, not electrons. Your value system can change in both better or worse ways with this new "no free will" perspective so finding a "no free will" group might be helpful to navigate this perspective.
10. Use Environment Strategically - We are a collective species that is highly influenced by environment. Therefore, your moral system should geared towards promoting the best environment possible so that a feedback loop is created between the people and the environment such that they are making each other better in an upward spiral. Promote better epistemology and bias checking in your information channels. Make a list of healthy principles to meditate on. Surround yourself with a healthy environment - inspiring art and movies, uplifting friends and family. Reinforce positive thought patterns in the brain that produce good results in the world.
11. Philosophy over Ideology - Ideologies and religions are weak because they are all about identifying villains with different reductively inaccurate definitions of evil. Transcending ideology for philosophy is how you create a better definition of evil that combines ideologies. Ideologies have no nuance; philosophy is obsessed with nuance, digging deeper, understanding and weighing every side of an issue.
12. The Law of Non-Contradiction - The hard problem of consciousness and the cosmological problem are still two significant issues for humanity to resolve. There might be some type of deity or a spirit at the end of scientific investigation. But that possibility does not justify believing in a self-contradictory God that violates his own principles all the time with immoral behavior that theists always ignore or brush aside with their biases. The law of non-contradiction makes clear that it is impossible for something to exist that is self-contradictory in an ontological way. If God loves the innocent and also hatefully murders the innocent, he is a self-contradiction and hence doesn't exist.