Category: Philosophy

When we look at the microcosm of a structure or system, we focus on the particulars rather than the whole picture itself. When we become focused on the particulars, we look at the details, the minute components that make up the whole.

But we might end up so fixated on the details that we forget about the big picture. For a writer, it’s kind of like focusing on editing one chapter of a story, then a paragraph of that chapter (maybe even a sentence), and then ignoring the rest of the chapter.

Or it’s like a scientist that studies a plant, and then the leaves of that plant, and the cells of that plant, and the organelles of the cell, and the molecules that compose the organelles, and then they get so lost in studying the molecules that they forget why they were studying the plant in the first place.

To study the microcosm of anything can give us insight and knowledge of the components and mechanisms which function and operate within a structure or system. But how far do we go in our study? At what point do we stop analyzing each minuscule detail to the point that we lose sight of our goal, which is to understand the big picture, rather than the countless tangents and the endless number of microcosms it can lead us down?

What does it mean to be humble? To be humble is to acknowledge the fact that we are human. As humans, we make mistakes, learn, fall and get up like everyone else.

We can assign value to the money we make, our intellect, our status, our rank in a field or sport, but these gloss over the existential aspects of humanity. It is our humanity which makes us common–equal in the metaphysical sense (having faculties, sense perception, consciousness, free will, etc.).

When we look at the world from a quantitive lens, it can be hard to be humble. Everyone has a different net worth. Everyone has different skills, different achievements, and different areas of expertise. As a result, a small percentage will be at the very top. If we create a graph from it, we will get a bell curve with many people normally distributed in the middle. When we judge each individual this way, it’s as if we become focused on where they rank.

But rank can change overtime. And rank doesn’t give a wholistic picture of the complexity of each individual. Rather, it gives us a picture of the data, but not the personalities behind them–the life behind them.

And that’s where humility comes in. To be humble, we recognize that there is a story behind each person in the graph. There is a struggle, a challenge to overcome, obstacles, setbacks, failures, victories, etc.

As such, just because someone might be successful in one area, it doesn’t mean they are in others. They might excel at their job and have various accomplishments and awards under their belt, but what about the other areas in their life? What about their shortcomings, or the multitude of things they have little to no knowledge in, little to no achievements in?

Thus, to be humble is to acknowledge this truth that is common to all of us. To quote Socrates, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

We go through phases where we question our beliefs. As we change them, we become new persons. Our former selves fade into the past, and our new selves are born.

Why do we go through such phases? To exist means to be in a state of becoming, right? In existentialist philosophy, you are never the same as you were yesterday, since each choice redefines you, gives you new purpose, a new meaning.

And where does this choice come from? From our thoughts. And our thoughts form our beliefs. And our beliefs change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And the beliefs rest on premises we hold to be true about reality and existence itself.

As we change our beliefs, it is for the purpose of maturity, of personal growth–self improvement. We discard the worn out and outdated modes of thought–principles that fail to explain the world around us, or are unsuccessful in improving our lives.

Each day, we go through a transformation. Our experiences shape what we know, but in our reasoning, we form our beliefs. Each year, we keep some beliefs, discard others, and in the process, we struggle with questions which ones are true and which ones aren’t.

So what are we in the end? Do our beliefs define us, or do they merely help us understand what is happening in the world, as well as determine our choices and guide us to our goals? Perhaps it’s a combination of both. Besides, they are what shape our personality. Aren’t all of us unique?

How many people would say that they hold on to the same beliefs now that they did ten years ago? How about twenty years ago? And if they do, would they claim that their knowledge and understanding of their beliefs hadn’t increased over time? Thus, if knowledge and understanding increases over time, then that means that the meaning of that belief has changed, hasn’t it? Just as it would be true for me to say that the meaning of mathematics has changed with time, since it’s no longer just about passing tests in the classroom, but applicable in my finances and the calculation of interest rates, etc.

Thus, the meaning about something depends on the beliefs we have about it.

Thus, we must ask ourselves what is a belief? It’s a set of ideas about values, or it could be a theory about the way things work (or should work). Are beliefs malleable? Can they be changed in an instant? Perhaps some can and some cannot–just as it’s hard to undo lifelong habits or get rid of assumptions or expectations we’ve grown up with.

Sometimes beliefs change gradually, and sometimes they can change in an instant. It all depends on what we’re going through, what experiences occur. If something extreme and sudden happens that shatters our beliefs, we’re apt to change them immediately. But if the changes are subtle and nuanced, it can take months or years to turn our beliefs around.

For example, we might hold certain beliefs about how to create art, not to mention which discipline(s) of art we want to pursue. But as we go through the motions of creating art in multiple disciplines, we come to discover which ones we enjoy, and which ones we dislike. At the end of a year, we’ll have come to a conclusion of which discipline(s) to keep practicing, and which one(s) to cease practicing.

Also, our skills will be more developed, and our aesthetic style will take shape. Year after year, if we keep up with the discipline(s), everything about our work will have evolved. We’ll have explored and learned more techniques, and our choice in subjects will have varied. And after so many years, it takes on a certain aesthetic that is our own.

Consider the famous painters of the past (Monet, Van Gogh, etc.), and how their art has evolved. Can anyone look at a work of art they made in their twenties and say it’s the same (or equal to in quality) what they created in their later years?

This can apply to anything in life. A career, our habits, our hobbies, the choices we make, etc. Thus, we are never static in our beliefs. Our beliefs are always changing. And if we change, then that means we are always seeking answers.

Do we have free will or do we not? That’s the question.

Is everything determined (or predetermined for that matter?), or is everything random and chaotic?

As humanity’s knowledge of science increases, it would seem that everything can be explained in terms of cause and effect. Yet it can’t.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow or next year. Everything happens for a reason, it’s said, yet each second, each minute, each day is unquantifiable and irreducible despite how hard we try to quantity it to a clear cut formula.

First off, what is free will? It’s the conscious ability to make choices/decisions that are not produced involuntarily. Consciousness allows us to will a certain thought or idea into action (i.e. behavior)–manifesting itself into reality.

It’s not forced, not a reflex or an unconscious mechanical behavior like breathing or digestion, but an action that is deliberate and chosen against a wide array of possibilities such as what to buy, what to read, and what occupation to take up out of thousands, etc.

We understand science in terms of cause and effect–that y will happen if x occurs before it. When using this analogy for, say, machines and computers, the outcome is straightforward, predictable.

But humans are not the same as machines, though comparisons might be made for how the brain works or how the internal organs function. Free will is a lot more complex than that. It has to do with moral and existential questions: why we make certain choices, what is the value a choice, and why we have particular preferences and likes and dislikes across all areas of life.

If everything can be reduced to a simple formula, free will would be an illusion in which our choices are merely effects of unconscious (or mechanical) causes. But if this were the case, why couldn’t we manipulate and modify those causes to produce specific behaviors? But wouldn’t that be a choice? By tinkering with the mechanism that causes our choices, isn’t that resetting the whole system?

If our choices aren’t really choices, that would mean a pre-established system (or systems) determines our choices. But what would happen if that pre-established system were modified or removed? Wouldn’t our choices be random or at the command of someone else or a larger system, who is in turn, making choices for us?

If free will doesn’t exist, then wouldn’t that mean we would all be alike? Every choice and decision we made would be indistinguishable from everyone else’s. All our choices would merely be a set of reflexes and automatic behaviors like the gears and belts of an engine.

But the nuances and processes that go into our conscious decisions cannot be formulated into a rigid set of rules (people do make mistakes, right, because of their imperfections?). It’s based on experience, logic, feelings, intuition, etc., all of which coalesce into our decision-making.

If two siblings grow up in the same environment, in the same household, and go to the same school, etc., will the outcome necessarily be the same for both of them? Will they enjoy the same movies, the same books, the same food, and think exactly alike?

If everything is reducible to cause and effect, then why aren’t the aforementioned siblings exactly alike? Where’s the proof that they have no free will, that their actions are just reflexes of unconscious causes?

Even if we collected all the phenomena available about a specific individual, it wouldn’t be enough to explain every single thought or choice they made. Didn’t that individual make up their own mind about things, whether it be about their lifestyle or career choice? They decided on how they wanted to live, regardless of who told them otherwise, right?

It’s not in the purvey of science to understand individuals as if they are a collection of data on a spreadsheet. Instead, each individual lives a unique experience. Free will is intertwined with being.

Cause and effect is something that is essentially common sense to us, something that is seemingly self-evident. But years ago, I read a book by the philosopher David Hume called An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that challenged this notion.

His argument was that cause and effect was a habit of experience, and therefore, cause and effect weren’t in the actual objects or events themselves. To say one object caused another to move, for example, was just a pattern of experience we’ve become accustomed to. There’s nothing to say that it will always happen. So if that is the case, wouldn’t that mean the objects outside of us didn’t have any firm qualities, since they are contingent upon our experience?

That was Hume’s point: objects outside of our experience have a nature that is unknowable.

But we could counter this by arguing that experience is simply a means of knowing the outside world (not an end in itself), just as a microscope is a means of knowing the microbial world, and that cause and effect is inherent in the way the universe operates, since our reason has determined that to be so. Similarly, Newton’s Laws of Motion describe the rules that govern, or are inherent, in the way objects move and react to each other in the universe. Thus, experience isn’t everything. We need our reason to figure things out too.

Even though our experience gives us access to the world, we make sense of it by the principles and laws that govern it. These principles allow us to understand the world and to make predictions and calculations about it (i.e. how long it takes to get from point A to point B, how much weight a bridge can hold, etc.). If we denied the validity of reason, we couldn’t operate or function in the world, since we wouldn’t know truths that exist and can be applied universally.

We use reason and experience to know and understand facts about the world. Logic is applied to solve abstract and philosophical problems, and we use our senses (i.e. experience) to solve day to day problems or situations that are familiar to us. But intuition falls into neither category.

First off, what is intuition? Intuition is not a means of cognition, but a means by which to navigate situations and to assess their value (or importance) that is beyond experience or reason. It’s our gut-feeling about things–a sixth sense, so to speak.

We might have a bad feeling about a situation–sense that something isn’t right without knowing exactly why. On the other hand, we might have a good feeling about a situation without knowing why either. In games or puzzles, we might make a decision despite not knowing if it leads to a win or a loss. In all these cases, it is our intuition speaking to us.

Essentially, intuition is a means of navigating the gray areas of life when there are no clear cut answers. With all the uncertainty we face in everyday life, we make approximations rather than precise calculations. In many situations, we’re under time pressure, and we have to make split second decisions, relying on our intuition.

Common sense reality is the reality that’s outside of us–in the physical world of atoms and particles and gravity and energy. In connection to this reality, our thoughts manifest themselves through behaviors, and those behaviors are part of the physical world.

But what about the reality of the mind? Although it exists in a non-sensory world, they still have a connection to the physical world. How you may ask?

Our thoughts can produce moods and feelings, which in turn effect how we act and behave (as well as direct our speech). But more than that, they form a reality that’s as real to us as the common sense world, yet we’re the only observers of it.

Imagine all the ideas you might come up with when planning a project. Whether that project be a book or a song or a startup, those ideas become part of your awareness–a bubble of intangible things that exist on their own.

Or think about all the ways you can formulate an idea into a sentence. Those formulations takes shape in your mind as entities of thought–of something you can reorganize and tinker with and shift around.

Consider all of the emotions you might have after something upsetting happens. They conjure up thoughts that may never manifest themselves in physical reality (i.e. such as quitting something or scolding someone). These thoughts stay with us, impact our personal reality.

We internalize these thoughts, and they seep into our mood and outlook. Even if they’re non-sensory, they’ve impacted our consciousness as well as our subconsciousness. And this reality is just as real to us as the physical world.