Philosophy
The love of truth
Philosophy is a very interesting and broad area. It is also a very complicated subject
with many subareas and many points of view. This site is a non complete overview
of the subject and my opinions in short on these issues. The different parts of
Philosophy and my (current) opinions on those:
Metaphysics
Explanation: What is nature and reality? Existence and whether there is a God.
Opinion: I think we live in a random universe. There is no God, at least not a good,
almighty and rational one like in the big religions. You could question where the
randomness comes from and that is a hard question. It could appear at the quantum
level where stochastic calculus is the best description and could be pure randomness.
Otherwise I think randomness is the best way to describe the world even though the
underlying world might be deterministic.
Epistemology
Explanation: What is knowledge? The difference between knowledge, belief and opinion.
Opinion: This is a very hard question but I do think there is an objective reality.
I think we can make conclusions about it from scientific experiments. An important
point is that they are repeatable which indicate an objective reality in my view.
Then we of course produce a very subjective view in our minds. Knowledge can also
stem from logical conclusion, for example there are no squared circles.
Logic
Explanation: What is meant by logical consequence. Analysis of arguments (a sort of algebra).
Opinion: Logic is a sort of algebra where different expressions are built from clauses
which are evaluated as true or false. You could also have certain conclusions following
from premisses which is called logical consequence. It is generally very hard to
translate ordinary language to logical language.
- Gödels Theorem and Uncalculability
Philosophy of Mind
Explanation: What is the human mind?
Opinion: I think the human mind is a normal calculable process. There are a lot
of competing theories and other point of views including scientific non calculable
solutions and even non material explanations. I think these are often (but not always
since there are good arguments for them) part of humankinds tendency to overestimate
themselves. We want to be at the center of the universe, important for the creation
and so on.
- Free will
Ethics
Explanation: How should we live? What is good/evil? What is happiness?
Opinion: Like most people (at least people use to say that) I think you should treat
other people nice and with respect. I also have a strong individual view and think
that it has to be very good reasons for the common good to enforce restrictions
on an individual. One reason for this is that I think the question of what is common
good is a very hard question. This question is also related to the what is happiness
question since a common good probably should reference to some kind of happiness
for people or at least absence of suffering. I am not extreme on this point though
and think that many issues must be resolved in a kind of common good sense, for
example environmental issues and some social security issues. The good/evil question
is very interesting, most people view themselves as good. Especially religious and
socialist people and it tend to amount to a rather black and white view. I think
that good solutions should work in reality whether they exist in some holy/philosophical
book or not. What is good and what is meant by work in reality is of course debatable.
- Happiness
- Common Good and Greater Good
- Human Behaviour
- Madness
- Homo-, bi- and transexual persons rights
Aesthetics
Explanation: What is art? Why are things beautiful?
Opinion: I think there are at least two forms of art, the form that tries to say
something and the form that is just beautiful. They can of course also be combined.
Since this differs a lot from person to person it is a very hard (and interesting)
question what should be regarded as art by society. I think the reason people think
things are beautiful is because they trigger some kind of feel good reaction in the brain.
Political Philosophy
Explanation: How should society be organised? Is Utopia possible?
Opinion: I don’t believe in Utopia, the world will never be perfect. But I do think
we always can make the world better. Capitalism seems to have a strong economic
force and is flexible but has some disadvantages like shortsightedness and economic
concentration of ownership at least in some cases. Democracy seems to work best
to rule a country/area but shares the shortsightedness disadvantage with capitalism.
Socialist and religious states seem to lead to oppression.