Some Thoughts About Existentialism

I just finished writing essays for my take-home philosophy final. So, what better way to celebrate than to write some more about philosophy on my blog? Perhaps I'm just a masochist...

Anyway, a few years ago, I came across existentialism, and it resonated with me. I'm sure I had heard of it before then, but for whatever reason, it didn't stick. But this time, I looked into it, decided that I rather liked it, and so started considering myself an existentialist. I particularly like the idea that we create our own meanings. Meaning doesn't exist independent of us, waiting for us to find it, rather we create it.

Anyway, I needed to take an elective course, and Intro to Existentialism fit, so I took it. We went over four philosophers - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, and read The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoyevsky, The Metamorphosis by Kafka and saw the movie District 9.

After about a month into the class, I knew less about existentialism that I did before. Being slightly wiser, realizing how little I knew, I decided I should stop considering myself an existentialist until I knew more about it, and so could make an informed decision.

So, being done with the class, I gave it some thought. The first thing is that I disagree with most of what was said by most of the philosophers we studied. Interestingly, I disagreed with each philosopher a little bit less than the last. If I don't agree with what most existentialist said, how can I be an existentialist? Well, first it's important to remember that most existentialists didn't consider themselves existentialists. Hell, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche predated the term.

Further, if there was only one idea that all four philosophers shared (and there were damned few things all four philosophers agreed on), it was focusing on the individual over the group. So, I can disagree with them, and chalk it up to individualism. Seems appropriate. Also, the ideas I found appealing in the first place, I still find appealing, and while they are less central to the philosophy than I thought they were, they're still there.

And as a special bonus, here's a joke about existentialism. Don't forget to read the mouseover text.

Even More Geometrical Constructions

Swirled Hexagons

Countercycle

Tunnel

Celtic Knot

Cross

Geometric Series

Infinity

Similarity

Starwheel

Spider

Layered Flower

Tree

Shockwave

Substructure

Pebbles

Shuriken

Caltrop

Stellar Nursery

Penrose 1

Penrose 4

Penrose 2

Penrose 3

The Bat-God

Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same god? Is the God of the Torah the same as the God of the Bible the same as the God of the Koran?

Here's my (atheistic) take on it: God is like Batman. I don't mean that he's a superhero who fights crime under the cover of darkness (though that would be pretty cool). What I mean is that the different versions of Batman are like the different versions of God. There's the Batman of the comics, the Batman of the early Batman movies and the Batman of the rebooted Christian Bale Batman movies.

In each version, certain important characteristics stay the same. Batman is always dresses up as a bat to fight crime, has a batmobile and a batcave, etc. God is always the omnipotent creator of the universe, who personally cares about humans.

But also, important characteristics change. Who killed Batman's parents and where did he learn to be an expert in hand-to-hand combat? Who was God's most recent prophet and does he care if we eat pork?

So, is God the same God? Well, in the most important aspects, yeah, pretty much. But, that doesn't mean they're interchangeable regardless of context. You can't talk about why Michael Keaton's Batman never mentions Ra's al Ghul because it's not the same continuity. Similarly, you can't ask why the Christian God allows pork when the Jewish God prohibits it.

Of course, this is approaching God as a purely fictional literary character. A real entity can't be three different versions at once. Wait a minute...

(As a sidenote, I find it somewhat interesting that Aphrodite is another god(dess) who rather different versions of herself.)

The Efficiency of Captialism

Proponents of capitalism like to say that it's the most efficient economic system we have. I think it would be more accurate to say it's the least inefficient, similar to how democracy

is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried.

-Winston Churchill

Capitalism works well - very well - in certain controlled circumstances. When a resource is scarce, but not too scarce. When there are few barriers to entry. When there is strict regulation preventing monopolies from forming and other predatory business practices. When there's not too much unemployment, but not too little. When there's an increasing population. When income inequality is not too high, but also not too low.

If all these conditions, and others I haven't named, are met, capitalism is quite efficient. But too frequently, these conditions aren't all met. And when that's the case, capitalism kinda blows. Other forms of economy may blow even worse (though I'm sure other forms can outperform capitalism in certain circumstances), but that doesn't make capitalism good.

What brings this up is farmers destroying their crop, because they have too much. From a capitalist point of view, they're making the right decision. Reduce supply to increase price and profit. I can't see how any economic system rewards destroying a resource (especially one as valuable and necessary as food) more than distributing it could possibly be considered efficient. It seems to me to be an incredible failing of the system of capitalism.

Something That Explains Everything Doesn't Explain Anything

I read this somewhere else, but it's important so I'll talk about it too. "Something that explains everything doesn't explain anything." Sounds a little confusing at first. Let me try to reformulate it a little bit clearer.

Suppose you have an idea that is supposed to explain something. If any observation you make can be fit into this idea, then it doesn't have any actual explanatory power.

Now, let me explain. If something has no predictive power, it has no explanatory power. Because, if it can't tell you what to expect in the future, it can't tell you why something happened in the past. That is, if something has can explain something, it should be able to take the explanation, and apply it to something it hasn't seen the result of.

Something that can explain everything has no predictive power. Because it if explains x just as well as not-x, it gives you no reason to expect one over the other.


This is why falsifiability is so important in science. If nothing can show a hypothesis to be wrong, then the hypothesis "explains" everything. If there were anything that it didn't explain, then that potentiality would falsify the hypothesis. An unfalsifiable hypothesis can't explain anything.

The Supernatural Does Not Exist

Pretty much just by definition. The supernatural is that which is outside of nature. Nature is equivalent to the universe. If something is outside of the universe, it cannot interact with the universe. If it could interact with the universe, it would be part of the universe. If it cannot interact with the universe, there is no meaningful sense in which it can be said to exist. At best, you could say that it exists in some other universe*, but not this one.

Note: this is not intended to apply to any specific "supernatural" phenomena. This in no way disproves god or ghosts, or whatever. It merely says that if they do exist, they are not supernatural.

*Though, by these definitions, other universes don't exist. They either interact with this universe, in which case they are part of this universe, or they don't, in which case they don't exist. I'm fine with this, since "exists" should imply existing in this universe. It's not really much good to talk about something that exists, but has absolutely no impact on us in any way whatsoever.

Blasphemy

Blasphemy must be allowed. Though, not always appropriate, it must always be considered acceptable.

Why?

Because everything is blasphemy. Every Christian church blasphemes against Islam and Hinduism and every non-Christian religion (and maybe even some different forms of Christianity too!) every single week. Every religion blasphemes against every other religion, and just about every statement of opinion is blasphemy to someone. Hell, even demonstrable facts can be blasphemous (consider evolution).

Something cannot be considered wrong simply because it it blasphemous, because otherwise, everything would be wrong.