Mizblog

Eternal Philosophical Questions

(hopeless tender yearnings)

I realize today that I’m something of a radical skeptic. I don’t think we can know anything with certainty. We can believe things with absolute and unshakable certainty, but that’s not at all the same as knowing! This is because I can (and probably do) believe things that turn out to be wrong.

Luckily I can learn from my mistakes, and hopefully come out wrong with lesser frequency in the future.

QotD: If it’s true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

Excerpted and adapted from last week’s e-mail correspondence:

The problem of long term happiness has been an obsession of mine for years. The self-help gurus all say that happiness is not something that happens to you, but rather something that happens in you. In other words, being happy isn’t dependent on anything outside yourself. I have a hard time believing this though. It seems tantamount to denying the reality of the world around us.

Phil once pondered out loud what it would be like if we went through all our typical behaviors but with the sole exception that we weren’t conscious at all. I told him it reminded me of Monday. ;)

conscious – Saturday
unconscious – Sunday
subconscious – Monday

The whole “reality is in the mind of the observer” idea implies that the world ceases to exist when you sleep, and is recreated when you awake. The other theory I like is that all creation gets its size from invisible “size rays” which emanate from your toes and fingers, and this is why things which are farther away from you look smaller. It’s another wacky slant on the philosophy of solipsism, in which nothing is real except you. Logically unassailable but somehow unrewarding.

So yes, I do believe in an external reality. I don’t think I’m imaginative enough to have come up with the whole world all by myself.

I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things. It’s been difficult.

Yesterday I had to get up early and go downtown for a project update meeting. So much pain for such little benefit. It destroyed my concentration for the rest of the day. I kept flitting from one thing to another every 2 minutes. I couldn’t even watch TV!

I’ve been reading up on relativity, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. I’m convinced that these all tie together nicely somehow but I haven’t been able to understand the mechanics of it just yet. One problem is that I don’t know how to describe consciousness in terms of physics. There’s something there though, probably in the temporal perception bit, that I believe will turn out to be central to a deep understanding of the nature of consciousness. I’ll keep thinking about it.

I no longer enjoy using my computer. My hands hurt too much. I find the thought of work to be depressing. I’d rather lie on my back, clear my mind, and sleep. Indeed, but I’m not sleepy. It doesn’t matter.

Earlier today I thought of what it will be like when I’m dead: no sensation, no perception, and no memory. For me it will be like dreamless sleep, only I will no longer be me at all. I’ll be gone forever except in whatever of my imprints are remembered or sustained.

It doesn’t matter.

After finally getting a good night’s sleep the other night, I’ve fallen into a strange and unpredictable pattern of sleep and wake. I was up all last night and went to sleep yesterday afternoon around 3pm. I woke at 7pm and have been up ever since.

This unpredictability seems to be central to life. It’s the same thing as randomness. I’ve always wondered if there’s really such a thing as randomness, or if unpredictability is just a consequence of a nonrandom process that no one can know. I’ve also realized that without the passage of time, randomness and probability are meaningless. Intelligence becomes unnecessary. Life becomes impossible. Time is the great mystery. We take it for granted because it is so central to our existence. We seem ill equipped to even imagine its lack. And yet I sit, awake, trying to think unthinkable thoughts.

My hands are still sore. And here I am typing away… I’m going to try to take it easy on the fingers today and tomorrow, and spend my mental energy on the same stuff but using a pen and paper as my working memory extension system. I can’t keep it all in my head at the same time.

Gonna see Sin City later today. Heard it’s pretty good.