Massimo, your answers to the ten questions set out the worldview I’ve come to accept — a naturalistic, Stoic, and down-to-earth way of seeing life, meaning, and responsibility. But perhaps ideas on their own aren’t enough. I have developed a daily affirmation to I try to live those ideas each day.
It takes the themes you mention — focusing on whats in my control, acting with virtue, accepting impermanence, and caring for others — and turns them into simple, daily commitments. In that sense, the affirmation is the practical companion to the more philosophical reflections you have laid out above: the part I can actually carry with me into each morning.
--
Each Day Reborn: A Stoic Affirmation for the Present Moment
by Tim Patterson
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly… yet none of them can harm me.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1
Presence and Gratitude
I will live in the present moment and be grateful for the good I have in my life, mindful of the emptiness that would remain if it were taken away.
The past has gone; I am reborn each day. I will learn from past errors without clinging to them, and remember my successes with humility.
Virtue as My Compass
I will strive to live a good life by cultivating the Stoic virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. I will avoid excess in appetite and passion, and have the courage to act with integrity, regardless of external outcomes. Virtue will be my compass; all else is indifferent.
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.36
Control, Compassion, and Character
I will focus my energy where I have the power to act — in my judgments, my speech, and my actions. I will listen with empathy, strive to banish anger and hatred, and show compassion to myself and all who suffer.
Duty to Others and to Nature
I accept my responsibility to support myself and my family and to contribute to my community. I will seek ways to protect our planet and the diversity of life within it, knowing this too is part of living according to nature.
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17
Acceptance and Purpose
I accept the impermanence of all things, including myself. Life is fleeting — I will not waste this moment, this chance to do good and to leave the world better than I found it.
I am reborn each dawn. Today I will act with reason, virtue, and goodwill. This day — this moment — is enough.
I have always debated in my mind the old adage that if you don’t believe in something you’ll fall for anything. I’ve concluded over time that this, like every all or nothing statement, has pitfalls as deep as the Mariana Trench.
Believing is the key issue here. It wrongly assumes that we have to buy a certain proscribed value or view of living hook, line and sinker (and, yes, I mean the implication of the metaphor).
It doesn’t seem to address a questioning mind that finds value in some precepts of one philosophy and some in others or in a continual evolution of thought.
Thomas, I don't think I have ever suggested that one ought to accept a given philosophy in toto, and I have made very clear that that's not my approach to Stoicism. However, there is s danger inherent in picking philosophical precepts a la carte: one risks rationalizing one's preferences and ending up with an incoherent mess.
The solution, I think, is to pick a philosophy on the grounds that is the most promising at the moment, then work on it and add / substract things to it, very carefully and deliberately. And if it really doesn't work then one can pick another.
That's what I did with secular humanism, which was fine for me for a couple of decades, until life actually hit me with some serious setbacks, at which point humanism clearly showed its limitations. That's why I pivoted to Stoicism (after a detour in Buddhism, Aristotelianism, and Epicureanism). I've been with Stoicism for over a decade now, but always keeping a skeptical eye on it and constantly trying to update and improve it.
So you no longer believe that Stoics were compatibilists? And on the question of authentic self, it seems like you’re saying the question is a category error. I think a few questions here are like that. In fact, identifying which questions are coherent and which are not is a big part of what we all should be thinking about.
Daniel, yes a lot of these questions are, in my opinion, predicated on category mistakes.
But no, I still think the Stoics were compatibilists. They accepted the notion of universal cause-effect but agreed that we can nevertheless make decisions, which are ours because they originated from our own internal processes. And such processes can be improved by learning and self reflection.
I think a good number of people make the mistake of equating lack of free will with the impossibility of making decisions, which clearly doesn't follow.
Massimo, my understanding is that compatibilism holds that one can have free will in a deterministic universe. Since you stated that you do not believe in free will and that the universe is deterministic, you part company from the Stoics in this way? Or is my understanding of compatibilism not congruent with yours?
Daniel, I don't think that's what compatibilism is. Compatibility don't accept free will in the sense of non-caused will, they simply say that in a deterministic universe people still make decisions, and that such decisions are theirs. My understanding is that that's exactly the Stoic position.
Jim, the Stoics certainly did think that human reason is a spark of the divine, but I don't see it as a concession. Reason is no different from the wings of an eagle or the fangs of a tiger. It's just one of a number of natural attributes that allow different species to do what they need to do to thrive.
Excellent as always Massimo and I love your straightforward way of explaining things!👏
I struggle with #3 (The free will question) though. My reasoning says, “It’s all cause and effect—including our inner workings [our so called ‘inner dialogue’ and ‘choices’] yet it doesn’t FEEL deterministic.
I gotta stay skeptical on this point because my head will explode otherwise (like the android during the Liar paradox episode on Star Trek—you can Google it 😉).
Any verbiage about prohairesis (will, choice, discipline, moral character) makes no sense in a fully deterministic universe. I don’t know how to act or speak with this mentality. It’s the difference between theory and practice.
Jesse, modern psychology has amply demonstrated that we have a very poor inner access to our own cognitive processes, so the fact that something doesn't feel right is not a reliable guide to whether it is right. Here is one way to put it: if free will results from an exception to cause-effect, then every time you make a decision you are literally violating the laws of nature and performing a miracle. How like do you think that is?
As for prohairesis, it's what modern psychologists call the executive center of the brain, located in the fronto-parietal lobes. The ability to make decisions does not require contra-causal will.
Hi Massimo. I really appreciate your communicating with folks of far less scholarly knowledge such as myself.🙏
Your personal touch is very generous.
I also appreciate that feelings aren’t good at arriving at external truths—but hard for me to dismiss.😉
Your statement, though, that “The ability to make decisions does not require contra-causal will” doesn’t compute with my brain. A decision is a choice, yes? A choice means there were different options to ‘choose’. If something is determined, then there is no choice and thus no decision could have been made otherwise.
Therefore it puts the words ‘choice’ and ‘decision’ right there with ‘unicorn’—namely an imaginary thing that doesn’t exist in reality.
My lesser brain doesn’t know how to work with that way of thinking. 🤯
Jesse, the problem you raise is a real one, and it has been debated by philosophers and cognitive scientists. The answer, I think, is that decisions do not actually require choices made in a vacuum, only choices in respose to specific inputs.
Think of your mind as an LLM (a rough analogy, but let's go with it). When you ask a question to ChatGPT, it has many ways to answer it, some more or less helpful or factually correct than others. Chat makes a "choice" among those possible answers, based on its evolving programming. Imagine you tell Chat that its response was incorrect. Now you are providing the LLM with additional inputs and it may "change its mind" and give you a different output.
The human brain is vastly more sophisticated than a current generation AI, but the idea is similar: we produce "choices" as a result of our external and internal inputs, processed in particular ways that depend on our character, experience, memories, and so on. Given the exact same inputs, why wouldn't you produce the same outputs? If you didn't, you'd be behaving erratically.
We can't agree on everything! I'm sure I'll devote future posts to one or more of these points, then we can have a proper discussion. But of course, those answers represent the way I see things. I could be wrong!
That is undoubtedly true. As President Lyndon Johnson pointed out: "When two people agree one hundred percent of the time, one of them is not needed.".
Great content as usual…and as we’ve already heavily discussed our differences on free will I won’t revisit it here.
But I’m extremely curious on the empirical basis for ethics. Allow me to pose a dilemma: I frequently cross paths with homeless individuals and if I have leftover food with me from a lunch or something, I will typically hand it over. I never give money as I have a sense (perhaps it’s a prejudice) that money may encourage a bad habit that may prolong their unfortunate station in life.
Is it empirically defensible to not give money if money is all I have? Is it empirically unethical in sustaining a view that it’s bad to give money? What empirical test can I rely on to guide me in making the most ethical decision?
Jim, I think empirical guidance on ethical questions comes from evolutionary biology (which tells us about human nature), as well as positive psychology (which tells us what, empirically, works and does not work when it comes to human flourishing). That doesn't mean that science will always give univocal answers, which is why we also need empirically-based philosophical reasoning.
In the specific case you highlight, I think it is right, because it is prosocial / cooperative, to help the homeless person. What best form that help might take depends on the circumstances (do you have only money with you? Do you have time to go into a nearby store and get the person some food?) as well as research in social psychology (what sort of aid works best for homeless people).
I do. But couldn’t we say rational as opposed to theological? Something can be rational without being empirical, right? Or is that an outdated dichotomy?
Jim, ah, there's the rub. My thinking is that if we are talking about anything pertaining to the natural world then we need empirical information, reason by itself isn't going to do it, because reason is capable of exploring possibilities, but not, by itself, narrow things done to actualities (i.e., what really exists).
I’ll check this out…but I still have this sense that ethics is rational stemming from a principle like a CI but maybe I drank too much Kant in college.
Great read! I’m a bit more sympathetic towards metaphysics than you 😛, but overall I agree.
I think you articulated well something I’ve been struggling to put into words. I’m skeptical of moral realism since I somewhat think it would require you to adhere to some sort of Platonism or something of that sort. I’m at least agnostic on that front.
Also, as a determinist, I feel moral realism matters less. If our actions are determined than even if there are moral laws, there is not actually any moral responsibility.
But at the same time I agree with the Stoic ideal of being pro-social and think that’s a good way to live. I think it comes down to a mix of personal meaning (à la existentialism) and empirical evidence from psychology and such that pro-social behaviors benefit you.
So basically I think we choose our meaning in life and I choose Stoicism! I think I can make arguments for why it’s a good philosophy to choose, but I don’t think it’s something you can absolutely prove since I’m not a moral realist.
Matthew, I'm not a moral realist either, I'm an ethical naturalist, and the difference to me is crucial. I regard ethics as similar to medicine: there are things that are objectively good or bad for human flourishing, but that doesn't mean that there is a Platonic / Kantian realm of ethical ideas.
One of the reasons I chose Stoicism is because it too is founded on a kind of ethical naturalism. (Though so are Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Epicureanism, among others.)
Really cool article. I deliberately used the word ‘cool’ because you could answer 10 questions in a tiring, boring, and lengthy way, but you, Massimo, did it in an interesting, concise, and—well—cool way. I especially like your answer to questions 3, 7, and 10. My 18-year-old niece would say, ‘I’m vibing.’ :)
Excellent exegesis of your Philosophy, carefully built up brick by brick. Thank you so much for sharing. I humbly add two notes:
1) Free Will - While we may not have Free Will , we must act as if we do for our mental machinery to operate properly. The crack I see that permits / requires Free Will is in the formulation of postulates and theories and the establishment of goals and objectives.
2) Heidigger, who leads us into Cognitive Science, encourages us to think about thinking. The way that our thinking has and continues to evolve may lead to a deeper understanding of the brain and the governing rules of reason and cognition. The self-organizing principles of our cognition may lead to a deeper understanding of love as the ultimate organizing principle of our existence.
David, never been a fan of Heidegger, but it's likely my own limitation. I consider most continental writers too fuzzy and obfuscatory for my taste.
As for free will, I don't feel like I have to pretend to have it. All I need is to recognize that I am a sophisticated decision-making biological organism and go from there.
Very good post. In many ways I am a philosophy neophyte, however all of the questions that Claude posed I have thought about in someways most of my life. I am also a recovering Catholic. I recall questioning as soon as I started catechism. I was reprimanded a number of times for asking too many questions. I have vivid experiences of when I asked about the “soul” of animals. although I did not have a firm grasp of what a soul was, however when looking into the eyes of my dog and cats I saw life. With similar questions regarding the intelligence of animals and thinking how obnoxious we are to think we are the most intelligent. Dogs do what dogs do and they do it well. The same goes for other living things they are following their “nature”.
I have often thought about free will. I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and stopped using August 10, 1982, specifically at 2:00 PM(listening to Pink Floyd Animals as I emptied my remaining bottles of liquor before going to detox). There has always been a debate is addiction environmental or genetic. I stopped arguing or debating that question and simply say I know when I don’t drink or use drugs, my life is better. I have used that logic as somewhat of guiding principle, when I behave like X the outcome is Y. If I don’t like the Y outcome then don’t behave like X. I am not saying I make the right choice every time, but the older I get, I have reduced the number of times that I continue to bang my head against the same wall.
I am starting to ramble so time to stop! Thank you for the post and thank Claude for his prompts.
Thanks! One day at a time. I never had a legal drink in my life. I got clean and sober at 18, started drinking at 13 - 14. I was a bit of a perfectionist back then. I figured if I’m gonna drink I’m gonna do it right! :-)
Sakshat, your experience-based pragmatism would serve us all very well! And yes, one of the reasons I left the Catholic Church myself is precisely because of the injunction not to ask too many questions and/or think too hard... More here, if you are interested: https://figsinwintertime.substack.com/p/the-two-reasons-i-left-christianity
Massimo, your answers to the ten questions set out the worldview I’ve come to accept — a naturalistic, Stoic, and down-to-earth way of seeing life, meaning, and responsibility. But perhaps ideas on their own aren’t enough. I have developed a daily affirmation to I try to live those ideas each day.
It takes the themes you mention — focusing on whats in my control, acting with virtue, accepting impermanence, and caring for others — and turns them into simple, daily commitments. In that sense, the affirmation is the practical companion to the more philosophical reflections you have laid out above: the part I can actually carry with me into each morning.
--
Each Day Reborn: A Stoic Affirmation for the Present Moment
by Tim Patterson
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly… yet none of them can harm me.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1
Presence and Gratitude
I will live in the present moment and be grateful for the good I have in my life, mindful of the emptiness that would remain if it were taken away.
The past has gone; I am reborn each day. I will learn from past errors without clinging to them, and remember my successes with humility.
Virtue as My Compass
I will strive to live a good life by cultivating the Stoic virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. I will avoid excess in appetite and passion, and have the courage to act with integrity, regardless of external outcomes. Virtue will be my compass; all else is indifferent.
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.36
Control, Compassion, and Character
I will focus my energy where I have the power to act — in my judgments, my speech, and my actions. I will listen with empathy, strive to banish anger and hatred, and show compassion to myself and all who suffer.
Duty to Others and to Nature
I accept my responsibility to support myself and my family and to contribute to my community. I will seek ways to protect our planet and the diversity of life within it, knowing this too is part of living according to nature.
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17
Acceptance and Purpose
I accept the impermanence of all things, including myself. Life is fleeting — I will not waste this moment, this chance to do good and to leave the world better than I found it.
I am reborn each dawn. Today I will act with reason, virtue, and goodwill. This day — this moment — is enough.
Tim, absolutely, this post is about my views on the big questions, but a daily practice is needed regardless, and your approach works for me as well.
You and I agree on almost everything. Boy-o-boy are you smart.
And thanks for the food for thought.
😆
I have always debated in my mind the old adage that if you don’t believe in something you’ll fall for anything. I’ve concluded over time that this, like every all or nothing statement, has pitfalls as deep as the Mariana Trench.
Believing is the key issue here. It wrongly assumes that we have to buy a certain proscribed value or view of living hook, line and sinker (and, yes, I mean the implication of the metaphor).
It doesn’t seem to address a questioning mind that finds value in some precepts of one philosophy and some in others or in a continual evolution of thought.
Thomas, I don't think I have ever suggested that one ought to accept a given philosophy in toto, and I have made very clear that that's not my approach to Stoicism. However, there is s danger inherent in picking philosophical precepts a la carte: one risks rationalizing one's preferences and ending up with an incoherent mess.
The solution, I think, is to pick a philosophy on the grounds that is the most promising at the moment, then work on it and add / substract things to it, very carefully and deliberately. And if it really doesn't work then one can pick another.
That's what I did with secular humanism, which was fine for me for a couple of decades, until life actually hit me with some serious setbacks, at which point humanism clearly showed its limitations. That's why I pivoted to Stoicism (after a detour in Buddhism, Aristotelianism, and Epicureanism). I've been with Stoicism for over a decade now, but always keeping a skeptical eye on it and constantly trying to update and improve it.
I apologize if I suggested that is what you said. I meant it as a general comment on the way people tend to think.
No need for an apology! But glad we cleared up our meanings! Yes, a disturbing number of people do seem to think along those lines.
So you no longer believe that Stoics were compatibilists? And on the question of authentic self, it seems like you’re saying the question is a category error. I think a few questions here are like that. In fact, identifying which questions are coherent and which are not is a big part of what we all should be thinking about.
Daniel, yes a lot of these questions are, in my opinion, predicated on category mistakes.
But no, I still think the Stoics were compatibilists. They accepted the notion of universal cause-effect but agreed that we can nevertheless make decisions, which are ours because they originated from our own internal processes. And such processes can be improved by learning and self reflection.
I think a good number of people make the mistake of equating lack of free will with the impossibility of making decisions, which clearly doesn't follow.
Massimo, my understanding is that compatibilism holds that one can have free will in a deterministic universe. Since you stated that you do not believe in free will and that the universe is deterministic, you part company from the Stoics in this way? Or is my understanding of compatibilism not congruent with yours?
Daniel, I don't think that's what compatibilism is. Compatibility don't accept free will in the sense of non-caused will, they simply say that in a deterministic universe people still make decisions, and that such decisions are theirs. My understanding is that that's exactly the Stoic position.
Massimo, perhaps the Stoics' concession to human decision making was reinforced by their belief that human reason was a spark of the divine?
Jim, the Stoics certainly did think that human reason is a spark of the divine, but I don't see it as a concession. Reason is no different from the wings of an eagle or the fangs of a tiger. It's just one of a number of natural attributes that allow different species to do what they need to do to thrive.
Agreed! I'm just suggesting how the ancient Stoics might have considered it.
Excellent as always Massimo and I love your straightforward way of explaining things!👏
I struggle with #3 (The free will question) though. My reasoning says, “It’s all cause and effect—including our inner workings [our so called ‘inner dialogue’ and ‘choices’] yet it doesn’t FEEL deterministic.
I gotta stay skeptical on this point because my head will explode otherwise (like the android during the Liar paradox episode on Star Trek—you can Google it 😉).
Any verbiage about prohairesis (will, choice, discipline, moral character) makes no sense in a fully deterministic universe. I don’t know how to act or speak with this mentality. It’s the difference between theory and practice.
I stay skeptical to save my inner circuitry.☺️✌️
Jesse, modern psychology has amply demonstrated that we have a very poor inner access to our own cognitive processes, so the fact that something doesn't feel right is not a reliable guide to whether it is right. Here is one way to put it: if free will results from an exception to cause-effect, then every time you make a decision you are literally violating the laws of nature and performing a miracle. How like do you think that is?
As for prohairesis, it's what modern psychologists call the executive center of the brain, located in the fronto-parietal lobes. The ability to make decisions does not require contra-causal will.
Hi Massimo. I really appreciate your communicating with folks of far less scholarly knowledge such as myself.🙏
Your personal touch is very generous.
I also appreciate that feelings aren’t good at arriving at external truths—but hard for me to dismiss.😉
Your statement, though, that “The ability to make decisions does not require contra-causal will” doesn’t compute with my brain. A decision is a choice, yes? A choice means there were different options to ‘choose’. If something is determined, then there is no choice and thus no decision could have been made otherwise.
Therefore it puts the words ‘choice’ and ‘decision’ right there with ‘unicorn’—namely an imaginary thing that doesn’t exist in reality.
My lesser brain doesn’t know how to work with that way of thinking. 🤯
Perhaps one day…🤔
Jesse, the problem you raise is a real one, and it has been debated by philosophers and cognitive scientists. The answer, I think, is that decisions do not actually require choices made in a vacuum, only choices in respose to specific inputs.
Think of your mind as an LLM (a rough analogy, but let's go with it). When you ask a question to ChatGPT, it has many ways to answer it, some more or less helpful or factually correct than others. Chat makes a "choice" among those possible answers, based on its evolving programming. Imagine you tell Chat that its response was incorrect. Now you are providing the LLM with additional inputs and it may "change its mind" and give you a different output.
The human brain is vastly more sophisticated than a current generation AI, but the idea is similar: we produce "choices" as a result of our external and internal inputs, processed in particular ways that depend on our character, experience, memories, and so on. Given the exact same inputs, why wouldn't you produce the same outputs? If you didn't, you'd be behaving erratically.
I hope this helps!
Very interesting. I’ll process this with my available inputs—including now this one.😉☺️
You don't have a choice... 😉
🖖
A good set of points to ruminate on. Some we are in agreement, some not, such is life.
When and if you go over them one by one, I would be glad to pose counters to some.
We can't agree on everything! I'm sure I'll devote future posts to one or more of these points, then we can have a proper discussion. But of course, those answers represent the way I see things. I could be wrong!
That is undoubtedly true. As President Lyndon Johnson pointed out: "When two people agree one hundred percent of the time, one of them is not needed.".
😆
Superb. This will set me up for a day or two, then I’ll read it again :)
Thank you, Massimo.
🙏
Great content as usual…and as we’ve already heavily discussed our differences on free will I won’t revisit it here.
But I’m extremely curious on the empirical basis for ethics. Allow me to pose a dilemma: I frequently cross paths with homeless individuals and if I have leftover food with me from a lunch or something, I will typically hand it over. I never give money as I have a sense (perhaps it’s a prejudice) that money may encourage a bad habit that may prolong their unfortunate station in life.
Is it empirically defensible to not give money if money is all I have? Is it empirically unethical in sustaining a view that it’s bad to give money? What empirical test can I rely on to guide me in making the most ethical decision?
Jim, I think empirical guidance on ethical questions comes from evolutionary biology (which tells us about human nature), as well as positive psychology (which tells us what, empirically, works and does not work when it comes to human flourishing). That doesn't mean that science will always give univocal answers, which is why we also need empirically-based philosophical reasoning.
In the specific case you highlight, I think it is right, because it is prosocial / cooperative, to help the homeless person. What best form that help might take depends on the circumstances (do you have only money with you? Do you have time to go into a nearby store and get the person some food?) as well as research in social psychology (what sort of aid works best for homeless people).
Interesting…I’ve always been drawn to the idea of ethics as natural law but have never considered it to be empirical. Perhaps it is.
Right, natural law comes from, well, nature! So it's either an empirical discipline or a theological one. You know which one I prefer...
I do. But couldn’t we say rational as opposed to theological? Something can be rational without being empirical, right? Or is that an outdated dichotomy?
Jim, ah, there's the rub. My thinking is that if we are talking about anything pertaining to the natural world then we need empirical information, reason by itself isn't going to do it, because reason is capable of exploring possibilities, but not, by itself, narrow things done to actualities (i.e., what really exists).
Reason by itself is sufficient, of course, for problems in logic and math. Here is what I mean in more detail: https://figsinwintertime.substack.com/p/if-you-aint-got-evidence-you-dont
I’ll check this out…but I still have this sense that ethics is rational stemming from a principle like a CI but maybe I drank too much Kant in college.
Great read! I’m a bit more sympathetic towards metaphysics than you 😛, but overall I agree.
I think you articulated well something I’ve been struggling to put into words. I’m skeptical of moral realism since I somewhat think it would require you to adhere to some sort of Platonism or something of that sort. I’m at least agnostic on that front.
Also, as a determinist, I feel moral realism matters less. If our actions are determined than even if there are moral laws, there is not actually any moral responsibility.
But at the same time I agree with the Stoic ideal of being pro-social and think that’s a good way to live. I think it comes down to a mix of personal meaning (à la existentialism) and empirical evidence from psychology and such that pro-social behaviors benefit you.
So basically I think we choose our meaning in life and I choose Stoicism! I think I can make arguments for why it’s a good philosophy to choose, but I don’t think it’s something you can absolutely prove since I’m not a moral realist.
Matthew, I'm not a moral realist either, I'm an ethical naturalist, and the difference to me is crucial. I regard ethics as similar to medicine: there are things that are objectively good or bad for human flourishing, but that doesn't mean that there is a Platonic / Kantian realm of ethical ideas.
One of the reasons I chose Stoicism is because it too is founded on a kind of ethical naturalism. (Though so are Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Epicureanism, among others.)
Really cool article. I deliberately used the word ‘cool’ because you could answer 10 questions in a tiring, boring, and lengthy way, but you, Massimo, did it in an interesting, concise, and—well—cool way. I especially like your answer to questions 3, 7, and 10. My 18-year-old niece would say, ‘I’m vibing.’ :)
🙏
Excellent exegesis of your Philosophy, carefully built up brick by brick. Thank you so much for sharing. I humbly add two notes:
1) Free Will - While we may not have Free Will , we must act as if we do for our mental machinery to operate properly. The crack I see that permits / requires Free Will is in the formulation of postulates and theories and the establishment of goals and objectives.
2) Heidigger, who leads us into Cognitive Science, encourages us to think about thinking. The way that our thinking has and continues to evolve may lead to a deeper understanding of the brain and the governing rules of reason and cognition. The self-organizing principles of our cognition may lead to a deeper understanding of love as the ultimate organizing principle of our existence.
David, never been a fan of Heidegger, but it's likely my own limitation. I consider most continental writers too fuzzy and obfuscatory for my taste.
As for free will, I don't feel like I have to pretend to have it. All I need is to recognize that I am a sophisticated decision-making biological organism and go from there.
Thank you! Yes it is important not to pretend but simply to act with the recognition you describe so well.
Very good post. In many ways I am a philosophy neophyte, however all of the questions that Claude posed I have thought about in someways most of my life. I am also a recovering Catholic. I recall questioning as soon as I started catechism. I was reprimanded a number of times for asking too many questions. I have vivid experiences of when I asked about the “soul” of animals. although I did not have a firm grasp of what a soul was, however when looking into the eyes of my dog and cats I saw life. With similar questions regarding the intelligence of animals and thinking how obnoxious we are to think we are the most intelligent. Dogs do what dogs do and they do it well. The same goes for other living things they are following their “nature”.
I have often thought about free will. I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and stopped using August 10, 1982, specifically at 2:00 PM(listening to Pink Floyd Animals as I emptied my remaining bottles of liquor before going to detox). There has always been a debate is addiction environmental or genetic. I stopped arguing or debating that question and simply say I know when I don’t drink or use drugs, my life is better. I have used that logic as somewhat of guiding principle, when I behave like X the outcome is Y. If I don’t like the Y outcome then don’t behave like X. I am not saying I make the right choice every time, but the older I get, I have reduced the number of times that I continue to bang my head against the same wall.
I am starting to ramble so time to stop! Thank you for the post and thank Claude for his prompts.
Congratulations on your long recovery!!
Thanks! One day at a time. I never had a legal drink in my life. I got clean and sober at 18, started drinking at 13 - 14. I was a bit of a perfectionist back then. I figured if I’m gonna drink I’m gonna do it right! :-)
Sakshat, your experience-based pragmatism would serve us all very well! And yes, one of the reasons I left the Catholic Church myself is precisely because of the injunction not to ask too many questions and/or think too hard... More here, if you are interested: https://figsinwintertime.substack.com/p/the-two-reasons-i-left-christianity
That's what drove me from Christianity as well. I was always the smart little kid asking the hard questions that baffled or irritated the teachers.