Values
(here is a representation of a core thing that I believe.) (it will almost certainly be revised.)
There are many meanings to "good." (This is an understatement)
You can think of some of them like this:
- Instrumental: good i.e. useful, a thing is good insofar as it helps you change the world into a state that you prefer
- Epistemological: good i.e. (superficially) true, as in this thing helps me make more accurate predictions about the world
- Aesthetic/moral: good as in, uh... good. Good? Beautiful? Moral?
Aesthetics — judging the beauty of a thing — and ethics are the same thing, in that they are axiomatic value systems. There is no empirical basis for any system of ethics, nor for aesthetics. (The is-ought problem: you can't derive what ought to be from observations about what is.)
There are surely intuitive things to believe in. I believe fully in beauty and in moral values. Some ideas like "human flourishing" are so obviously good that it feels like absurd contrarianism to dispute that they are worthwhile ends — and yet, there is no abstract argument that I can make to support the idea that humans achieving a sense of personal meaning is a good thing.
I think this extends to truth as well — though this relation makes sense only in a very abstract way, in that there is no way to derive any first belief. It seems obvious that, well, my subjective experience is in some sense real, but I could continue down an infinite chain of beliefs until I reach nothing or I reach a circle. Systems may be internally consistent, sure, but there is no external reference to validate them against.
"Yes please give me an INFINITE REGRESS OF BELIEFS. Please give me a COHERENT INTERCONNECTED STRUCTURE OF BELIEF that is SELF-JUSTIFYING "
I am not a nihilist. I am the opposite of the nihilist. Values are just independent of reason.
Here are some things that I think are beautiful.