Free Will Part 1

In a previous post about determinism I established that even if the universe in general is not deterministic and predictable, for all intents and purposes I am. All of my thoughts, feelings, and deeds have causes. I can tell that if time turned back on any choice I made and I was in exactly the same circumstances with my knowledge, thoughts, emotions, and surroundings, I would make exactly the same choice again for better or worse.

Arriving at the realization that I am governed by cause and effect made me wonder if being deterministic meant I do not have free will.

Tarot Reading Explained

The tarot is a set of 78 cards used by various people for meditation, insight, and divining the future. Receiving a tarot reading from my father was an established birthday ritual when I was growing up, and I first picked up an interest in learning how to read the tarot when I was in high school. 

Identity Death

A variety of ideas about myself have served as the basis of my self-worth in the course of my life. My success academically, variety of hobbies, awesomeness at computer games, intelligence, skill at listening, helpfulness of what I have to say, and the approval of others have been more or less important to my self esteem. All of the skills or qualities I have mentioned are ultimately fleeting.

Caring for People Who Cannot Give Back

I feel meaning and significance in the work I do feeding, clothing, and generally helping elderly people who can no longer fulfill those basic tasks for themselves. Not long after I started working at the nursing home, I started to wonder why taking care of these people mattered so much to me, and at first I did not have a good answer. Thinking about my beliefs and emotions was similar to the process I went through thinking about morality.

Blog Update and Social Fears

Today I updated my blog in several ways. I changed the blog name and web address to more accurately reflect the direction of its content, and instead of remaining anonymous behind the nickname “dabbler” I decided to use my real, full name. Finally, I created or updated accounts on different social media so that my posts will automatically appear on those sites. This post will be the first that is automatically shared to other social media sites.

Changing the domain name was easy enough, and having my real name attached to what I write only caused a twinge of nervousness. However broadcasting updates for my blog across social media with my name attached to them is terrifying for me.

Perception and Reality

A philosophical idea that I find fun to play with is that what we perceive is not what actually happens in reality. For example, when I hear music being played, I perceive a beautiful chord or a groovy beat. What is physically happening is that the air is vibrating in waves that align harmoniously and have a rhythmical pattern.

Determining Determinism

Most people are familiar with cause and effect. My throwing a stone over a lake, the cause, has the effect of it skipping over the water. Even if I failed to make the stone skip, that failure would also have causes. Perhaps I did not give the stone enough spin, or threw it at an angle that was unsuited for skipping. Cause and effect are everywhere in the natural world, and philosophers have translated that into the concept of determinism.

Speculations about Death

Working in a nursing home allows me to see death up close and personal. So far two people have passed away who I was involved in caring for, and I occasionally wonder whether we exist as more than corpses after we die. “Life after death” is a phrase that never sat right with me, as I can tell the person is both no longer alive and that their body decays. That they somehow receive a new one and become alive in a physical reality we cannot detect by physical means has never seemed likely to me.

Why Palm Trees Glow at Night

Storytime.

When I was little I lived in various places in San Diego, where there are plenty of palm trees. These particular palm trees were extremely tall, but because they were at the bottom of a hill, and I lived at the top, I could clearly see their heads from my bed. Usually I could only see them during the daytime, but one night they started glowing.

What is Morality?

The nature of good and morality is a perennial question for philosophers, and recently I realized that while I use the term good all the time, if someone asked me what I meant by that I would not be able to give them an answer that satisfied me. In this post I am interested in describing the results of my investigation into what I think of as good or moral, rather than trying to defend it as the one true concept of morality.