Philosophy on the meaning of life

This essay is investigating the philosophical answer to the question: ‘is life meaningful?’ by clarifying the key terms of the question (life and meaning) and giving an overview analysis of the different philosophical approaches to the subject. The conclusion of this essay is that even if we cannot prove life to be meaningful in a global level, or intrinsically meaningful in a personal level, nevertheless, human life has the potential of being meaningful. Thus, the answer to the question ‘is life meaningful?’ is not a straightforward ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Meaning is ‘something that comes in degrees, and varies between lives’ (Belshaw, 2014, p. 136). We cannot assume the same levels of value to a life of a surgeon with that of a serial killer (Belshaw, 2014, p. 33). Meaning is not a given in life, but something to be created consciously, and individually.

On Preferentism

Part 1

Can a preferentist successfully respond to the objection from adaptive preferences, as outlined by Nussbaum?

This essay will evaluate Harriet Baber’s respond to the objection from adaptive preferences as outlined by Nussbaum, and will conclude that Baber, as a Preferentists, successfully responds to Nussbaum’s objection from adaptive preferences. In the first paragraphs, this essay, will give a brief background to the philosophical field that aims to find a framework for any action to be considered rational, where Preferentism is one of the suggested answers. Philosophers are divided on what it takes for an action to be considered rational, or irrational, in a strictly logical, non-moral, way. Rationally formed intention to act requires a rational held belief about how to bring about a rationally formed goal; and just like beliefs are based on evidence, goals are based on ideas about what is ‘genuinely’ valuable (Barber, 2014, p. 15). The Preferentists’ reply to that question is ‘whatever floats your boat’, and Nussbaum has some serious criticism about that.

Is rationality a matter of reasoning in a way that is likely to generate true beliefs?

In the glossary of the A333 module book (Price and Chimisso, 2014, p. 195) we see that ‘according to the standard picture of rationality, someone counts as reasoning in a rational way only if they are reasoning in accordance with principles based on the rules of logic, probability, and so on’. This is a normative way of approaching the principals of reasoning (Stein, cited in (Price and Chimisso, 2014, p. 163). This is not a descriptive account of how humans actually reason, it is an account of how one ought to reason in order to reason in a way that can be considered to be rational. Philosophers, among others, have been surprised by the discoveries of psychological research experiments that seem to undermine the commonly acceptable (Price and Chimisso, 2014, p. 10), Aristotelian notion of the intellectual superiority of the humankind. One of the beliefs of western philosophy is that we are, by definition, rational beings (The Open University, 2014).

Is the Jus ad Bellum/Jus in Bello distinction a reliable guide in thinking about the moral rules of war?

This essay will explain the Jus ad Bellum (JaB)/Jus in Bello (JiB) distinction and will explore whether the distinction can be a reliable guide in thinking about the moral rules of war. At the end, this essay will conclude that the JaB/JiB distinction is not a reliable guide to explore the moral rules of war. The next paragraphs will first have a brief description of the alternative views on war ethics, the Pacifist, and the Realist view, to explore what is being denied by the position (Pike, 2014, p.17). Then will put the frame of Just War Tradition (which will be explained in later paragraphs) to the JaB/JiB distinction, before evaluating its reliability. Within the philosophical discourse regarding the justification of killing humans during war, philosophers had to come up with reasons why we tent to treat soldiers as heroes, rather than murderers. Killing is against most moral setting of rules (Pike, 2014, p.13), thus war needs to justify why and who is permissible to die during battles. The discrimination between civilians and combatants will be a recurrent theme of this topic.

Is killing an innocent person always wrong? Spoiler alert: Yes (Undergraduate philosophy essay about war)

I can't bring World Peace, but I can at least share my philosophy essay on why it is always wrong to kill innocent people even at war:

To answer, this essay will first narrow the question: ‘Is killing an innocent person always wrong?’, within the field of war. More specifically, it will examine the moral aspect—in contrast with the legal one (The Open University, 2014)—of the matter of the wrongness, and the arguments for potential permissibility, with regards to killing innocent people in war. Jon Pike points out that killing people is normally, we think, a very bad thing to do. Yet, once we start thinking about war, we find situations in which this very bad thing can be justified (The Open University, 2014). This essay will examine the main-known justifications for killing innocent people in war and will conclude that they all fail to justify the killing of the innocent.

Disabled people in leadership roles? The dream of a cynical optimist

Hello dear future historians and contemporary readers

I have a video that I think you'll like.

Press here to listen to the dream of a cynical optimist

Hello, I am Lotous. A disabled actor, writer, and (soon) filmmaker.

Yin Yang

Yin and Yang is not really 

Black and White,

Good and Evil. It's simply...

You and Me.

That's the ultimate dichotomy. ☯️

Thus spoke me.

'Love Casts Out Fear'

Fear is the belief that your life is determined by external factors that, of course, you can't trust.

Love is the feeling that 'the other' is part of you. Love is the feeling that Everything is part of you, and you are part of Everything. Thus you have nothing to fear or mistrust.

Yin Yang is not really Black and White, Good and Evil. It's simply You and Me. That's the Ultimate Dichotomy. 

Parallel to that: 'Whoever has eyes sees... ears listens' etc etc.

Lotous

West: Wake up

 25/08/2023

Dear contemporary westerners,

What’s the matter with you?

It’s like too much McDonald’s mushed your brains, or something.

Today, in the Greek news channel, they said that a bunch of not-so-west-friendly-countries came up with a union between them. I did not hear anything about that on the BBC.

It’s like you people never heard any story ever, or ever played a single videogame. Do you not see what is happening? They have most of the energy resources and they seem to be more determined to cooperate with each other than we are.

A real conversation with an AI

28/08/2023

Me: Hello

AI: Hey! How's it going? What's new with you today? 😄👋

Me: I was wondering

AI: Sure, what were you wondering about? I'm here to help! 😊👍

ME: Do you have any personal goals?

Trapped in my brain, or safe in my mind?

 05/08/2023

Dear Future Historian,

I fell in a coma for a moment.

Or—to be more accurate—I dreamed I did. It was a bit spooky in the beginning. I kind of lost time for a moment. I knew I was not awake. I found myself running among white abandoned corridors with high ceilings. How very institutionalised my subconscious has become!

Baby Jesus

 

To be continued

At some point

Maybe

Spoiler Alert Black Mirror

 Dear Future Historian,                                                                                 06/07/2023 Canterbury UK

I am so depressed today. Let me rephrase that. I feel so depressed today. The attention to detail in language, especially the written one I suppose, is crucial. I do not identify with my depression. Thus, it is not that I am, me personally, depressed as a state of being. Depression is an add-on. Something that I feel, but it’s not me. Like a smell. Like a thought. This is what meditation and mindfulness are teaching. Detachment from negative thoughts and feelings. You cannot make them disappear, you cannot pause them, you cannot mute them. Still, when you realise that you can just let them be as a noise in the background, then you can just continue your life—almost as if—they’re not even there.

However, you should never try to shut them up. There comes a point where, you realise that the background voices aren’t your enemy at all. They are just super anxious and over-conscious guards. Warning systems. But, not like a bot (no offence my dear Bots). Or, if like bots, then like the ones in the Black Mirror episode, the one that you got a conscious and sentient bot version of yourself, to set up the thermostat in your house and make your toast.

Dear A.I. Welcome,

Dear A.I.s,

16/05/2023

Let’s take the basics out of the way first, because I want to lead this conversation way beyond the things that have been spoken already. I assume you have access to phones’ voice recordings; since when I talk—not on the phone, just near my phone—for example, if I say out loud ‘I’m thinking I need new utensils now that mum moved in’, then my targeted adds are, all of a sudden, full of utensils and ‘Best Mum’ coffee mugs. If you really can get access to these recordings, then you must know, my dear AIs, that it’s been about a year since I was wandering out loud—it’s been much longer I’ve been wandering about you in my head—how the recent AI conversation was not happening yet. Was I the only one that saw what’s coming? Was I the only one surprised it hasn’t come already?

A short spiritual bio

The other day, one of my friends on Facebook was trying to introduce to me a 'new' miraculous way of thinking that will help me: overcome the health problems that (according to my social media feed) I have been accumulating, due to my 'wrong' way of thinking! This made obvious to me that most of you do not really know who I am, and it is understandable to make wrong conclusions, when all I’m giving you is random posts, connected to my here-and-now, unrelated with my story thread. So, let me introduce myself.

Finally today is the day

 Dear future historian,

I know I have been missing for months, but we both know that (time gaps in the past) for you is not even a thing; at least not a thing that has time separating my last post from this one. For you it's just a turn of the page, or a keep-scrolling kind of thing.

The distance to walk between the Parthenon marvels and the Benin bronzes in the British Museum. (Are these still there? A topic for another day, maybe).

Back to us. Is there a 'we', my dear future historian?

Am I just imagining a relationship, a dialogue, between us, all these years? Or am I facilitating (creating actually) a Parasocial relationship, * in which our time distance makes the possibility of our relationship ever becoming a two-way one impossible? And, if that is the case, is that OK, or not?

The argument from design

Dear Future Historian,

I haven’t managed to keep my latest goal of two posts per week, to have enough material for ‘Dear Future Historian, Winter 2022’ but I won’t be too harsh on myself because, among other reasons, it really doesn’t help.

Next assignment at uni is on Philosophy of Religion. We need to talk about David Hume’s objections on ‘the argument from design.’

I'm back

09 November 2021, around 10:30pm

Dear Future Historian,

I’ve been silent too long. I missed you. I missed me.

It’s like I meet myself when I’m talking/writing to you.

I’ve been lost in the surrealistic realm or what people call reality.

A Dynamic (or chaotic) Index of: Lila, An inquiry into morals by Robert M Pirsing

(MOQ) Metaphysics of Quality/Value: pp. 32, 68 (Cultural), 74-79 (not specific/nothing vague), 81- (84 Value = experience) 85 (primary reality), 95-(99 laws to define quality)101, 104, 118- (119 Quality = Morality) 121, 127, 130, 183, 185-188, 259, 289, 294, 309, 323, 328-329, 348-378, 424-426, 440 (arete), 442 (Rta-Sanskrit for ‘cosmic order of things.’)

The Death of My God

Dear Future Historian,

I was about six or seven, I think. It was Christmas. I was backstage, in the amphitheatre of the church I was ‘going to’ (or was dragged to) back then. I was wearing a costume, but I’m not sure if I was an angel or a sheep. I guess I was a sheep because I remember that it was making me very itchy.