I thought it would be interesting to see where we all fit in terms of philosophical outlook. Just in a basic numeric list form with a pithy explanation for why you hold the given view. [Full disclosure: I’m a relative n00b in a couple of these. The only things I’ve studied extensively are philosophy of religion, quite a bit of ethics, and a good deal of political stuff about 90% of which has revolved around anarchism as of the last year and a half. The other three areas I’ll list are where I’m pretty n00bish]
Supernatural: Atheist vs. Theist vs. Other
Philosophy of Mind: Dualist vs. Physicalist/Materialist
Causality: Free Will vs. Determinism
Meta-Ethics: Realist vs. Subjectivist vs. Nihilist
Political: Anarchist vs. Statist (yeah I have a feeling how this will turn out )
Epistemology: Coherentist vs. Foundationalist
Supernatural: I’m a staunch atheist. I think religion is about power (at least at the top) and I think it’s an affront to human freedom. I don’t mean to offend anybody with my sentiment, but that’s my opinion. On the other hand, I don’t think the supernatural has any evidence going for it and I don’t feel that there’s any positive reason why I should accept the claims of any religion (a la Hume and Clifford from Intro to Philosophy class). I had a phase where I was obsessed with religion and impressed by Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. I still think they are relatively entertaining, but the philosophy in this field is a lot more intriguing than your regular Internet atheist would portray it as.
Philosophy of Mind: I lean towards property dualism. I’m not necessarily a fan of eliminative materialism because the experience of pain seems to have some extra dimension that isn’t reducible to firing neurons. It’s just a hunch of mine, no well-conceived ideas to support it.
Causality: I’m completely agnostic on the subject. I don’t want determinism to be the case, but it seems the most plausible. But obviously you feel like you have conscious control and who knows about quantum physics and how that plays into the determinist narrative.
Meta-Ethics: Again, I’m rather agnostic. There are a lot of complications with moral justification, but in the end you kind of just accept that some things are “moral” and “immoral” and that’s just the way it is. If I had to pick, I’m relatively convinced by Fictionalism, but I don’t view that as a bad thing necessarily. We as conscious creatures interact with our environment and our psychological constitutions determine what is “good” for us as individuals; in any case it may be subjective but it isn’t arbitrary. I’m sympathetic to that view and some hybrid of the NAP, Nietzsche, and egoism (will explain if pressed ).
Political: Definitely an anarcho-capitalist. I’m convinced economically by the Austrians.
Supernatural: I believe in a sense of spirituality but i think that every belief system exploits spirituality and i do not believe in metaphysics or supernatural phenomenon. (not sure what ism that is)
Philosophy of Mind: Physicalist as well as Phenomenalism (not well read)
Causality: Existentialism (not well read)
Meta-Ethics: Realist (not well read enough, could be a Subjectivist)
Ethics: Amoral Egoism (I refuse the term nihilist, it seems silly)
Politics: Apolitical / Amoral Egoism / Liberal / Insurrectionist
Epistemology: Doxastic Aristotelianism / Anti-Skeptic (nowadays this may be post-foundationalist, not so sure though as these terms get really technical and confusing)
Radical agnostic. There might be a god (I think the infinity that is the universe it is certainly possible)
Strict determinist. I don’t even see how free will is supposed to be possible in theory
Total subjectivist, morality is nothing more than preference
I am a minarchist but it’s not that simple. I think Utopia is best set up for minarchy, but the real world is inherently more set up for anarchism, however I believe that minarchy is the most practical to currently set up at the moment. So I am an advocate for voluntarism but most trying to facilitate minarchy
Supernatural: Theological noncognitivist/ignostic, meaning I don’t know what “omnipotent” or “omniscient” could even mean.
Philosophy of Mind: There’s nothing to say about my mind; it is merely given. As for the minds of others, well, they’re a useful model.
Causality: Free Will and Determinism are both meaningless. All there is are successions of phenomena, and we can find more or less useful regularities among those successions. See here for more.
Meta-Ethics: A useless field, unless it merely means looking at how moral sentiments and traditions evolved. There are no objective ethics, but of course there can be subjective moral feelings that are broadly similar among the population. Short answer: like Mises, but I wouldn’t call it “utilitarian” as that often implies collectivism. Mises’s utilitarianism was subjective and purely individualistic, so it was something so obvious that it is meaningless to even comment on: we act to do what pleases us, including what feels morally good or bad to us. Time structure often confuses the language, which obscures this fact. See my various past posts on lesswrong.com and on these forums.
Political: Anti-statist, meaning I think it’s a bad idea to let any compulsory organization grow much larger than the size of a family. This remains the best encapsulation of my political philosophy and what I think the fate of states will be.
*Why else have a field called epistemology unless you’re going to go really deep?
Most importantly, language is a terrible system for representing thoughts, which is why there is all this confusion. Nearly all of my philosophical observations came straight from clearing up semantic ambiguities, reifications, word-thought overwrites, and other word-based errors. Essentially, I think the praxeology of communication (praxeology of intellectual discourse) holds the key to clearing up most of philosophy: simply the idea that intellectual communication is about trying to get thoughts from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. Keeping that ever in mind clears things up so-incredibly-much, because so much of the use of language in philosophy ignores that obvious point, instead asking things like, “What is X?” The question is, “What are we trying to convey when we say X (if anything)?”
