I use several different heuristics for living properly. Here is one of them. I hope you find it edifying.
- Think frequently on what is good.
- Test your ideas. Try to prove yourself wrong.
- Do your best, and try to be content with that.
Commentary:
I developed these rules by developing a phenomenological metaphysics. I developed the metaphysics by thinking about Descartes’ skepticism (I think, therefore I am). I thought that Descartes’ choice to reject his sense data while trusting his reason was arbitrary. If he had chosen instead to guess that maybe he was crazy and that his reason could not be trusted, then he would not have been able to prove by reason that his reason was reasonable.
After considerable thought, I came to the conclusion that all of human experience whatever can be divided into these parts:
Value (arbitrarily asserted, & concerned with good/bad)
Reason (innate in the mind, ban be trained, & concerned with consistent/inconsistent)
Facts (observed through sense data, or testimony of sense data, & concerned with True/False)
The validity of all 3 must be taken on faith and cannot be derived from the others.
All human experience ought to be decomposable into these subjects. As an example, science is concerned with finding rational explanations for explaining observed phenomena. Forecasting or detective work assume scientific knowledge to try to figure out what specific things will happen or did happen. Moral philosophy assumes unjustifiable moral premises & works through the logical implications. Game theory assumes some game, and finds ideal strategies (“ought”) for that game. Practical decisions come from knowing what one wants, and taking stock of one’s tangible surroundings in order to come up with a way of getting closer to what one wants. Empathy comes from using physical sense data & reason to try to build a model of what’s going on (both intellectually and emotionally/value) in another person’s head. Math is a pure expression of reason, and art/music is an expression of value.
If this metaphysics is correct, then the above rules I created ought to describe right action with respect to basically all observed phenomena. There aren’t really any fixed objective rules for what is good, but we need opinions about good & bad in order to be able to function. So, really all major questions in life are moral questions (what should I do?) Therefore, we should spend a lot of time thinking about the good. That could be done very broadly: it could mean appreciating a pretty flower, or studying philosophy.
Reason can tell you what is inconsistent without sense data, but it cannot tell you what is uniquely true, because there are an infinite number of internally consistent systems that don’t correspond to any known material system (such as geometry with an arbitrary number of dimensions). Therefore, the proper use of reason is to tear down bad ideas, rather than to actively support any given position.
Everything that is uniquely and objectively (in that everyone can agree) true comes from sense data. Nobody argues about whether the sky is blue. This is also where all tangible actions take place. But our agency in the material world is constrained. So, I took a lesson from the stoics and decided that doing one’s best is sufficient. What “best” consists of is informed by rule 1.
Edit: I am curious to know whether other people think that this post makes sense. I know it can be hard to think of what to say if you agree too much. But if you think it makes sense, I’d appreciate a quick, “makes sense” reply. Or, if you try it out for yourself and discover something interesting, you can write a reply about that. And of course, I’m sure I don’t need to invite replies which offer criticism, since this is the internet.