Here is a (not necessarily complete) list of philosophical “isms” that I believe in. I don’t believe in “isms” lightly at all, because I feel that adopting an “istic” view is a rather drastic thing to do.
The following list will give you deep insight into the way I understand life, reality and science… if you want to find out, that is.
- Antireductionism – the belief that breaking things down into simple building blocks is misguided, in my case because I reject the assumption that such simple building blocks always exist or are an accurate enough abstraction of reality.
- Nondualism – the belief that all dichotomies and dualisms are illusory.
- Fallibilism – in my case, the belief that there is no irrefutable knowledge.
- Possibilianism – the dissatisfaction with both atheism and all established forms of theism, and the belief that one should actively explore new ideas and never completely reject any nor commit to any possibility.
I feel that possibilianism should be applied to a much wider range of topics than just (a)theism. I think it’s generally desirable to be open to all possibilities. As such, I’m open to the possibility this article could eventually become outdated. - Spiritual relativism – not strongly defined. For me, this is the belief that any kind of spirituality gains meaning only and exactly in personal growth. As such, I hold that any spirituality is only meaningful for those in whose lives it has made a positive difference. I reject the position that any spirituality is absolutely better or more “correct” than any other. I don’t fundamentally oppose attempting to explain and promote existing spiritualities, though.
On the other hand, here are some “isms” that you frequently see people having that I’m very much opposed to:
- Pseudoskepticism – a non-agnostic skepticism that construes the lack of evidence as a negative proof.
- Scientism – in the sense that science is held as superior to all other means of acquiring knowledge and/or producing explanations and predictions. I am demi-seriously considering calling myself “sciencer” to distance myself from this form of scientism.
- Optimism. Figuring out why I reject it is left as an exercise for the reader.
- Pessimism. Figuring out why I reject it is left as an exercise for the reader.
Here’s a somewhat unrelated observation: staying awake very long (like longer than 24 hours) creates blog posts. At least for me.
I also agree with your positions on these various ‘isms’. The ones I moved out of most recently are scientism and reductionism. Your post “A scientific defense of pseudoscience” is also very clear.
Just wondering, have you ever looked into panpsychism? A good explanation I found on ( http://www.panpsychism.net/html/what_is_it.html rest of the article is kind of disorganized though):
“Christian de Quincey said “If both mind and matter are real, and are not separate substances, and neither can emerge or evolve from the other, then both matter and mind have always existed together, are coextensive, co-eternal and in some way, co-creative. Panpsychism, variously called panexperientalism or radical materialism, proposes that matter (or physical energy) itself is intrinsically sentient or experiental, all the way down.” (When de Quincey says, “all the way down,” he means from the entire universe down through the sub atomic particles or waves.)”
I did some extensive research (on a non-scientific level, tee hee) about various philosophical and spiritual positions, and that also briefly covered panpsychism. It’s something I’m agnostic towards: I consider it to be possibly true but I don’t particularly care whether it is… it doesn’t seem to me as if, if anyone showed panpsychism to be “correct”, I could draw any new and helpful conclusions from that.
I see what you mean. I haven’t really looked into it except running into it as an alternative to the traditional physicalist/dualist problem. Might be useful in expanding what we consider consciousness would cover (as *everything* would have it in some sense) or investigating ‘degrees of consciousness’ – I can’t imagine yet how we would get to that knowledge though.
you rejected them because everything is relative!
I couldn’t agree with you more on Spiritual relativism.
It’s always been amazing to me how people must push and embrace certain theology or spirituality, to the extreme of fighting and dying over it.
Not sure about the rest