Pure Reason's Crib Death

Descartes did the whole radical skepticism thing. How do I know I exist? Well, if I doubt my existence, then someone must be doubting. Cogito ergo sum, or whatever. That worked well, but it wasn't a repeat performance. One knows that their senses could be deceived at any time, or perhaps at all times. Pure reason can't prove that you genuinely saw a black cat go around a corner twice. It likewise can't prove whether Chuang Chou dreamed of a butterfly, or the butterfly dreamed of him. There's no first-order reasoning to escape solipsism. When a new atheist says "Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence.", they don't see their own arbitrary choices not to reject solipsism, but to accept an alternative. While I don't believe in solipsism, I lack any first order arguments to prove it nor the competing model upon which impiricism is based, and I doubt they do, either. It's a fork in the road, and there is no default option that is exempt from requiring proof.

Unknowable, but Believable

Now we know that we don't know. The nature of the world is unknowable, just like the nature of the future. I'll treat the world like I treat the future. I have no knowledge of the future, but I do have beliefs based on faith. I have faith that the sun will rise, and that faith grows because, to the best of my knowledge, the rise and fall of the sun is a pattern which would require a significant change to break. I trust the laws of physics won't change in the next five minutes. Perhaps a quantum physicist might explain some scenarios where this does indeed happen. For the world I psychologically inhabit, however, the world of newtonian physics acting on objects I can perceive visually, it's a safe assumption. If someone said "tomorrow the sun won't rise", I would say "I sure hope not" or "that would fundamentally change my worldview", but what I couldn't say is "No it won't, idiot!" I could bet them $1000 the sun will rise(if it doesn't, what do I need $1000 for?), but that'd just be an expression of confidence, of faith. I've been wrong many times in my life, and I expect that to continue. My worldview will adapt precisely because I know that I do not know, but merely believe things to be true. This isn't to say I lack any way to evaluate my beliefs, but that I understand how precariously these beliefs are stacked.

Metaphysics are Busted

So, if I pick up a rock, I can only really believe it exists. What of morals, then? Well, I can use my eyes and see a rock. Even if I crush a rock to a fine power and look through an electron microscope, I won't find any moral substance inside. We can perceive morals, though, using our gut(or brain, rather). If I hold up a rock to a crowd and say "this is a rock.", I don't expect any honest disagreement. If I instead make a moral statement to a crowd, I expect results to vary. I would be rather surprised if 100 random people could agree on anything remotely "controversial". Consensus doesn't exist for positive statements(see: flat Earthers), and it most-certainly doesn't exist for normative statements. I can't prove a rock exists independent of my perceptions of it, but I believe it because I can observe patterns that seem to happen even when I'm not watching. But that's building predictive models. "If I do X, Y will happen." is a test I can repeat. Morality lacks one of those. Best I have is a gut check, which is two levels removed from first order principles.

The Nihilism Twins

Another fork in the road! This one regards the response to losing your belief in objective morals. In common parliance, nihilism involves smoking, wearing dark hoodies, and losing all passion in life. Let's call that negative/pessimistic nihilism and push it aside in order to look at its sibling, positive/optimistic nihilism. What does this twin do? Well, anything they want to. Most people don't want to be ax murderers, even if you take away any rules or authority to reinforce that preference. The moral compass we're born with works well-enough as far as I'm concerned. Like Newtonian physics, it isn't the final word in morality, but it's a good place to inhabit. The biggest pro of owning your morals is that you can think critically about all the rules other people try to put on you. "It's morally right/wrong to do X." Why? Sometimes the answer is "because this institution benefits", and that sucks.

Helpful Ghost Stories

Let's run a thought experiment. A sick person sneezes on you and you get sick shortly after. What just happened? Germ theory would help a lot here in explaining, but that's like reading the answers in the back of the math book. Let's pretend we don't already know the answer and work our way towards one. You can observe this phenomenon and take notes. Obviously there's an evil spirit, and the sneezing spreads it. You notice that people who wear ceremonial face coverings spread/catch the disease less. The spirit must have some aversion to these face coverings. So next flu season, everyone wears face coverings and the sick stay away from the public to prevent the spread of the spirits. The rate of sickness drops. Clearly, you're giving these spirits a run for their money. Now check the back of the book where germ theory is explained. Quarantine and wearing masks are useful practices. Of course vaccines, antibiotics, and anti-viral drugs beat the heck out of any attempt to exorcise spirits from a sick person. What is illustrated here, however, is that people can stumble upon practical insights without knowing the underlying mechanisms. You can find your heading using the sun without any need to know why it rises in the East and sets in the West.

Harmful Ghost Stories

Ok, but what about bloodletting? That didn't improve people's odds of survival. These ghost stories aren't always helpful compared to the default of admitting "I don't know". Science has gotten a good handle on a few subjects, but others remain clouded in subjectivity. Remember morality? Well, throw beauty into that, too. Oh, and psychology, while we're at it. There's plenty of R&D invested in beauty products, but a laboratory can't touch questions like "what is beauty?" or "What is right and wrong?". Neuroscience is in the infancy of growing brains in vats, but still hasn't reduced human thought to computer science. The best answers we have institutionally are like the best morals we have institutionally. They're all more or less best guesses that institutions can live with. Homosexuality sat in the DSM until 1973, and is one of the more obvious examples of bloodletting. We can't flip to the back of the math book and find the equivalent of germ theory here. Whatever that is, it hasn't been discovered yet. Until the brain and philosophy are a science, they will remain magic. I don't propose we start doing magic, but that we instead acknowledge we already are. What are gender, class, race, neurotype, fandom, or nationality? Ghosts. Many of the stories surrounding these ghosts frankly suck eggs and should be treated like the bloodletting they are.

My Magic

So here we are. By this point I hope I can establish that I don't have any positive belief in deities or the supernatural, but am 100% interested in practicing magic. While I have no desire to take on bloodletting, I am nonetheless intensely interested in digging through ghost stories to find pearls of wisdom equivalent to "wear a face covering if you are sick". I believe I've already found some of these, and hope to share them in later sections.