INTRODUCTION

Once again I am re-examing my worldview.

I was raised in a Christian home but as a teenager I rejected the church of my parents. At age eighteen I joined what I later learned was a benign cult. For the next twenty-five years my worldview was heavily influenced by the Worldwide Church of God. I tell that story in My Spiritual Journey Part 1 - My Cult Experience and Part 2 - About the Worldwide Church of God. At midlife I lost my faith and looked for and found a new worldview.

From midlife until retirement I self-identified as a secular humanist and an agnostic. My worldview was best captured by the Affirmations of Humanism - Statement of Principles. During this period of my life I was not very interested in spirituality. In 2014 that began to change and I tell the story in Part 4 - Secular Spirituality. Writing now in 2020, I am trying to define my worldview with clarity in greater detail as best I can.

SCOPE

My worldview is my foundational point of view in the broadest, deepest and most basic sense, the lens through which I see everything. There is an overwhelming amount of information available about worldviews. Where to start?

One common approach to describing a worldview is by answering some basic questions.

I have not found a framework that I am completely comfortable with so I will create my own approach.

WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL?

What is the most Fundamental question that I can think of that can be a part of the foundation of my worldview? Why not Nothing? is the question addressed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn in an article published in SKEPTIC Volume 13 Number 2 2007. My answer to the question is I DO NOT KNOW. Furthermore, I believe that multiple answers are reasonable. I also believe that it is not possible for anyone to know for certain what the right answer is.

Consequently, in my view, there are many reasonable worldviews but I cannot escape from my own.

Science has made a great contribution to human knowledge but has failed to tell us what ultimate reality is. The Standard Model of particle physics is impressive but leaves many questions unanswered. It is not a good foundation for a worldview.

More fundamental than the Standard Model is the language it uses, mathematics. Some people, like Max Tegmark, believe that the universe is mathematics but that idea is beyond my understanding. What can be described mathematically is impressive but is not a good foundation for a worldview.

Max Tegmark is the Scientific Director of the Foundational Questions Institute which has an impressive Advisory Council. Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a member of the Council. Occasionally I browse this websites articles and blogs.

Kuhn is the host of Closer To Truth, a great website for building a worldview. Occasionally I browse its Content Guide which is structured mostly as a list of questions begging for answers. But there are many answers, too many answers, most of which are reasonable but contradictory. Kuhn himself seems to be agnostic and I really like his style when he conducts his interviews. The videos on the website make many very difficult topics somewhat accessible to me.

Is GOD fundamental? The word god is problematic and I will restate the question. Is a SupremeMIND fundamental? Perhaps, but I DO NOT KNOW. I think it is reasonable to accept such a being or force as a brute fact and build a worldview on that foundation. I also think it is reasonable to not accept such a being or force and proceed accordingly. Very different worldviews emerge from such a choice. Personally, for reasons I will explain later, my worldview does not include a SupremeMIND or GOD.

I have concluded that it is not possible to determine what is fundamental. This makes constructing a worldview a more difficult task than were it otherwise. Nevertheless, I will proceed with my quest. Where next?

IS EMERGENCE FUNDAMENTAL?

I DO NOT KNOW if emergence is fundamental but I think it is a very interesting idea. That this universe emerged from the initial conditions of the Big Bang is awe inspiring. That life emerged on earth is awe inspiring. That homo sapiens emerged from evolution is awe inspiring. That minds emerged from human brains is awe inspiring and perhaps the only known example of strong emergence. Although I only know a little bit about emergence, it has become an important concept in my worldview, as I will explain later. The idea is not new but it is something I have been learning about only in the last few years.

References:

What is Strong Emergence?
The world works at different levels — fundamental physics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology — with each level having its own rules and regularities.  Here’s the deep question: Ultimately, can what happens at a higher level be explained entirely in terms of what happens at a lower level?  If the answer is ‘No’, if complete explanatory reduction fails, then what else could be going on?
Varieties of Emergence by David J. Chalmers
Written for the Templeton Foundation workshop on emergence in Granada, August 2002. Given the informal nature of the workshop, I haven't been especially careful with citations and such, but I should note up front that not much of what follows is fundamentally original with me. I hope that nevertheless there is something useful at least in the way I have put things together.Written for the Templeton Foundation workshop on emergence in Granada, August 2002. Given the informal nature of the workshop, I haven't been especially careful with citations and such, but I should note up front that not much of what follows is fundamentally original with me. I hope that nevertheless there is something useful at least in the way I have put things together.

WHAT IS A HUMAN BEING?

What am I? I am an animal and that is significant. We can learn much about ourselves by understanding evolution. Human beings, in one sense, are survival and reproductive biological machines. These drives, and others, have considerable influence on our behavior.

But we are also a unique animal, unlike all other animals. We are so different that be belong in a separate class by ourselves. We are unique because our brains have evolved to become the most complex thing in the universe. From this brain has emerged a mind but how this occurs is a mystery. Much has been learned about brains in recent decades but little more has been learned about minds which remain mysterious. Furthermore, and also very significant, this mind has free will, although highly constrained.

Because of the nature of the mind, it is very difficult to know ourselves well. To what degree do I function nonconsciously? To what degree do I function subconsciously? To what degree does my conscious mind distort reality? Is it even possible for me to create a woldview through which I can accurately view everything?

WHAT DO I KNOW?

Although I have had a love of learning for most of my life, I do not know very much. Compared to the aggregate of human knowledge which continues to grow at an accelarating rate, the percentage that I know becomes smaller with each passing day. I am very aware that some human beings have a much greater capacity to know than I do. And I do not know what the impact of artificial intelligence will be in coming years. Will machines gain greater knowledge and intelligence than human beings in my lifetime?

Some of what I know is my subjective experience of my own life which is different from that of every other human being. Much of that experience is beyond the reach of my conscious mind. Consequently, much of my behavior is intuitive. I believe that the model of a human being as a rational animal is deeply flawed. But I also know that my intuition can easily lead me astray.

What I DO NOT KNOW is significant. My knowledge is very incomplete and always will be. The knowledge of every human being is likewise very incomplete and always will be. I should not be overly impressed by myself or anyone else. Every worldview constructed by anyone will necessarily be incomplete.

WHAT IS IMPORTANT?

It is self-evident that what is important is important.

I was working on this page of my website when the coronavirus pandemic started. I tried to document my experience of this story in almost reat time for 2020 MARCH. At some point I hope to get back to this project and I wonder how the coronavirus will impact my worldview.

I want to expore my worldview by answering some questions. What is important? What matters? What is meaningful? What is valuable? What is right? What is wrong?How do we understand the past? What will the future be like? 

I have found the label for my worldview - metamodernism. The term gives me a foundation on which to build. Whatever I build will be incomplete and subject to valid criticism, as with all worldviews. My worldview needs to work only for me. However, it would be wonderful if it leads to connections with others who are likeminded.