Tag: Albert Camus

Existential Ramblings and Conclusions

On By Chris ShuttleworthLeave a comment
Originally Written: July 20th 2020

The problem is that we have an experience, and that experience can be better or worse. Not to mention, that experience and its contents, which are ranging, are wholly contingent upon this world in which we find ourselves thrown into.

The question no longer becomes whether anything matters or doesn’t, as it surely does, to us, it becomes – how do we best navigate this existence we find ourselves thrown into? The social milieu, the time, the space, the experience, the present moments causal tethers, and the anticipation of the future, how do we navigate with the givens?

Do we stop trying, and produce an intolerable suffering that we subjectively experience? Do we struggle to pursue what we individually uncover as valuing, despite the universes judgment upon the futility of meaning? We ought to. We ought to rebel against the universes condemnation, and bring to the forefront that meaning which we find gives sense to our experience, that which relates to our conscious awareness the beneficiality of pursuing, not because it means something to the world, but because it means something to us. Is this real? Does it exist? It exists as sure as our experience of existence exists, and to optimize this experience is to pursue what we value, which, if we’re smart, we would look to discovering what is the most optimal pursuits to value themselves.

We don’t forget our thrownness into a world unasked for, we don’t ignore the universal insignificance of our existence, rather, we value the content of our own experience, we see the sense that is made behind every moment, as our embodied perceptive ability discerns which content to manifest in conscious experience, and in so inviting, we discern modes of being, we experience life, we live and we learn, we strive for optimal states, and we ought not feel guilty, nor forget the framework from which we work in.

Our natural orientation toward the world will inform us of our values, whether they be pre-conscious in perception, or consciously directed. Our genetic encoding for how to perceive, and the way in which we orient ourselves towards our environment is done so by a certain signification that objects in our environment give as mediated by the perceptive system (itself genetically and environmentally informed). This is base level sense, meaning, and signification. It also just so happens to be the case that we are located in a social milieu, a familial and culturally influenced system, which is formulated into our perceptive orientation system since birth. These systems all seek to orient us in a way that has value, from the basis of survival, propagation, and other evolutionary factors. This basis, provided with a social milieu, entails action and Being that works in a way towards properly being in the world. This “proper” is somewhat anthropomorphized, but it is a natural process that is underlined by a certain sense.

There is sufficient reason why we pay attention to certain things, why certain content has the effect it does upon us, why we reciprocally act in a way that is “intuited” as optimal for us. It is a production of a value system, that is part in parcel of our Being, that which we are, and our place in the world we find ourselves in.

We can extrapolate, as the desires and goals become enriched by the societal norms, become more complex as the means to survival and satisfaction become more entwined and enriched with a causally determined value. We pursue things, we say things, we do things, we think things, and we reflect on our own experience, not for no reason at all, but for good reason, it is all bursting with meaning, we ought to attempt to uncover such things, which we can (Value System Uncovering). Proper Vipassana meditation, analyzed with a phenomenological method, can disclose the intentionality behind conscious experience, can disclose the modes of being which we embody, and their characteristics (Phenomenology of Vipassana Mode of Being). One of which, as Hiedegger pointed out, is our natural care or concern system, which courses through every present moment.

Everything we do is fundamentally informed by our care and concern, our want, our deficiency and its alleviation. We care about things, we value things, because they mean something to us, there is no escaping this, whether we consciously attribute our belief structure to being nihilist, or absurdist, etc., the orientation towards a belief structure, and mediated by the belief structure, itself is rooted upon a type of meaning, albeit the selection of negation over affirmation (in these cases).

Why do you think you better yourself? We should answer these questions for ourselves, look to who we want to be, what we want to do, and strive to go there, for good reasons and intentions. Making this goal, these intentions, and the path there explicit provides a benefit towards achieving that goal of becoming who we want to become, of getting “better” in a subjective sense – made objective only in its relation to our subjective experience of being better or worse.

Why do we continue living? Why do I do the things I do? I do it because it fills me with meaning, provides positive states of being, it will make me a better husband, father, citizen, which themselves are sources of meaning, they provide a framework from which to act under that improves my psychological state, it fills my life with potentialities that have a significance to me, and for me, that is enough to continue living.

The better we are, in ways which we value, hypothetically (if our goals, intentions, practice, and definition of “better” is actually conducive to a better experience of life) the better we can navigate existence, the better we can cope with hardship, the better subjective experience we have, and the better we can aide others. By bettering ourselves, we become more equipped to handle life itself, optimally, that produces wellbeing for ourselves and those we care about.

The more virtuous we are, the better we can act, the more knowledgeable we become, the better we are able to understand reality, and the better equipped we become to live in an optimal manner.

While this is itself subjective, I think we ought to pursue what we value regardless, at the least on a “whim” as Camus said, but we can go past that, because this “whim” can be properly informed and backed by empirical evidence of improving psychological wellbeing, which ought to matter to us, seeing as our experience does matter to us. We can instantiate a path towards a consciously formulated goal, mode of being, character trait, personal accomplishment, creative act, etc. that is the result of a pursuance in accordance with what we find meaningful in the present moment, or what we value.

Now why ought we to pursue what we value, what we consciously formulate as being valuable? This is generally a tautology, we pursue what is valuable because it is valuable, it provides us with wellbeing, reduces suffering, creates a life that is meaningful, to us, by definition, because it’s based on our values.

This would be, if you could grant me, a subjective pursual that is objectively verified as a real present moment decision, act, understanding. The phenomena of such conscious decisions, the awareness necessary to realize, is all subjective, but we can say, from our experience, if is an objective fact about our existence that it is occurring.

I would never make a claim that pursuits and values are universally shared to the same degree, just that they objectively exist and can be discovered subjectively. Any further extrapolation would require quite a detailed phenomenological explanation as well as a philosophically vigorous explanation of what “truth” here entails. (On Truth Claims) I hope you see where I’m coming from regardless.

One more point on the is ought problem, as far as morality is concerned, I’m coming from a meta ethical perspective of moral realism, tempered by individually acquired wisdom in actuality, so there’s that.

In regards to extrapolating these musing beyond the life of a human, to other sentient life, the natural orientation we have towards the world we’re in, this goes for Dasein, and dog, and buffalo, is naturally oriented towards the content within its environment, pre-consciously. This orientation is grounded upon the biological structure of our system, formed through DNA, developed through our historical development by environmental factors. The dog isn’t aware of the being of the object which imposes a reaction, the dog is merely orienting himself to the environment he perceives in embodied pre conscious adjustments. The perception of the hot ground in Arizona, and the subsequent movement of the lizard in response, isn’t merely an empirical sensory intake and thus movement, neither is it the intellectual comprehension and directedness of the mind imposing direction and movement, it is the embodied perceptibility of his being which is seeking to reorient that being based on the conditions of the world in which he finds himself, the milieu which surrounds him.

I would say the orientation of the being of the organism to color and heat is intuited by its perceptive abilities prior to cognize, that being said, where anthropomorphized cognition and intellect must be suspended, such as in another organism such as a lizard, we cannot claim that it recognizes the being of such phenomena as such. We only claim the being of the object being perceived in consciousnesses as being a possibility due to our own recognition of our being, I think it would be fallacious to attribute the same power, to the same degree, to other beings – but this also holds true to members of the same species.

That being said, from our perspective, using our language, we can say that the organism does intuit heat and color, that they recognize the fluctuation, variance, and thus orient themselves accordingly, but this content is never made explicit to itself in a way which humans are capable of doing so.

So the organism does have a comprehension of the color and heat of the sand which it darts across, and thus is impelled to action through movement, but that comprehension which we say is the comprehension of the being of externalities, isn’t the same comprehension which we are used to. Our comprehension is mediated and filtered through our perceptive abilities, and the mode of comprehension which is enacted upon by the lizard isn’t making the content of his environment explicit, or attributing it to the being of externalities, he is merely reorienting in much the same way we do with a hot stove, or when someone walks into the room.

Every being, in relationship to any other being which enters into our perceptual or even conceptual horizon, modifies the being which is present in response to its recognition (not conscious recognition, merely perceptive.) The manner in which we do so, the characteristics of such modes of being, how phenomena influence us, and how we come to perceive, comprehend, and are modified by such phenomena, is the role of the phenomenologist to attempt to uncover.

The manner in which organisms which are farther away from us do so, i.e. not Dasien, becomes less clear and more difficult their degree of removal of sameness they are from us, as we all know, even denoting our own fundamental characteristics in regards to any given phenomena, noema, and the underlying noesis, is difficult enough.

What stands, regardless of the being which is in question, is that if it is life, it has a set of values, instantiated at birth towards certain aims. These aims, whether conscious, unconscious, or merely perceptual and reactionary, inform the being of the organism in question as to how to orient itself in life. Whether to produce locomotion, cognition, action, or inaction. This evaluation of our environment, our modification in response to the gulf between ourselves and the environment, urges us in directions, towards objects of intentionality. This all is presupposed by a significance, a meaning, an evaluation, which, if uncovered, can provide insight into why we do the things we do. This system isn’t merely bottom-up, but can be effected significantly in a top-down manner as well, which is where the absurdist or existentialist conceptions come in play. As long as our subjective experience matters to us, we ought to pursue that which we value, re-examine our value system, and direct ourselves towards actualization of that content – that is – if we want a meaningful life, if we want to have a positive psychological experience. While none of this matters sub species aeternitus, from the universes perspective, or from any perspective outside our own, the fact remains that it matters to us, and that is more than enough to pursue what we value.

Criticism of Absurdism and how to Escape The Absurd

On By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment
Originally Written: March 24th 2019

The error with duality, and with certain philosophies, specifically absurdism, is the fundamental claim that humans are somehow distinct and separate from the universe. To distinguish man, and the universe outside man, as two separate groups, conceptually, is useful and descriptive of a real situation, but it doesn’t mean that it accurately reflects a reality outside of our conceptual usage, to which, such distinction does “truly” exist. The trouble comes in making exclusionary claims about either two of the groups without depicting the role the opposite has in its functions. This distinction causes us to have a gap between the two concepts that is larger than it actually is, and is ignorant to the inclusion of man within the bounds of the universe, and the presence of the universe in man’s reality. We are most obviously rudimentary aspects of the universe, neither divine nor lowly, yet part of the whole. To distinguish the universe from ourselves is to leave out an integral part, it’s literally separating advanced biochemistry from reality as if it’s not part of the picture. Its saying that the teachings of physics don’t exist, it’s making a claim which doesn’t match up to established scientific truths and observational data.

Does it matter, to a human, if the outside universe is meaningless, when the human, himself, has found meaning or has the possibility of discovering meaning within the universe? It becomes irrelevant of the universe without him in it, as he surely is in it. Thus the distinction of absurdity in comparing the two is valid if recognizing that certain people are searching without finding, thus it is just a matter of them not looking hard enough, but it is not absurd for anyone who has discovered, or seen manifest in his consciousness, or who merely isn’t ignorant of his will to live, of a meaning within the individual’s life. The nihilist in the room is ignorant, easily cured by knowledge, introspection, abstraction, a leap of faith, or a change of perception. A pointed awareness toward the epiphenomenon of our own biology and will to live gives ground to sufficiently explaining at least one value system inherit within us.

Is it possible to escape the absurd through realizing truly real meaning in the universe? Perhaps it is not the contradiction between the humans seeking meaning and the nature of a meaningless universe that is absurd, perhaps the absurd is in the ignorance of our own selves being part of that very universe, and there being a meaningful path engraved into us biologically, paradoxically, or perhaps not so, created by this universe. Thus, if we are part of the universe, and there is a meaningful path to be taken through the passage of time that means something, perhaps only to humans or sentient beings, and morality truly exists in this sphere, without committing philosophical or physical suicide, we have stumbled onto a 4th solution that lies outside of the question. There isn’t any higher transcendental place to find the answers which we seek as most existentialist claim as they take leaps of faith. Nor is the absurd predicament a true predicament. But the universe itself holds meaning in the very fabric that gave rise to us humans. While we don’t matter to any other aspect of reality, the aspect of reality we do matter to is ourselves – and each other. Any being that can have a better or worse experience finds significant meaning within that experience, things matter to it, insofar as they have an effect on subjective experience.

Could this be the fundamental claim on which absurdism is broken? That the philosopher who compares the universe with the human, fails to recognize that the human, being a part of the universe, is in himself as much the universe itself as is anything else that is real. Thus, claiming the absurd arises when there is a human and there is a world, a world which is irrational and meaningless and a human which is rational, seeking meaning, rests on false promises, if that human has meaning within himself and which his seeking is able to find. This absolves the solutions of necessarily committing philosophical suicide, as nothing transcendental or supernatural is conceded. It is merely within the organization of one’s own consciousness that one discovers that there is meaning, it’s in one’s intentionality of our Being. Meaning, value, purpose, drives us through our desires and anticipations, our anxieties and our aims, it courses through our blood every moment of everyday, it drives us to continue living, and not only merely to survive, but to survive in a way which is optimal for us experientially. Our own subjective experience, our unconscious accumulation, our biological perceptivity, is all mediated with a purpose, it is transfused with meaning, whether we can conceptually admit to it or not. Our interpersonal relationships exist in a mode of being which is directed with meaning, it isn’t for no reason that we act the way we do, moment to moment.

The principle of sufficient reason applies to all phenomena, and that principle applied to our totality of being can reveal to us the value structure we contain, toward which we consciously and environmentally we modify, and pursue life through that modified mode of being as depicted in its total process in “Value System Instantiation”. Setting an aim to pursue, that aim being ours, and us being part of the universe which is “meaningless” (in its entirety, but not in its parts, obviously), gives us the fulfillment and purpose we have been searching for. We find meaning in the product of our actions, in consciousness intentionally directed, moment to moment, in alignment with a value structure (conscious or unconscious) – manifest in one’s relationships, in life, in experience, in subjectivity, which is part of this universe, not outside it nor transcending it, not more important than any other aspect of it, just part of it. 

Albert Camus committed the universal danger of intellectual folly in pursuing absurdism with the either voluntary ignorance in the above information, or the omission of such information in his philosophical works. While his framework from absurdism, and the conclusions of rebellion and his answer to the “absurd” conundrum is all coherent and of a rationally unique philosophic spectrum, he commits the sin of omission, or ignorance, in regard to articulating the full picture in which we find ourselves. It is a great danger to any person who is brighter than normal, intellectually gifted, or extensively educated to use the enhanced power of critical thinking, reasoning, and logical coherence down a path with unstable roots, producing a product, a work of abstract conceptual explanation that is through and through coherent and revelatory, yet built on sand rather than bedrock. Thus the transient obsession of the intellect can lead one to profound experiences and insights along a path that veers away from concrete reality, beautifully explaining and rationalizing the journey in a way captivating to the intellect, yet unable to visualize one’s own digression away from truth. As the intellectually powerful yet deceived man continues an abstract journey down metaphysical pathways, explaining and rationalizing aspects of such a revelatory perception, abstracting and logically tying ethics or ontology or psychology into the mix and supporting claims with proofs and valid evidence, he invests more and more of his conscious attention, time and energy on the exposition of such realms, captivating audiences, yet, the great danger presents itself when discovered by a random onlooker. The beautiful construction was built from cards, on a bed of water, and elucidates an entire reality on which we are not part of, which doesn’t match up to the one in which we find ourselves. People have done this with religions, governments, philosophical concepts such as free will, self-hood, the list goes on and on, and the rabbit hole proceeds from false axioms. Perhaps the foundational claims or interests which springboard the philosophy into the genius’s production are based on premises that are falsifiable, perhaps the interest and discoveries prove truly unuseful, unmeaningful, to anyone except the dedicated expositor, perhaps the system is coherent if the laws of physics were different, if reality itself revealed itself through concrete evidence to contain the cornerstones of which the intellectual built off of. Yet reality doesn’t always contain that stone, and thus the exposition becomes a sham, and a convincing sham at that. Thus the danger of the intellectual, that he should lead his life in using his powers to discover nothing of value, nothing of meaning, and to falsely believe so. Thus, one should be grounded and fire a thousand bullets from every angle into any premise in which one desires to proceed from, and the analysis and criticism of one’s values should be in the periodical checklist of the person’s consciousness, to avoid pursuit down such paths, and to greater clarify and point one’s direction.

Camus’ solution to the absurd in accepting a transitory meaning without philosophically forgetting our absurd position in the universe, smiling though accepting a meaningless fate, is thus discredited if the universe is framed differently as I have just shown. It’s not necessarily wrong, it’s just not a complete picture, it is omitting an important distinction, and caveat, to the distinction made between man and the world. Framing the universe as meaningless, is a false method of framing it, as there is meaning in life which is in the universe, which makes the inclination behind the premise lead to false conclusions. Of course the whole is different than the sum of the parts, but if a part has meaning, is made of meaning, is oriented and navigates experience based on meaning, then the whole necessarily contains meaning, albeit it may solely be one part of its totality. If we say, what is the meaning of the universe? For what purpose does the universe exist? The question makes no sense, as the arbitrary category includes literally everything, the only response would be to say it exists for the purpose of Being, so that its contents can exist, the totality exists for the purpose of supporting all existence (God?), as that naturally is what we see the contents of the universe doing, existing. If we make the clearer significant distinction, what is the meaning the universe has for us? For what purpose is our individual existence existing within the totality of existing things, “the universe”? Towards what end ought we pursue within this universe we find ourselves “thrown” into? That question itself is also slightly misleading, as shown above, we already have meaning which is driving us through every moment, we have genetically coded, biologically modified, culturally and environmentally shaped, desires and conscious experience which strive to achieve satisfaction of momentarily dissatisfaction. We can easily tell moment to moment what we want, and this desire stems from an evaluation of who we have the potential to be, or what we could potentially have. It is in this constant pursuit of the future that we uncover what we value, it is in pursuing what we value that we find the meaning the “universe” has for us, we find the fulfillment and the purpose for which we strive to conceptualize in the revealing of our value structures and the pursuit of that which is important to us, that which our care is directed towards. For more information on the topic: (It’s A Wild World, The Answer to the Absurd Conundrum).

Universal Existentialism, Its Manifestations, Absurdism, Solipsism

On By Chris Shuttleworth1 Comment
Originally Written: February 22nd 2019

All humans follow a philosophical existentialist doctrine, whether or not they recognizing or fully become conscious of it. It isn’t a necessary precondition to meaning seeking to recognize the absurdity, or meaninglessness of existence. One doesn’t have to be interested in formal philosophy, to follow a philosophically analyzable lifestyle, and the same applies to our pursuit of meaning. I think humans are hardwired to seek meaning, and to follow it, whether it is the will to survive and preserve the organism, or protect one’s family, or pursue success, everyone unknowingly follows a meaningful path that exists in an un-meaningful world. Thus, anyone who hasn’t killed themselves, has essentially followed some source of meaning and purpose whether they consciously know or accept that fact. Even the staunchest nihilist is a hypocrite in this regard, they are still breathing, they find some meaning in being alive, even in the worst case if it solely is the biological imperative, their being, the totality of the individual, has found some meaning in this existence. Solely stating that life has no meaning, and that meaning is un-findable, doesn’t make it true. Ones actions say otherwise. From an objective perspective, life has no meaning, in its particulars or in its totality, but all life has convinced itself, at least at the lowest level, evolved, so that it believes, or acts out the belief, that there is some reason to live. Life keeps on living, regardless of its meaningless place in the continuity of the world. Thus, all life, that is, somehow, miraculously, still alive, has a meaning in reference to itself that is sustaining its life. Whether this is consciously conceptualized, or not, it exists in all life that is not attempting to annihilate itself.

A rock thrown across the yard has no objective purpose to continue moving in that direction it was thrown, and will keep moving till it reaches its destination, it is simply the laws of physics at work, and if the rock was conscious of its own existence, and became aware of the physics moving it across the yard, and the inability for things to be otherwise, whether his thought mattered objectively or not, he could consciously believe that following that path he is on inevitably matters, revolt against the nihilistic tendency of reality, be happy with his situation and find a transitory purpose in moving to that determined location. This understanding, acceptance, consciousness, and transitory meaning I believe to be truer to reality as well as more psychologically beneficial than holding the belief that one has the “power” to move out of the laws of physics governing the situation inevitably. This revolt against meaningless, and the acceptance of a transitory meaning within this world where death is a given, is the solution of absurdism given by Camus.

We are the rock thrown. We can realize that the universe is at work, that we are part of it all, we are just an aspect of the physics of all nature, becoming conscious of ourselves, and while we can see that from an objective, external source, our lives have no meaning, as they are positioned in a meaningless world, we can accept our condition, smile at the absurdity, accept it, and revolt against the meaninglessness by creating or following values we ultimately know to be valueless, outside of ourselves and other life. Life is the criteria for meaning.

Some conclusionary states that a human may find themselves in, in regards to meaning are: 1) consciously finding the meaning inherit in the physics which created our biology which makes up the fundamental levels of our psyche which pushes us to survive, or 2) unconsciously following that meaning, or a meaning, without realizing it, one way or another staying alive or 3) while following that biological, psychologically inherit deterministic meaning, also become conscious of the absurdity, that meaning itself, and then create a further abstract ideology, morality, or system of meaning in addition to that which is naturally within all life, additionally in all human life, etc., 4) be unaware of our place in the universe, unaware of absurdity, yet consciously create a structure of meaning to be fulfilled in the world, or have a psychologically more pleasant experience through various sources such as the adoption of responsibility or pursuing something your psyche/culture/influences has deemed important or meaningful. 

Proposition 1) It is possible to believe that every moment in your subjective experience has meaning, every thought you experience, word you say, action you take has meaning. It’s possible to do this because these things all become prior causes with future effects. Thus you are impacting the future. The problem comes when objectively stating that this impact matters at all, is good or bad. This in turn, depends on the perspective, or lack of perspective, taken. When examined from a life-form, proposition 1 matters in its ability to affect the subjective experience of the being, for better or worse, in the present or in the future. Thus, where there is life, there is an importance to one’s action, from the perspective of that life which can be affected. But from the perspective of the universe, or from the inanimate, the nonliving, from reality as a whole, or as a collective of all its constituents, there is no meaning, as there is no reference, no individual, no experience, no consciousness, no suffering and pleasure, no better or worse state, thus no importance, no good or bad in proposition 1 “Answer to the Absurdist Conundrum”. Thus, being that we are life, and being that we want a beneficial experience, and recognizing there is other life, and other people are able to have better or worse experiences, better or worse conscious states, we are able to 1) act out unconsciously a (biologically/socially/culturally reinforced) system of ethics, 2) consciously adopt someone else’s or some organizations, system of thought or ethics, etc. or 3) consciously reason out a reasoned philosophical system of ethics, and develop morality, with a spectrum of integrity and thoroughness, and a range of influences and factors, yet consciously compiled.

Once consciously considered, one may ask how do I most honestly articulate where this morality comes from? I propose, through phenomenological means, or introspection, and the primacy of subjective data given through our experience, including; meditation, mindfulness, contemplation, philosophizing in general, studying other philosophers work, talking to others, wisdom gained from experience, etc. Maybe one asks, what are the basic constituents that must come into being to create morality? I propose that this is best articulated as morality comes into place once we take into account our own situation, of being alive, and our own conscious states (self-interest – in either its rational or irrational forms), and the existence of other life forms in a similar situation. It’s absurd to consider that a nonliving object would take on a moral code or act morally. As for itself, and for everything outside itself, from its perspective, the possibility of better or worse situations is nil. Life itself implies meaning, and the existence of life outside oneself logically produces morality, that is, at least from my perspective, as I believe other life has consciousness and an experience similar to mine, therefore better and worse states, therefore my actions truly matter in that they affect other life form’s experience.

If you reject the claim that any other being has consciousness, an experience, or that that experience can be better or worse in some way or another (solipsism), then you reject morality and our ability of effecting others. A question arose to me in considering this, could morality exist in this type of universe? You cannot deny that your own conscious has better or worse states, “Basic Moral Realism”, and perhaps morality, stripped of external meaning, stripped of belief in other beings’ consciousness, can at its base find morality, good and bad, in how thoughts/speech/actions are proceeding effects that are produced within itself, producing better or worse states. In this way it’s possible to produce a morality only concerned with oneself, placing good and bad value on what is better or worse for yourself, in terms of suffering and wellbeing. This value judgment exists upon the spectrum of what one considers is better for oneself, in one’s hierarchical value structure, it could be; hedonistic pleasure, usefulness, growing towards truth, etc. As philosophical positions and focuses can vary, their ethical systems naturally express the ideas behind each respectively. This says nothing about different philosophies and their overall ranking in a hierarchy which we ourselves create, or, to confuse the subject one last time, says nothing about the meaningless of every philosophy as it relates to a non-living phenomenon, including the universe or reality or time, themselves.