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Overcoming Nihilism: Why Meaning Matters And How To Find It

By

On May 11, 2022

In Philosophy, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 14 minutes
nihilism, infinity, ouroboros
Infinite Ouroboros

Anyone who has struggled with existential issues has probably bumped into the problem of nihilism, a philosophy that seems to influence so much these days. Nihilism comes in many forms, but on a zoomed-out level, it more or less states this: against the infinity of the cosmos and the absurd nature of human life, there is no intrinsic meaning or value to be found.

People have various reactions to that claim, ranging from an instinctive flinch away to a full-on agreement. But both ignoring nihilism and succumbing to it are bad solutions. The better path is to fully contend with nihilism—to intellectually give it its due—with the goal of overcoming it and connecting to a deeper instinct of meaning.

Nihilism and Camus’s Question

There is no question that a huge portion of life contains darkness—everyone faces death, suffering, and malevolence. Philosophers like Camus described the human condition as being absurd, going so far as to say the fundamental philosophical question was suicide:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

Albert Camus, the myth of sisyphus

That is quite the intense framing, but it cuts right to the core of whether life has meaning, or at least enough to balance the darkness. Many people answer such a question by believing in an eternalist philosophy. Whether through a God, a cosmic plan, or some other abstraction, they make meaning definite by removing it from the unreliable subjectivity of humans.

Others avoid truly questioning the meaning of life through distraction and pretense, tacitly ignoring questions about life, suffering, and meaning. And to be fair, it’s not easy to honestly contend with the dark side of the human condition, especially without some kind of grounding in religion or eternalism. In that case, pulling at the thread of meaning is risky—if the whole thing unravels, you’re left with suffering and meaninglessness.

But can we really avoid Camus’s question? It might feel better in the short term to ignore questions about absurdity and meaning in life or to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. But in my view, we ignore wrestling with nihilism at our own risk, as the nihilistic chickens usually come home to roost.

The Prickly Intellect

Opposite those that ignore the darkness are the “intellectually rigorous” people that take pride in honestly admitting to it. When faced with the question “why is there meaning to human life?”, they stare into the abyss of infinite regression and realize that only a religious answer can create axiomatic meaning. So for them, the only intellectually rigorous conclusion is that there is no inherent meaning to life—many find a sense of comfort in the honesty and consistency of this nihilistic conclusion.

And as we argued in our podcast episode on nihilism and the meaning crisis, an honest person should struggle with nihilism because it gets certain things right. In its cosmic, existential, and moral manifestations, nihilism has valid concerns that you should not carelessly toss aside. One should engage with nihilism and struggle with its arguments, but with a catch: you should do so with the goal of overcoming it, of finding a deeper and more sustaining sense of meaning in the process.

Because at the end of the day—and no matter what nihilism gets right—it seems like suffering only gets worse when nihilistic philosophies propagate. Nihilism might be more intellectually consistent, but perhaps the intellect should not be the only source of truth. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, “the intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master”.

So this article will briefly explore the history and philosophy of nihilism along with how it manifests in today’s society. Following that, it will explore ways to define meaning outside of the religious framework, a meaning that can help you overcome nihilism in an honest and durable way.

What Is Nihilism?

Nihilism, coming from the Latin nihil (meaning nothing), is the philosophy asserting that there is no basis for values and meaning in life. The term became widely popular after its use in Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Father and Sons, and it represented a kind of radical skepticism towards epistemology. If there is no God to give meaning to things, how can we be sure about knowing anything? You can find the same Latin root in the word “annihilate” which helps explain nihilism’s influence on anarchist political groups and revolutionary movements.

infinite regress

For some, annihilation meant terrorism and violent revolution. But the annihilation aspect of nihilism need not be physical—it could also mean extreme skepticism towards knowledge and values. This epistemological nihilism annihilates knowledge structures by pointing out that knowledge and truth have no fundamental grounding—nothing stops you from infinitely asking the question “but why is that true?”. It is reflected in a lot of postmodern philosophies popular today.

But the skepticism inside of nihilism has a long history, one that particularly synced up with the Englightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Enlightenment concepts and scientific thinking led human beings to question everything, including the fundamental axioms of their culture. Besides epistemology, other popular branches of nihilism include political, moral, and cosmic.

But probably the most common and encompassing definition of nihilism—and the one most relevant to our personal psychology—is existential nihilism.

Existential Nihilism

Existential nihilism asserts that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. It overlaps with cosmic nihilism in pointing out the lack of purpose in the entire cosmos, but existentialist thinkers focused on the human condition and the existential anxiety we feel in our search for meaning and purpose.

And the absurd nature of existential nihilism is that even in a meaningless world, humans still search for meaning. Even those that have discovered the absurdity still can’t help but desire meaning and purpose. Some of my favorite television shows like Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, and Mad Men explore this tension beautifully.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism

“What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Nihilism has a strong connection to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1901 work The Will To Power, he warned of the advent of nihilism and the catastrophe that the European culture would encounter because of it. The highest values of the human intellect, in seeking truth and questioning everything, would end up destroying the possibility of value itself.

In Nietzsche’s words, people would discover that there was no “true world” in which to ground any truth claims. This discovery is the endpoint of the extreme skepticism that annihilates knowledge and values. Some cosmic versions of nihilism are passive, but for Nietzsche, this destruction was an active part of nihilism: “nihilism…is not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plow; one destroys.”

When you devalue the foundation from which all other values are rooted, nihilism emerges as the only honest way to view the world. In this view, no value system has a legitimate basis for existing since the foundation of any such system is arbitrary.

Nietzsche’s Solution

Despite his grim diagnosis, Nietzsche did not think of nihilism as an endpoint, and like many existential philosophers, he struggled with how to overcome it. To that end, Nietzsche spoke about becoming unique individuals who create values for themselves:

“We, however, want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Nietzsche seemed to believe that we could find meaning within ourselves by aiming at our unique potential. He said that people “fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly”. But if we have the courage to listen to this higher voice, perhaps it is possible to develop maximally into who we could be. And perhaps this aim creates enough meaning to challenge nihilism.1

Amor Fati

Besides ideas of becoming our unique higher selves, Nietzsche also embraced Amor Fati, the concept of accepting suffering and loving fate. It is an idea that was central to Stoicism, and Nietzsche summed it up as follows:

“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

I think amor fati goes a long way towards embracing life and avoiding negative emotions like resentment that can tempt one towards nihilism.

Contending with Nihilism

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”

Albert Camus

I think at one or more points in life, we must all confront the problem of nihilism. And how you approach that confrontation will largely affect the philosophy of life you end up building for yourself.

Embracing nihilism furthers the kind of destruction that Nietzsche warned about. And from what I can tell, ignoring it only pushes those thoughts into the shadows of the mind where they can more deceptively influence behavior.

Embracing Nihilism

You can embrace nihilism actively and passively, and both lead to problems. Passive nihilism is more of the cosmic nihilism gestured at by writers like Kurt Vonnegut—”we are just here to fart around”—and by shows like Rick and Morty.

Passive nihilists do not wish for destruction, but they also struggle to build a proper argument against nihilism. Looking back on my younger self, I could express my passive nihilism as a “what human concerns really matter in this giant universe” kind of attitude. And knowing some astrophysics about the eventual heat death of the universe did not help…

Passive nihilism might be less destructive, and its honesty towards the dark aspects of life can be weirdly comforting. But it created resistance against self-improvement, and as I aged, the comfort was slowly replaced with a sense of existential anxiety.

Active Nihilism

Active nihilism means you actually follow through on the logic of the philosophy to varying degrees. When taken to its extreme, the active nihilist might be resentful towards Being itself—they believe it would be better if nobody existed.2

For most, active nihilism fuels one to question all truth claims with prickly intellectual methods that make everything relative—a “there is no absolute truth” kind of philosophy. Skepticism can be healthy, but the nihilist’s extreme skepticism/relativism can be too easily used to justify immoral behavior.

To use the metaphor of a house, relativists point out that where you put the ground floor—your culture’s axioms—is arbitrary. Adherents to Michel Foucault and other postmodernist thinkers, in claiming that you cannot separate knowledge and power, would say that the ground-floor axioms of knowledge are mostly about those in power maintaining control over others.

There are some legitimate aspects to that way of thinking, but claiming that knowledge is either arbitrary or fundamentally about power misses the most crucial aspect of our reality: either Being continues or it doesn’t—either the house collapses or it doesn’t. So while it is true that you theoretically can put the ground floor of a house anywhere you want, houses built on firm bedrock with a high bearing capacity are more stable than those built on flimsy soil. And the same logic holds true for axiomatic claims and their load-bearing ability to sustain civilization.

But the active nihilism I observe today does not seem to care about how durable the house is, so to speak. It questions and destroys cultural norms and values without concern, perhaps even with a malicious delight. This overly active skepticism—”putting one’s shoulder to the plow” in Nietzsche’s words—destroys value after value without knowing (or maybe even caring) whether human societies can survive the absence of certain load-bearing values.

Certain cultural norms and truths should be questioned and destroyed, but I do not think that relativism and nihilism can ever be proper justifications. And the irony that living by an absolute truth of “there is no absolute truth” seems lost on the relativistic nihilists.

Being

“The knowledge that nothing matters, while accurate, gets you nowhere.”

Dan Harmon

For me, overcoming nihilism comes down to one fundamental assumption that we can find deep within ourselves: Being is good. The light of human consciousness is a mystery and a miracle, and to let that miracle succumb to the darkness would be a tragedy. But since life is filled with suffering and tragedy, we need meaningful reasons to sustain ourselves and our species.

So if we need to believe in meaning to sustain Being, then we should make it our life’s mission to continually seek it—that is justifiable bedrock for me. This kind of meaning, grounded in the belief of Being, does not come from outside ideologies or intellectually clever arguments, but from deep within.

Is Nihilism on the Rise?

Trying to empirically figure out if nihilism is on the rise goes beyond the scope of this article, but I do want to briefly comment on my motivation for writing on this topic. In my experience over the last few years, I began suspecting an implicit/passive nihilism influencing many people’s behavior. It is reflected academically in the postmodern traditions and culturally in the popular political ideologies that casually destroy long-held Western values—Chesterton’s Fence is relevant here.

Changing outdated, non-inclusive, and unfair cultural norms is important for progress. But it is also important to do so thoughtfully, humbly, and with a guiding motivation that Being is good—that we should continue the miracle of human consciousness. I think ideology is dangerous wherever it comes from on the political spectrum, but it is many of the leftist/social justice ideologies that seem to flirt with nihilism these days. While these ideologies claim to be guided by virtue and compassion, under the surface it seems like there is implicit anger, resentment, and even sometimes a nihilistic urge to destroy.

One hypothesis would be that failing to consciously contend with nihilism pushes it into our subconscious, where it can influence our behavior in more deceptive ways. Another hypothesis is that the anxiety of nihilism causes many minds to implicitly seek out its opposite: dogmatic ideology and totalitarian certainty. That second hypothesis explains why many political movements have taken on religious fervor.

I frankly do not know what is going on, and my opinions on this topic are still fairly open and curious. But my instinct tells me that the dogmatic and righteous-sounding ideologies popular today have something to do with nihilism. For some, the ideology might be a cover story for their urge to destroy. But the majority might not realize how self-destructive certain philosophies are—they believe the label on the ideology box without knowing what is inside. Whatever is happening is above my understanding, but my instinct detects growing nihilistic darkness in our societies.

The image of the ouroboros at the top of this article—the mythical serpent that destroys itself—reflects the infinite regression of nihilistic skepticism combined with the desire to destroy, even if subconscious.

Finding the Meaning of Meaning

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

On the one hand, choosing meaning over nihilism has an easy explanation: nihilism does not help you deal with the suffering in life. It either has no effect on suffering and tragedy or more likely, makes them worse. So for me, the intellectual reason for choosing meaning rests on the assumption that Being is good and that reducing suffering is also good.

But to understand what meaning is, I think we must move beyond the intellect. The intellect craves precision and consistency, but for me, meaning is an instinct that comes from non-intellectual parts of myself, including the body.

What Is Meaning?

The prickly skepticism inside of nihilism wants to prove that meaning is empty if you cannot precisely define it. The intellect seeks to understand the world by boxing things into neat categories, especially when language is involved. A precise definition is great at telling you what something is, but to box something in is also to box it out. When you give something too precise a definition, you box it out of all the other possible manifestations.

And some words are too deep to be precisely one thing. We can still use the word, but we should know that the word is merely a label for an experience. It gestures at a concept that originates from places deeper than the intellect, including the body. The body is our primary connection to the world, and its signals are more honest than the deceptive nature of words and intellectual prickliness.

Our ancestors connected to meaning and Being through their bodies long before language existed, as did we during development. As Iain McGilchrist says in his book about our divided brain structure:

“The very words which form the building blocks of explicit thought are themselves all originally metaphors, grounded in the human body and its experience”

Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary

So if epistemological nihilism would assert that there is no ultimate meaning because all explicit knowledge must be defined in relation to other knowledge—like defining words with other words—then a good retort is that we can ground meaning in the human body and its experience.

To find meaning, then, we should not be tempted by the intellect to think of ourselves as abstract biological machines that happen to have an intellect. We are instead an embodied consciousness, and it is okay to be guided by the deeper embodied instinct towards meaning.

Meaning Is Surrender

“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”

Carl Jung

Another way to express meaning is to say that meaning is surrender, specifically surrender of the intellect. Meaning created by the intellect is misguided, and it tends to flirt with dogma and ideology. But the sense of meaning that comes primarily from our bodies is deeper and implicit. It manifests itself to us from outside of our conscious awareness, such as when something triggers goosebumps or tears. Meaningful signals from the body also convince me in crucial moments that love is a deeper value than anything else, even truth.

To believe in meaning, therefore, is to surrender to the signals of meaning that come from our entire nervous system. The instinct for meaning might be an evolutionarily adaptive guiding system that kept our ancestors properly oriented. In this evolutionary view, the instinct to do meaningful things, something we feel rather than think, might be what keeps us on a balanced path that sustains Being.

Meaning Is Pointing

For those whose intellect is still holding on, there is one other concept that might help you choose meaning over nihilism. I first encountered it in Kevin Simler’s article titled A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning, which tries to more explicitly define meaning.

After similarly describing the implicit sense of meaning outlined above—meaning as a bodily feeling/perception—Simler tries to more precisely define meaning to be pointing:

“A thing X will be perceived as meaningful in context C to the extent that it’s connected to other meaningful things in C.”

In this formulation, meaning is all about connectedness. Something is meaningful if other meaningful things depend on it. Your life has meaning because other meaningful people and things depend on you. And in such an environment filled with meaning, having more connections pointing outward makes your life more meaningful.

This meaning-as-pointing concept is a narrative tool used in many movies, perhaps most famously in It’s a Wonderful Life. In it, we understand the interconnectedness of meaning by observing the effects of removing points from the meaning web.

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

This conceptualization does not solve the infinite regression problem—you still have to assume some inherent meaning somewhere to get the meaning web up and running. But for me, appreciating this interconnectedness makes life more meaningful, and it’s far better than focusing on the dark abyss.

Nihilism: Brilliant Outrage

“Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, however brilliant”

Alan Moore

The intellectual arguments for nihilism are strong, and emotions of fatigue and resentment towards life can make it all the more tempting. Especially if we think belief in some eternal/religious entity is the only alternative, nihilism appears to at least come with some intellectual honesty and consistency.

But I think the nihilist/eternalist dichotomy is false, and it is okay to find yourself somewhere in between those two poles. You can contend with nihilism and understand where it’s right without becoming a nihilist, and you can also connect to a more nebulous and mysterious source of meaning without being religious. Staying on a middle path like this creates a true-to-yourself meaning, one that will make you less tempted by the comfort of dogmatism or ideology.

To be clear, I am not pretending to have solved the meaning crisis by intellectually beating nihilism’s arguments. I am purposefully bypassing the intellect to ground meaning in personal experience. The nihilist might call this an intellectual foul that in no way proves an objective or ultimate case for meaning. But when you compare such intellectual skepticism with the undeniable meaning of things like crying at a wedding, crying at a funeral, getting goosebumps at the climax of a symphony, holding a baby, having an uncontrollable belly laugh with someone you love, wistfully reminiscing about a cherished memory—the list could go on and on—the prickly/brilliantly sharp arguments for nihilism seem pathetically small.

So don’t be afraid of nihilism—contend with it and intellectually understand it. But to overcome it, surrender your intellect, go home to your body, and connect to the obvious truth of meaning.

Stoicism as a Philosophy of Life

By

On July 28, 2021

In Philosophy, Self-Improvement, Stoicism

Reading Time: 12 minutes
definition of stoicism and stoic beliefs

The definition of Stoicism as a philosophy is not the same as being lowercase s stoical—it is not being immune to feelings and emotions. Rather, Stoicism beliefs guide us to down-regulate negative emotions and promote well-being. Stoicism is a philosophy of life that brings you into harmony with nature, with what is.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, says “nothing can happen to me that isn’t natural” and later that “nothing natural is evil”. And in Stoic philosophy, this harmony with reality is the source of wisdom and tranquility in life, something much more valuable than even happiness.

**Click here to listen to the podcast episode that corresponds to this article**

Stoicism, founded in the 3rd century BC by Zeno of Citium, is one of the most influential philosophies from the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. And since the end of the 20th century, it has been undergoing an impressive revival.

The name comes from the “stoa” or porch in Athens where Zeno gave his lectures. Following Zeno’s death, Stoicism would continue to develop first under Zeno’s pupil Cleanthes and later under Cleanthes’s pupil Chrysippus. They and other Greek philosophers provided the more academic underpinnings of Stoicism, but only fragments survive from their writings.

Luckily, Stoic philosophy spread to other areas after Chrysippus’s death, most notably to Rome. Stoicism particularly resonated with the Roman aristocracy and according to Gregory Hays became “the real religion of upper-class Romans”. The most notable Roman Stoics were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.

But what is Stoicism?

This article will answer that less from the academic and historical perspective and more from the personal and practical wisdom of Roman Stoicism. The Roman Stoics had specific techniques for avoiding negative emotions and improving one’s life. Stoicism as a philosophy of self-improvement also fits in well with Exploring Kodawari’s approach to life.

But before giving the definition of Stoicism, let’s first highlight the importance of having any kind of philosophy of life to guide you.

A Philosophy of Life

In modern times, the word philosopher usually induces the image of a university department. University philosophers specialize in metaphysics, politics, logic, etc, and usually study those topics in a theoretical way. They might teach certain ethics and principles in their lectures, but it’s not obvious that they would actually live by them.

But the thinkers of ancient philosophy—especially Roman and Greek philosophy—had a different conception of the endeavor. They too had academic motivations for being philosophical—such as epistemology, logic, rhetoric, and physics—but they pursued those interests in the service of something else: a philosophy of life.

For them, developing a philosophy of life—a doctrine for living a virtuous and good life—was the entire reason for studying philosophy. Such a philosophy wasn’t purely abstract and theoretical but also practical and hands-on. A human being ought to live out their chosen philosophy to be a wise man and live with virtue.

And Ancient philosophers formed schools to teach their various wisdom to others. The Cynic school, developed by a student of Socrates named Antisthenes, promoted a monastic life of discipline and abstinence from pleasure. On the other end of the spectrum, the Cyrenaic school—one of the first Socratic schools— pushed for a hedonistic lifestyle. For them, the only truth they could know for sure was their direct sense-experience, making physical pleasure the ultimate good in life.

Epicurus had a similarly hedonistic school of philosophy that challenged the moderation of Platonic thinkers, although with more sophistication than the Cyrenaic school. Epicurean beliefs stated that one ought to extract as much pleasure as possible in life, but Epicureanism also taught enough self-control to avoid the pitfalls of overindulgence.

But most relevant to this article—and a rival to Epicurus—was the Stoic school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium. Stoicism began as a Greek philosophy but later evolved from these Athenian roots to become a life doctrine for upper-class Romans, including the emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is this Roman Stoicism that is most suitable to the modern individual looking to improve their well-being.

A Grand Goal in Life

The key to a philosophy of life is having a hierarchy of values and goals. What is worth pursuing in life? What do you most want out of your life?

And it turns out that answering these questions is much harder than it appears. Setting daily or monthly goals is easier, but stating your big life goals and putting them into a hierarchy is intimidating.

Why do your goals need to be in a hierarchy? Because if two or more goals conflict, then you have to know which one prevails. And at the top of such a hierarchy is your grand goal, or as William Irvine, author of the Stoic book A Guide to the Good Life puts it, “the goal that we should be unwilling to sacrifice to attain other goals”.

So there are two main components to a philosophy of life:

  1. In the most zoomed-out perspective, what do you want out of life? Of all the goals both short and long term, which one is the most valuable?
  2. What strategy will you implement in order to attain that goal?

Most people will freeze at the first question. While they have probably made a plan for their life—career, house, family, etc—they probably haven’t made a plan for how to live. And modern life makes this aimless life far too easy. As Irvine says at the opening of his book:

“Our culture doesn’t encourage people to think about such things; indeed, it provides them with an endless stream of distractions so they won’t ever have to. But a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.”

william ırvine, A guide to the good lıfe

Luckily, Stoicism has answers to both of those questions. But even if Stoicism does not become your philosophy of life, hopefully, you can see the value of having some kind of philosophy to guide you.

The Definition of Stoicism

The definition of Stoicism, at least the Roman version most applicable to ordinary people, is more ethical and personal. It helps an individual live a better life. The motivation for adopting it is nicely expressed by a series of questions posed by Gregory Hays in his introduction to Marcus Aurelius:

“The questions that the Meditations tries to answer are primarily metaphysical and ethical ones: Why are we here? How should we live our lives? How can we ensure that what we do is right? How can we protect ourselves against the stresses and pressures of daily life? How should we deal with pain and misfortune? How can we live with the knowledge that someday we will no longer exist?”

Gregory hays

These ethical questions especially express the definition of Stoicism from the Roman perspective. While the Greeks like Chrysippus spent more time on theoretical concepts such as logic and physics, these were not the focus for Roman Stoics like Marcus Aurelius. At the end of Book 1, Marcus even gives thanks to the gods that he “didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics”.

Tranquility

“Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’ “

Marcus Aurelius, Medıtatıons

With the philosophy of life framing, the definition of Stoicism can be summed up by stating its grand goal for living, tranquility.

Tranquility, or ataraxia in Greek, is a state of equanimity similar to the goal of Buddhist mindfulness meditation. It does not mean being immune to emotions (like the modern word stoical) or having neutral emotions. Instead, it means a kind of framing that contains the whole range of emotional experiences, one that puts you at peace with the world. A Stoic will observe their own life carefully and practice specific techniques for avoiding negative emotions and maintaining tranquility.

So the goal of Stoicism is not happiness—tranquility is something more subtle. A state of constant happiness, even though it’s probably not psychologically attainable, is also not something you would want. Life will have external challenges and setbacks. But Stoic principles provide an internal framing for these setbacks that prevents suffering and promotes joy. As Marcus Aurelius said:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

marcus aurelius, Medıtatıons

Stoic wisdom tells us that it is usually our reaction to a setback in life, not the setback itself, that causes suffering. Aiming at the goal of tranquility, especially of accepting what we cannot control, will provide a deeper sense of well-being amid life’s challenges. Stoics believe—and you can try their techniques for yourself—that positive emotion will automatically follow the acceptance of Stoic principles.

Stoicism Beliefs

In addition to the goal of tranquility, the definition of Stoicism can also be expressed through some of the fundamental Stoic beliefs. If you internalize the logic and connection between these Stoic beliefs, it will help you to understand the philosophy.

I do not think one has to become irrational or unscientific to become a Stoic, but accepting the premise and logic of these Stoicism beliefs seems a necessary prerequisite for attaining Stoic tranquility.

Determinism & Logos

Like all philosophies, Stoicism requires some underlying assumptions to make sense. The first is that the universe follows a rational and predetermined chain of cause and effect. This is supported by the concept of determinism in modern physics, which states that all matter in the universe—from the beginning of time until now—follows a chain reaction according to the laws of physics.

The Stoics thought of this determinism as a cosmic force that they called the Logos. Logos on the universal scale is synonymous with nature or God, and it organized the world in a coherent way. The universal Logos determined fate in Stoic philosophy, but on the personal scale, logos was the ability for the individual to think and reason.

“It was for the best. So Nature had no choice but to do it.”

marcus aurelıus

A second crucial assumption was that the Logos is good. To find tranquility against the challenges of life, one has to assume that the overall design, nature as a whole, is harmonious and good (not indifferent). In this view, bad fate is ultimately good if it advances the overall design of the Logos.3

Does that mean that we don’t have free will? The Stoics worked this out by emphasizing the control we had over our internal psychology. As Gregory Hays writes, the Stoics defined free will as “a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable”.2

Everything Changes

“Whatever the nature of the whole does, and whatever serves to maintain it, is good for every part of nature. The world is maintained by change—in the elements and in the things they compose. That should be enough for you; treat it as an axiom.”

marcus aurelıus

In sync with the determinism of the Logos, another Stoicism belief is the concept that everything is always changing. This echoes the famous words of Heraclitus that “the only thing constant is change”, including ourselves.

Marcus says that “there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it”. The emphasis on accepting change in Stoicism echoes Buddhist teachings that warn against getting attached to the externals.

That is because the externals are always changing, and it is unwise to anchor our well-being to something unreliable. Like Zen Buddhism, Stoicism emphasizes the transitory nature of everything so that we can learn to overcome our insatiable desires.

As we will see later, the concept of change also leads to the logical realization that we must accept our own change and eventual death.

The Dichotomy of Control

The first two Stoicism beliefs emphasize the overall design of the universe, the constant change of cause and effect. And in the face of that, Epictetus opens his Handbook with the following:

“Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”

Epıctetus

This concept is known as the dichotomy of control. It states that we should understand what we do and do not have self-control over. If we spend time worrying about external events that we can’t control, we will suffer. So it is much wiser to spend time on affecting what we can definitely control, namely our internal goals and desires.

William Irvine avoids the potential false dichotomy by reworking this into the trichotomy of control:

  1. Things for which we have complete control
  2. Things for which we have no control
  3. Things for which we have partial control

Understanding the dichotomy of control is key to understanding the definition of Stoicism. It is the wisdom to know when we should fight and when we should surrender. When we struggle for something that we have no control over, we are wasting our time and do not have tranquility.

This Stoic wisdom echoes the Christian serenity prayer, which asks for courage to change what one can change, serenity to accept what one cannot change, and wisdom to know the difference.

Stoic beliefs and techniques logically conclude that we should focus our energy on things we do have control over, namely our goals, values, and character.

Framing & The Art of Acquiescence

If I were pressed to give a one-phrase definition of Stoicism, it might be “the art of acquiescence”. The Stoic beliefs are all interdependent, but this one specifically follows from the dichotomy of control.

The art of acquiescence is the wisdom—the skill—to gracefully accept that which you cannot control. If you can change the externals, then go ahead and do it. But if you can’t, you should focus your energy on accepting reality and framing it to prevent negative emotions.

And the Stoics did this by separating our perception into two functions. First is phantasia, the initial mental impression received by our senses. We don’t have control over this. But the perception of this, the hypolepsis, is the value judgment that we place on our mental impressions. And we do have self-control over this, even in extreme circumstances. The mindful pause is a relevant skill here as it will help prevent your automatic judgments.3

So framing is this discipline of how we interpret our life circumstances. You might not be able to prevent something bad from happening to you, but you always have freedom in how you interpret it. As Marcus says: “Choose not to be harmed —and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed —and you haven’t been.”

Even when you have partial control over external events, the fact remains that you will always have more control over your internal framing.

And a good framing is one in which we acquiesce to reality while also safeguarding what is under our control: our psychology, our soul. Marcus regularly reminds us to protect our spirit within from negativity and false beliefs. Framing ourselves as a victim or becoming resentful will always stain our character and make us suffer more.

This points at the most powerful reframing technique in the Stoic toolbox: viewing everything that happens to you, even bad things, as a blessing instead of a curse. It is summed up beautifully by Marcus at the end of Book 4:

“So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.”

marcus aurelius

Said differently—in fact, this might also be a concise definition of Stoicism—you should believe that things happen for you and not to you.

Mortality

All of these Stoic beliefs logically lead to the most difficult acquiescence: our own mortality.

If everything is always changing, as determined by Logos, then we must apply this understanding to ourselves. We must accept the small role we play in the larger design and the brief time that we have to play it. Marcus reminds us that death is the great equalizer—that after death, Alexander the Great and his mule driver became the same, “absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms”.

The Stoics also believed that people fear death because they are disturbed at how they mislived. Without a philosophy of life, they probably wandered aimlessly and didn’t attain valuable goals. But with Stoicism as a guide, one can be sure to have an aim, and they will almost definitely attain virtue and tranquility. And as Marcus says, doing so will ensure that our mind “accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed.”

This means that the definition of Stoicism becomes personal to you and your conscience. Even if others don’t recognize it, you won’t fear death because you will know that you lived a good life.

“And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness —he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.”

marcus aurelıus

Stoicism Beliefs vs. Enlightened Hedonism

In some sense, the definition of Stoicism is really framing your life to be a hero and not a victim. As a philosophy of life, it is a way of understanding your mind and the world so that you can increase your gratitude and tranquility.

The Stoics even had specific techniques to induce these emotions, which we will cover in a future article. But the zoomed-out message from this article is that even if Stoicism is not for you, you need something to guide your life. Because without any philosophy, you will probably default to what William Irvine calls enlightened hedonism, the smarter and more planned version of hedonism.

“Furthermore, whatever philosophy of life a person ends up adopting, she will probably have a better life than if she tried to live—as many people do—without a coherent philosophy of life.”

william ırvıne, a guıde to the good lıfe

And lastly, you don’t have to fully convert to Stoicism to benefit from its wisdom. Like all religions and philosophies, I think you can dine à la carte and only take the bits that work for you.

So consider Stoicism as your philosophy of life. Or simply read about Stoicism from time to time—even this is enough to find nuggets of wisdom that will change your perspective on life.

Mental Models And Critical Thinking

By

On May 13, 2021

In Mental Frameworks, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 7 minutes
Critical thinking is using mental models

More important than learning what to think is learning how to think ( critical thinking). So in this article, we will examine one approach that’s been useful to us—that critical thinking is learning how to use mental models. Mental models are the frameworks that we use to simplify and understand the world. And building a robust toolbox of these is a great way to think more clearly and make better decisions.

At his trial, Socrates apparently uttered the famous words that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. It means that we should strive to understand ourselves in order to have a deep and meaningful life. This includes examining and being critical of our thinking.

And one way to get better at critical thinking is to build up a database of mental models.

Mental models help us by reducing complexity in the world. We can’t pay attention to everything, and models help show us what is important—they block out the noise and boost the signal. At Exploring Kodawari, we refer to them as mental frameworks, and you can view our growing list of them here.

But in order to improve our critical thinking, we must first understand how mental models work. So this article is a kind of “meta” mental framework explaining what models are and why we need so many of them.

Mental Models And How They Help With Critical Thinking

Mental models are representations of how human beings think. They can be loose concepts with a wide utility or very narrow concepts for specific applications. But in all cases, they help us understand the world by highlighting certain information within it.

Mental models also highlight the connections we see in the world. For all intents and purposes, the world is infinitely complex, and mental models allow us to let go of most of that complexity so that we can pay attention to the relevant bits.

Without mental models, we would be completely overwhelmed—we wouldn’t have a hierarchy of what to pay attention to. With them, though, we have a better chance at figuring out what’s important and how to act.

While each model by itself is biased, critical thinking is having multiple models that compete against each other. This helps us to cancel out that bias by seeing reality from as many perspectives as possible.

Heuristics

One way of understanding mental models is to understand heuristics. A heuristic is a fancy term for what is commonly called a rule of thumb. These are rules or models of reality that are easily learned and broadly accurate. By definition, they are not completely accurate and they do not work all of the time.

So heuristics are approximations of reality that allow us to be more efficient with our thinking. They lower our cognitive demand by blocking out the complexity of each individual situation and focusing on the broadly true pattern.

For a heuristic to be good, it either has to be true most of the time or has to have a bias in the direction of safety. For example, the rule of thumb to treat every gun as if it’s loaded might be literally false most of the time, but still pragmatically true enough to prevent horrible gun accidents.

And mental models are like heuristics in that they don’t have to be completely right—they just need utility. As British statistician George Box once said, “All models are wrong, some are useful.”

As long as we are aware that heuristics can bias our thinking, they are safe to use. And when we have to make fast decisions, they are really our only choice.

Compressing Reality

When an image or sound file is digitally compressed, information is strategically removed in order to create a smaller file. Due to redundant information and limitations in human perception, compressed files can be many times smaller while retaining almost the same fidelity.

And a good mental model is similar—it simplifies reality by removing unnecessary information and focusing on what is useful. This overlaps with the psychological concept of cognitive schema. Schemas are how our brains interpret and categorize information in the world. For example, a chair and a beanbag have little in common objectively, yet our brains see them both through the same schema of “something to sit on”.

Like heuristics, schemas/frameworks/models are about utility. Our brains did not evolve to objectively understand the world—to find the ultimate truth. Instead, they evolved to build models that are true enough. Like digital compression, successful cognitive models simplify reality by maintaining sufficient complexity—that is, they are true/accurate enough to remain useful.

As soon as they are not useful, we either have to use a different model or update our model to accommodate new information.

Your Toolbox For Critical Thinking

We’ve already said that because of bias, critical thinking requires you to have multiple models (or categories of models) that see reality from different perspectives. For example, a biologist might rely too heavily on evolutionary models (incentives, hierarchies, niches, etc) while an engineer might rely too heavily on systems thinking (feedback loops, emergence, critical mass, etc).

So having a toolbox of multiple models, including those outside your specialization, helps you find the right tool for the right job. Or at least, because different models highlight different patterns, you’ll find a model that best fits your goals.

Plus, having more schemas/models also means that you can learn and retain information more quickly. This is why I prefer the term framework. Like Charlie Munger says, frameworks give you a place to hang information:

“Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.  You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models.”

Charlie Munger, A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom

Just like your skeleton gives your body a structure, mental frameworks structure your knowledge in an organized way. And the more frameworks you have, the more organized and useful your knowledge will be.

Making Them Personal

Just because you read about a mental model, it doesn’t make it “yours”. To really own a model, you have to integrate it into your mind through personal experience. Otherwise, the model is just a shell—a name without enough depth. But this changes once you make it personal.

Personal models become deeply rooted in your mind. It evolves from a name to a complex network of connections and examples.

For example, I use the mental framework of the modular mind almost every day. This model says that, even though we feel like a unified mind, we are actually comprised of multiple “modules” competing for our conscious attention. It has a long and complicated scientific history, but the main takeaway is simpler: you have subpersonalities inside your head and many of them are shortsighted and selfish.

So with this model, critical thinking is realizing that certain thoughts are not even your thinking at all. Yes, they come from your brain, but the modular mind reminds us that evolution makes us think things that we don’t have to believe.

But just understanding the psychology of it is not enough. You have to also sit down and notice this mental framework in your own life. You have to subjectively feel how your modules try to control you. And this is true of all models—if you don’t make them personal their utility will be mostly limited.

Categories of Mental Models

As a person just looking to think more critically, make better decisions, and generally improve themselves, I’ve found that broader categories of models are often more useful than specific ones. You can use specific frameworks, but sometimes the larger category gives you enough perspective.

So here are some broad categories of mental models and a short description of how that framework can be useful.

Evolutionary Framework

It’s easy for human beings to feel like they are somehow separate from nature. But the evolutionary framework reminds us that we are a product of nature—gradual change due to evolution by natural selection. And this applies not just to our bodies but also to parts of our psychology.

Psychological traits that occur universally across cultures are good candidates for being adaptations. Certain cultural practices work this way too—you can think of culture as “idea software” that evolved to run on the hardware of the brain. When we learn to view ourselves through the evolutionary lens, a lot of our behavior and motivation make way more sense.

This doesn’t mean that evolved behavior is good just because it’s natural (the naturalistic fallacy). Instead, it’s a way to understand ourselves so that we can be more consistently moral.

Hedonic adaptation, the modular mind, and consciousness are all mental models that fit into this category.

Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies are the classic thinking traps that our brains can fall into. We are especially susceptible to these in arguments and debates. While fallacious arguments might appear legit and persuasive on the surface, they contain logical errors that invalidate whatever is being argued.

A logical fallacy may be committed on purpose (deceptive) or on accident (just sloppy thinking). But the point is that either way, an argument based on a logical fallacy is false—although a claim can still be true even if its reasoning is false.

So logical fallacies are great mental models to learn about and notice in your thinking. They highlight the common patterns of how we tend to be sloppy with our thinking, and being familiar with them will improve your critical thinking skills.

Some popular examples of logical fallacies are ad hominem, the slippery slope, and the straw man. Aim to learn them and notice them in yourself and others. This will definitely improve your critical thinking skills.

Physics

This category refers to general laws or concepts from physics that we can personify in our human lives. One example is inertia. Inertia states that an object will resist changes in velocity and direction unless acted on by an outside force. And this principle of motion also applies to individuals and organizations.

Relativity is another powerful physics concept that we can export into our thinking. You don’t have to understand Einstein to realize that our frame of reference biases us. For example, if we’re in a plane at cruising altitude, we don’t realize that we’re going nearly 600 mph. But an outside observer would notice this immediately. And this effect occurs in our social lives as well. Critical thinking requires that we be aware of how relativity biases us.

Engineering Frameworks

Engineering frameworks are similar to physics (because engineers rely on physics to build things). But they tend to involve concepts that reveal themselves in more complex systems.

For example, emergence says that sometimes lower-level parts create unexpected higher-level phenomena. And often we can’t even reduce that higher-level emergence to truths from the lower-level domain.

Another engineering principle is feedback loops (A causes B which loops back to A). A classic example of this is when you place a microphone next to its speaker, quickly resulting in a high pitch screech (positive feedback). Positive feedback loops run out of control whereas negative loops (like a thermostat) maintain equilibrium.

These types of frameworks apply not just to engineering systems but also to ourselves and the organizations we create.

Conclusion: Critical Thinking Is Critical

Critical thinking is not just knowing what to think but knowing how to think. It is understanding more consciously how the human mind learns and makes sense of the world. And because mental models are how we do this, learning them more consciously will allow you to think more clearly and make better decisions.

So if you want to get better at critical thinking, consider adding more and more mental models to your toolbox. Study them and make them personal. Over time, they will help you to live a more balanced and consistent life.

Mental Model Resources

The Null Hypothesis: Why we should all have fewer opinions

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On August 1, 2020

In Mental Frameworks, Philosophy, Self-Improvement

Reading Time: 8 minutes
The null hypothesis of having fewer opinions.

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”

Rumi

In the age of social media, sharing our opinions with others is easier than ever. And emotionally charged subjects, such as politics, fuel our desire to get those opinions out there. We want to join in and give our take on things—we want to feel relevant.

But opinions are tricky things, and we have to be careful. We don’t always understand how they formed and why we want to share them. And once we do share them, our instinct is to stubbornly defend them, even in the face of contrary evidence. But how sure should we be? How much about the complex world do we really understand?

In this article, I want to convince you of one opinion that I’ve grown to be most confident in over the last year: we should all have fewer opinions. This is a mental framework that I label as the null hypothesis, and it’s been a game-changer for me.

On a personal level, it will relieve the psychological burden of needing to signal—or have—an opinion. On a practical level, you’ll actually be right more of the time, since the few opinions that you allow yourself to have will be more robust. And on the societal level, maybe humility like this will create healthier and more productive conversations.

The Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis is a concept from inferential statistics, and it’s a way to avoid experimental bias. The null hypothesis is a default assumption stating that there is no effect or relationship between two phenomena—in other words, having no preconceived opinion. If there does turn out to be some causal relationship, then the evidence will indicate that, and you’ll know that your null hypothesis is false.

Approaching epistemology in this way is known as falsifiability, and it’s a concept in the philosophy of science introduced by Karl Popper. The opposite of falsificationism is verificationism, which is a problem because of confirmation bias. If you set out to prove your theory true, you might believe it to be true for the wrong reasons. So the null hypothesis is a safety mechanism that defaults you to having an “empty” hypothesis, that is until the evidence clearly indicates otherwise. 4

In more general terms as a mental framework, the null hypothesis is the space between two (or more) opinions. It’s the quality of saying “I have not yet formed an opinion on that topic”. And perhaps you shouldn’t ever form an opinion on that topic, that is unless you are willing to put in the requisite research.

Even with a falsification approach to research, the strength of your opinion should depend on the depth of that research.

Because part of this mental framework is recognizing—becoming mindful of—the relationship between your knowledge and your opinions. The more robust your knowledge is the stronger your opinions can be. Too often, though, the strength of our opinions is more informed by the emotional charge of the subject. When we vocalize opinions from this place, we are only a few probing questions away from looking foolish.

So the null hypothesis is also a reminder that you should have a high threshold of knowledge and research—again research where you try to prove your preconceived notions to be false—before ever codifying a strong opinion on something.

But people rarely do this. Mindfully watch yourself next time you’re in an argument and you want to prove your point. You begin researching something, something you’re sure will make your opponent look foolish. Is your instinct to verify the position you’ve taken—verificationism and the problem of confirmation bias—or is it to try and falsify your already held opinion?

Especially during political disagreements, I too often catch myself being a verificationist. You might win in the short term, but it doesn’t mean you’re right.

Having the mental framework of the null hypothesis avoids this by keeping us in a space between conclusions. It is remaining agnostic until the data truly lead you to a conclusion. You will have fewer fights because you will vocalize fewer opinions. And the opinions that you do vocalize will be carefully researched, or at least their strength will be properly calibrated.

Bias

“Bias is the brain’s strategy for dealing with too much information”

MOLLY CROCKET ON VERY BAD WIZARDS

I think about bias in a few different ways. One version is the more obvious and conscious bias that we all have. For example, you might have a bias towards or away from certain foods and music genres. You might hate classical music, which would clearly bias you against writing a fair review of a newly released classical music album. These kinds of preference biases are easier to admit, and we usually don’t demand reasons for having them.

From these more explicit biases of preference, we can slide into a more implicit type of bias. These can still be conscious, but we tend to mask their existence—to ourselves and to others. The most obvious example of this is political bias. People mask their political bias by asserting “I am being completely objective”. To the extent that this is even possible, it’s rarely what people are actually being. And such a person must know on some level that they are more critical of one side than of the other.

But there is a more disturbing layer to bias, even more implicit, that should induce humility. This is a completely subconscious bias in which your brain decides what data to promote into your conscious awareness. This type of bias is what Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University Molly Crocket has called “the brain’s strategy for dealing with too much information”.

There’s so much data around us at any moment, and if we consciously received it all we would be overwhelmed. The brain decides for us—not surprising since 95% of our brains processing is subconscious—what information we become aware of. This is a kind of signal to noise relationship, and only certain information—useful information—passes the test.

And on top of that, there’s also the problem of interpreting that data. There is an infinite number of ways to interpret information, and the brain largely decides on that interpretation without us. So you should realize that you might literally see a different world than the person you disagree with.

The Laurel-Yanny and the Gold Dress-Blue Dress internet sensations were a perfect example of this kind of subconscious bias, but unfortunately, most people didn’t get the humbling message that we are not in control of our brains.

Hidden Motives: Why we share our opinions.

Speaking of not being in control of our brains, there is a book that I want to point you toward that further develops this concept. In fact, one of the authors of this book, during the Q&A section of a Sam Harris podcast, gave the same advice of having fewer opinions.

The author was Robin Hanson, and the podcast was about his recent book The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life.2

**Click here to listen to our podcast interview with Robin from 2021.**

“In summary, our minds are built to sabotage information in order to come out ahead in social games. When big parts of our minds are unaware of how we try to violate social norms, it’s more difficult for others to detect and prosecute those violations. This also makes it harder for us to calculate optimal behaviors, but overall, the trade-off is worth it. Of all the things we might be self-deceived about, the most important are our own motives.”

 The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

What is the elephant in the brain? Similar to the elephant in the room, it is the often unacknowledged and awkward truth about how our brains really work.

We might feel like we are transparent to ourselves, like we are in charge and understand ourselves. Putting the question of free will aside, we feel this way because we tell others—and ourselves—why we do certain things. But if 95 percent of our brain’s activity is subconscious, how can we be sure that we know ourselves?

The relevant take-away from the book is that our brains hide information from us and manipulate the reality we experience. We—that is the conscious/speaking version of ourselves—might feel like the president in charge of our brains, but in reality, we are more like the press secretary. And your job as the press secretary is to give acceptable reasons for why you do things. As Robin Hanson said on the Making Sense Podcast, “You don’t actually know why you do things, but your job is to make up a good excuse”.

You give these excuses to other people in your social circles, but you’re also giving them to yourself.

And we are rarely giving the real or primary reasons for why we do things. We self-deceive because it makes it easier to manipulate others—to send a signal of our prestige or dominance.

And we don’t only hide our motives—we also invent counterfeit reasons. This post hoc rationalization is illustrated in experiments by Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga on split-brain patients, but the same process happens more subtly in a normal whole-brain person. Our ego, our press secretary, evolved not to give the most truthful explanations for our actions, but rather the most plausible and prosocial ones.

The psychology highlighted by this book is honestly disturbing, and I personally interact with it in small doses in order to maintain my grip on reality. For me, the takeaway is to watch myself more closely when I want to vocalize an opinion. What are my real motives: solving a problem or signaling prestige? Telling the truth or signaling group membership?

The Relief of Not Knowing

“When we understand the truth of uncertainty and relax, we become free.”

Jack kornfield

Much like a press secretary always has an answer, our egos always want to say something, even if we don’t have relevant knowledge. It will dodge questions, change subjects, and pretend to know things. The motive, largely hidden to ourselves, is often to signal our intelligence and prestige to our social group.

Evolutionarily this makes sense—we don’t have time to research everything, and it’s safer to go along with groupthink rather than stand alone as an individual.

Another motive might be to reduce anxiety. The world is so complex, mysterious, and unpredictable. We don’t like this insecurity, and pretending to know things helps us to ignore it, to fool ourselves into feeling more secure. But being uncomfortable with uncertainty is a bad reason to have an opinion on something.

Before having a meditation practice, I was doing that all of the time. I had trouble saying “I don’t know” or “I guess I got that wrong”. I still catch myself being too confident or pretending to know, but I now aim at what Jack Kornfield calls “the wisdom of insecurity”. This is accepting the fact that life is chaotic and insecure—we can’t control things and we don’t know enough.

And it turns out that admitting this—not just verbally but really feeling it deep down—is a tremendous relief. It’s a relief because it’s the truth, and truth makes our minds more harmonious.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t have any opinions. The null hypothesis mental framework is simply a reminder to form opinions in a slow and thoughtful way—to stay uncommitted while you research and to be truly guided by the evidence.

Don’t confuse emotional charge with reasoned evidence. Maintain your curiosity and be open to changing your mind. Learn, as Oscar Wilde said about the value of a university degree, to “play gracefully with ideas”.

You do know things, and you might even be an expert in certain areas. The key is to have self-awareness about the depth of your knowledge and to calibrate the strength of your opinions accordingly.

Have a few strong opinions in a select few areas. Form many weak opinions, but be willing to let go of them easily. And on the rest, enjoy the relief of not needing to have any opinion at all.

What is Consciousness?

By

On July 9, 2020

In Meditation, Mental Frameworks, Philosophy

Reading Time: 11 minutes
what is consciousness?

“First, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is nothing, and then suddenly, magically, at just the right moment . . . something. However minimal that initial something is, experience apparently ignites in the inanimate world, materializing out of the darkness.”

Annaka Harris, Conscious

How do you know if something is real?

It may seem like a silly question, an academic game for philosophers. But when you contend with the question more rigorously, the intuitive answers quickly evaporate leaving you wondering what is real and important in life.

We know that we do not see the world as it truly is because the fundamental constituents of matter are subatomic particles—quarks and electrons from which our macroscopic world emerges.

But is our view of the world even an accurate estimate of reality? It might be, but there’s no guarantee. Reality could even be an advanced computer simulation. According to Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, there is in fact a high probability that we are in a simulation.

If that’s the case, then your consciousness—every aspect of your life—emerges from the computer processing of ones and zeros.3 The experience of mourning someone’s death, falling in love, or biting into a delicious piece of fruit would be emerging from the complex computer code of such a simulation. But we can’t yet prove this one way or the other.

The fact is that it’s hard to prove the reality of anything. But there is one thing in this universe that you can know to be real, no matter its true nature or where it exists in space: your consciousness.

“Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.”

Sam harris, The mystery of consciousness

Your consciousness could be code running on some advanced human (or perhaps alien) hard drive. Or it could be, as most modern neuroscientists would assert, some mysterious result of the complex information processing of your neurons. After all, humans have roughly 100 billion neurons that each make thousands of connections—there are up to a trillion synapses in an adult human brain.

But even if reality is a simulation, it wouldn’t affect the reality of your consciousness. This is because, by definition, consciousness is the first-person subjective experience of being you. No matter how consciousness is ultimately grounded in reality, your having an experience is the definition of consciousness. And it is also the basis for caring about anything in this life.

Consciousness

Like so many words today, the word “conscious” has a variety of meanings and can be easily misunderstood. And as we will see later, our intuitions towards it are not to be trusted either. Consciousness is not synonymous with wakefulness, alertness, or the ability to self-reflect. And it does not require complex thought—we can agree that a dog is conscious but probably does not reflect deeply on the nature of its experience.

As a base definition, consciousness is simply experience. This experience, no matter how simple, just needs to exist. This definition, famously given by the philosopher Thomas Nagel is his essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, is the most encompassing and sensical one:

“An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.”

thomas nagel

If we have experience at this moment, then we are conscious—this we can know for sure. There are some theories, such as solipsism, which posit that you could be the only mind that exists. But there are better reasons to assume that other creatures with similar neural arrangements are also conscious.

And following that logic, we also have little reason to suspect that your kitchen table has consciousness. It does not have the same complexity as a brain and therefore probably does not have subjective experience. But in all cases except ourselves, we cannot know for sure.

Yes, consciousness does provide outward signs of its existence. People and animals show emotions while tables do not. And we can scientifically correlate damage to the brain with outward changes in consciousness. But from the outside, this is still not proof that someone or something else has consciousness.2

“The problem is that both conscious and nonconscious states seem to be compatible with any behavior, even those associated with emotion, so a behavior itself doesn’t necessarily signal the presence of consciousness.”

annaka harris, CONSCIOUS

An advanced robot could give every outward sign of consciousness—words, facial expressions, intense emotion—without actually having an inner experience. The complex programming of such a robot could mirror every detail of being a human, but the lights of consciousness could still be off. The philosopher David Chalmers calls this a “philosophical zombie”.3

But you know that you’re not a zombie. Even if everything else in your reality is not what it seems, you still have your subjective experience.

This definition of consciousness may seem vague, and it may seem to be lifting itself up by its own bootstraps. But experience is the most solid reference point for defining consciousness, and our confusion towards it merely reflects how mysterious this topic is. We simply do not know how an experiencing mind emerges out of the wetware of biology. But if you’re having an experience of reading this sentence, then you know it happened at least once.

Intuitions

Similar to many other scientific pursuits, our intuitions largely fail us when studying consciousness. These intuitions—shaped by natural selection— are fast and effective, and we need them to survive. We often experience them as a gut feeling, and they allow us to decide things without a complete understanding. For example, we often assess danger based on information that our brain acquires and processes subconsciously. These intuitions are life-saving, and it would be foolish to abandon them.

But we must also realize their limitations. Natural selection could not have anticipated the modern human philosophizing about the nature of mind. In certain domains, we have to let go of intuitions in order to think more flexibly.

In her book Conscious, Annaka Harris asks us to test our intuitions with the following proposition:

“People are conscious; plants are not conscious.”

It seems safe to say that this is a true statement, right? It certainly feels true. But upon deeper reflection, even this statement gets complicated.

We assume that people are conscious because they have a brain and a central nervous system, and plants do not. But as we said already, this is technically not evidence of consciousness. Still, our intuitions don’t really come from this scientific fact anyways—they come more from observing the behavior of an organism, such as its ability to react and communicate with other things in its environment.

But there are examples that challenge this. Locked-in syndrome is a terrifying condition in which everything except a person’s eyes becomes paralyzed, yet they still have full conscious awareness. Sometimes even the eyes are paralyzed. French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered from this and was able to tell his story through blinking only his left eye.

Imagine if his left eye had also been paralyzed—to the outside observer he would appear to be in a coma, even though he would be having a fully conscious experience on the inside.

There is a similar example, perhaps even more terrifying, known as “anesthesia awareness”. This is a complication with the general anesthesia given before surgery in which a patient fails to lose consciousness. Their body could still be paralyzed while some amount of awareness remains. Imagine being awake and feeling every aspect of surgery without being able to communicate anything.

The point with both of these examples is that consciousness can exist on the inside without any signs of it showing on the outside.

And on the plant side of things, there are behaviors that challenge our intuitions as well. There are examples of plants reacting to their environment, communicating with other plants, and even sharing resources with each other.

Do plants have memories? According to plant geneticist Daniel Chamovitz, plants such as the Venus Fly Trap definitely have a form of memory:

“Plants definitely have several different forms of memory, just like people do. They have short term memory, immune memory and even transgenerational memory! I know this is a hard concept to grasp for some people, but if memory entails forming the memory (encoding information), retaining the memory (storing information), and recalling the memory (retrieving information), then plants definitely remember.”

Daniel Chamovitz, Do plants think?

And the ecologist Suzanne Simard, in studying forest ecology, has shown that trees have complex communication networks. In a 2016 TED talk, she described how two tree species use underground networks of fungi to communicate and share resources.

On top of this, Simard showed that mother trees were able to recognize their own kin. They provided more resources to their kin and curbed their own root growth in order to leave more room for the younger trees.

Does this mean that plants are conscious? It would be a far stretch to say that it does, but it’s less of a crazy idea after learning about their complexity. And it does challenge our intuitions about why we grant consciousness to some things and not to others.

Somewhere along the spectrum of increasing complexity (rocks, bacteria, plants, insects, snakes, mammals, etc.), there has to be a moment when the lights go on—when there is suddenly something that it is like to be that thing.

I don’t know where that moment is, and maybe it’s nowhere close to plants. Or maybe the premise is wrong. But the point of these examples is that we must be wary about trusting our intuitions on this matter so that we give the problem its due diligence.

Mind-Body Problem

To be a proper scientist, one must subscribe to the materialist perspective. This is the perspective of physicalism, meaning the universe is made up of matter which follows the laws of physics. This is the objective perspective of the universe. It’s extremely powerful, and it serves as the foundation for scientific advancement.

But studying consciousness objectively—mapping neurons and brain structures—will always miss something. Even if we learn next to everything about how the brain works, there would still be a gap between those facts and the first-person subjective experience. Seeing the color blue is not just a particular firing of neurons—there is also your experience of seeing the color blue. And you can’t reduce that experience to outside observations. This tension is known as the mind-body problem.

Epistemologically speaking, the mind-body problem highlights an impassable gap between the subjective and the objective. No matter how much we learn about neurons and brain networks, it still doesn’t explain how or why conscious awareness hovers above them.

This was the main takeaway from Nagel’s essay:

“If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”

Thomas nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”

The scientific method is designed to remove subjective bias. It is about shifting the perspective to be more objective—something is true no matter who is observing it. It assumes that the universe is made up of matter that follows rules, and if we follow the epistemology of science then we can slowly but surely uncover those rules.

So the scientific method can study consciousness, and neuroscience has in fact learned a lot about how the brain works. David Chalmers calls this mapping of the brain the easy problem of consciousness—not because it’s easy, but because its easier. But it still leaves us with the mind-body problem, what he calls the hard problem. Even if we completely map the brain, down to every last neuron, we still have not bridged the gap between objective and subjective.

“Unlike the “easy problems” of explaining animal behavior or understanding which processes in the brain give rise to which functions, the hard problem lies in understanding why some of these physical processes have an experience associated with them at all.”

ANNAKA HARRIS, CONSCIOUS

This explanatory gap is perplexing, and it’s no surprise that most religions have a different view of consciousness. Most of these are dualistic and involve some sense of a soul that is separate from the brain and survives the body. It might not be scientific, but reflecting on the mind-body problem does give one a greater understanding and compassion for the religious perspective.

But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There are other theories that attempt to do away with this problem by approaching it in completely different ways.

Panpsychism and Other Theories

Plenty of alternative theories for consciousness are wild and unscientific, but some are more rigorous and plausible than they seem. And when you consider some of the wild ideas that are now accepted truths in physics, like quantum mechanics, keeping an open mind is essential.

We wondered earlier about where to draw a line for consciousness—how much complexity is required for consciousness to emerge? And if you can recognize the distinction between strong emergence and weak emergence, then you realize that having to draw such a line creates the hard problem of consciousness—why does one side of the line have experience while the other does not.4

Philosopher Joseph Levine coined the phrase “the explanatory gap” as a way to showcase strong emergence and the hard problem of consciousness:

“The explanatory gap argument doesn’t demonstrate a gap in nature, but a gap in our understanding of nature.”

Joseph Levine, “Materialism and qualia: the explanatory gap”

But some theories, such as panpsychism, do away with having to draw such a line in the first place. Panpsychism is the hypothesis that all matter, even atoms, contain some amount of consciousness.

There are definitely unscientific versions of panpsychism, but in theory, the hypothesis is plausible. Imagine if consciousness were a fundamental force in the universe such as gravity. Science values simplicity, and making consciousness fundamental removes the complexity around how it emerges.

The British philosopher Galen Strawson would assert that panpsychism is actually the most plausible theory if one wants to be a strict physicalist/materialist/naturalist. Because even though science has not figured out the details of panpsychism, epistemologically it solves the explanatory gap, the hard problem.

And panpsychism doesn’t claim that atoms or rocks think like humans—complexity is still a factor. Just like the gravitational force is proportional to mass, the experience of consciousness could be proportional to the complexity of a system. The “lights of consciousness” could become brighter and brighter as complexity increases.

And if you want to go further down the rabbit hole of alternative theories, then you can check out the work of cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman. This TED talk introduces his user interface theory of consciousness—the idea that our sense of reality is merely an evolved interface. In addition, Sam and Annaka Harris did an extensive interview with him in this podcast conversation.

Consciousness Is Everything

For the layperson who just wants to live a good life, why does any of this matter? I personally find the philosophical details surrounding consciousness endlessly fascinating, but probably they are not all crucial.

What is crucial, though, is to understand that consciousness is experience. And the utility of meditation is relevant here. It allows one to sit down and nakedly experience consciousness—to fully experience “experience”.

And it is the experiencing of life—in yourself and others—that serves as the foundation for all of your concerns. It motivates your moral and ethical positions in this life. You could say that a good life mission is to maximize the well-being of consciousness, wherever we find it.

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