User:Khayyam 77/Afedism

Afedism

This article is not intended to become a proper Wikipedia article since it describes a private philosophy held by the author. Maybe one day.... but for now it should be read simply as a personal musing.

Afedism is a recent philosophical approach developed by an Israeli thinker, which deals with questions concerning irrational beliefs: what is a belief? Why do people believe in things that have not been proven to be true or that have been proven to be untrue? Can one live free of any beliefs, and is it desirable?

Afedism is yet quite unknown, and exists mostly in the mind of its creator, who is also the author of this page. It is related to a model of psychology, society and of social evolution, developed by the same person.

Etymology

The term "afedism" is the combination of the negative prefix "a-" and the word "feid", which means "faith" in Old French.

Afedism and Atheism

From an afedist's point of view, atheism is a term that is not accurate enough, since atheism makes no claims about reality other than denying the existence of any supernatural entities - gods - whereas afedism rejects any idea that has not been scientifically proven. An atheist may believe in different ideologies or in various universal principles, such as: human rights, pacifism, feminism etc. The afedist rejects all ideologies and all assumption about human nature, the human condition, existence and on reality as in general, and instead examines the physical and biological forces that operate in every situation from a deterministic perspective. Afedism denies the existence of free will.

Internal Contradictions

One of the central tenets of afedism is that this doctrine contains a fundamental internal contradiction: pure afedist thinking is impossible, since the human mind was not 'created by evolution' merely for the purpose of identifying patterns in its environment, but, first and foremost, to meet the survival needs of its owner. One of those needs is the psychological need for self-deception, and therefore, no matter how much we try to keep our thinking purely rational and scientific, we will forever be tricked by our own brains into adopting various beliefs.

Determinism

The author of this page generally holds a deterministic view of the universe. However, the question whether all phenomena of one order of magnitude - or resolution - can be fully explained by phenomena of a lower order of magnitude still remains open. This question is, of course, still purely hypothetical, since no scientific discipline - physics, chemistry, biology etc. - possesses complete knowledge of its field of study as of yet, and might never reach such a point. Chaos Theory must be considered in this regard: in particular, phenomena represented by the Mandelbrot Set (endless complexity across scales) and the Butterfly Effect (minute changes in the input create vastly different outputs). Does this only mean that going from one order of magnitude to next requires us to posses absolutely accurate initial data, or that it is altogether impossible?

Regardless of the answer to this question, the deterministic approach still holds - if the laws of nature 'throw a die' to determine an outcome of a process (or the relation between what happens on one order of magnitude and another) then it makes the throw of the die a part of these laws.

Metaphysics

The (widely criticized) view of the creator of this page on all things metaphysical is that if it affects our physical world then it is also physical, and should therefore be measurable; it can be analyzed and it should, eventually, be possible to accurately describe it as a set of mathematical formulas.

Philosophy

Philosophy is the sum of a person's - or a society's - subjective views on reality, or on any particular aspect thereof. From the point of view of science, its only importance is that it has led to the development of scientific thinking and of the scientific method. Philosophy itself is a process which takes place in peoples minds, or in their collective consciousness - in their inter-subjective reality (to use Yuval Harari's term). While its logic might be vague and/or inaccurate, the logic guiding its existence and functionality within the human brain is purely scientific and strict, just like everything else in the universe.

While the ideas of philosophy are scientifically meaningless - unless they are pure science - the process of philosophical thinking itself is vital to any creature which possesses a brain. Every brain must reach a set of understandings about reality in order to be at ease, and it needs to determine its own attitude towards what it perceives to be real (not much room for maneuvering there, if you get it wrong, you die) in order to determine which actions to take, what to do. This subjective viewing of reality - from the individu8al or the cultural point of view - is in the essence of philosophy.

Recommended Reading

• A Fractal Model of Society