by Caleb Nelson
Even if you prefer Sensing, whether you’ve ever thought about it or not, you already have a philosophy! It is operating in all areas of your life, and you base your decisions, thoughts, and worldview on it. Despite philosophy being the foundation of our lives and minds, most people are never fully aware of it!
Just as humans can digest food without having any idea how stomachs and intestines work, so the mind performs its operations without our awareness. Ignorance is the human default. Everything you know you had to learn. That means every bit of your philosophy that you have never explicitly examined remains implicit—unconscious. It’s as if our mind were a computer operating system with millions of lines of code. There is malware hidden in the code that will remain there until we consciously find it and delete it. All our “code” we haven’t examined remains implicit—hidden and automatic and not consciously chosen. When we do not choose consciously, we do not act as humans; we mindlessly follow our programs like robots. We react like instinctive animals. That means we are at the mercy of chance and circumstance.
For example, Jennifer meets Sam at a party. Sam is a nice and genuine guy, but Jennifer feels uneasy and suspicious of him. What Jennifer doesn’t realize is that Sam’s face reminds her of someone who abused her as a young child. Her implicit, emotional memories are causing an unconscious reaction in the present, and will affect her feelings, thoughts, and decisions about Sam. Implicit reactions are subtle and often go unnoticed. Unless Jennifer works with lots of introspection, she may never know what caused those feelings. That which is implicit is hidden from the conscious mind. The same is true of our philosophy. It will forever remain that way unless we consciously change it.
You cannot escape philosophy because it provides the meaning and the reason for all you think and do. Why do bad things happen to good people? What is the purpose of my life? How can I be happy? How should I treat others? What kind of person am I attracted to? Whom should I vote for? These are all very practical questions, and the answer to every one of them is philosophical. “As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy,” Ayn Rand explained,
“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.”
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It was philosophy that led America to fight its war of independence. It was philosophy that led Stalin to murder millions of people. It was philosophy that started slavery thousands of years ago, and it was philosophy that ended it. Philosophy is the hidden engine that turns the wheels of history. And philosophy is also one of the first things to be ignored and swept under the rug. Philosophy is the ultimate foundation of human action, and as such, it is absolutely crucial to make sure our philosophy is rational, and based on facts. Whether you like it or not, philosophy is at the core of your life and character. It is therefore practical, and useful. Philosophy holds an indispensable place in your life, and it’s important to understand its role, but that doesn’t mean you need to learn Greek or read books by dead Europeans.
The happiness, prosperity, and freedom of your life are dependent on the extent to which you understand and apply true principles to your life. Is anything more practical than that? Before we get into the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of freedom and prosperity, we need to spend a little time talking about the nature of reality and what we should base our knowledge on.
REALITY IS REAL
The most basic axiom of life to understand is that existence exists. It is impossible to act rationally if this concept is not the foundation of all our knowledge and beliefs. Existence exists might seem like a redundant phrase at first, yet it is important because there are many widely accepted, yet fallacious, ideas and philosophies in the world which reject this idea. If we do not base the decisions in our lives on this knowledge, then we are basing them on arbitrary wishes and whims—things that aren’t real. This is a problem because actions have consequences, and if those actions are based on false beliefs, the consequences will not be good. We might choose to believe that hemlock isn’t poison, that prosperity can be obtained through deception, or that violent discipline produces happy and loving children, but these beliefs do not correspond to reality, and believing them will not change their consequences.
What does it mean that existence exists? It means that reality is actually real, it is there, concrete, static, external to our minds, existing independently from our consciousness. It is not an illusion, not a dream, and will not change how it works in a moment’s notice. Closing your eyes doesn’t make the world cease to exist; it only limits your perception of it.
How do you know existence exists, that reality is real? First and foremost, because you exist, you are conscious and aware of yourself. It is an axiom that is proof of its own truth. (You cannot argue against this fact without first accepting it, because things that don’t exist can’t form arguments.) We know that we exist, and we know that other things exist because we perceive them through our senses.
Isn’t perception faulty and unreliable? In many little ways, yes. In the “Monkey Business Illusion” by Daniel Simons, observers are shown six girls, all are wearing dark jeans, and half have white shirts while the other half have black shirts. Participants are asked to count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball. The players begin to move around in a small area, frequently shifting places and crossing in front of one another. Midway through this exercise a person in a gorilla suit walks from one side of the screen to the middle, pounds fists on their chest, then continues off camera. The gorilla is very prominent and visible, yet many people do not see it at all, nor do they notice that the curtain in the background slowly shifts from red to orange.
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Upon reflection it isn’t that surprising. We have been given a cognitive assignment to perform which requires us to track multiple players and count their passes. Because we have been given the specific task to watch the ball moving only from the players in white our minds naturally screen out the players wearing black, and in all that movement, it is little wonder that we miss another moving black element in our field of vision and inconsequential color changes in the background. The mind can be fooled, and the eye tricked; emotion can influence what we remember; focus is selective; and memory can be altered.
On these small scales we show our human frailty, but in the larger scheme we function just fine and our mental failings do not significantly hinder our lives. Reality still exists even if we do not process it flawlessly. We may not see a person in a gorilla suit during an experiment, but that doesn’t mean we are unfit to observe reality. Nor does it change fact that we must use our minds to obtain the necessities of life. Not being able to perform multiple tasks at once doesn’t change the principles of growing food, for instance. A farmer can still understand and use the principles of raising crops even if he misses seeing a curtain changing colors. Our minds are far from perfect, but they are perfectly suited to discern the requirements for survival and happiness and then act on those requirements.
“Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
[9] – John Adams, at the Boston Massacre trial
Metaphysics is the science of the nature of reality. There are proper and improper (or correct and incorrect) metaphysical ideas. (By proper we mean corresponding to the facts of reality.) For example, a correct rational metaphysical axiom is “Existence exists.” Knowledge that existence exists is the primary requirement of anyone who wants to be successful in l
ife, a scientist who seeks knowledge, a businessman who seeks to work and achieve excellence as well as profit, a politician or voter who seeks to know what is right, a child who seeks to experience everything, and a parent who seeks to raise good children. They all must rely on fixed facts of reality in order to find success. The alternative—relying on luck, fate, or wishes—does not produce consistent success.
What this axiom means is that everything around you is real. A dog is really a dog. Two apples plus two apples does in fact always equal four apples. The universe exists, and you can exercise your mind to discover how it works. It will work the way it does whether you understand it or not.
The universe is run by natural laws. These laws govern nature, physics, economics, and politics—and to a more personal degree, your career, your home, and your life. If you follow these laws, you will prosper and be happy. (One of the laws of happiness is, of course, choice. Failing to control our attitude, energy level, and perspective will prevent us from achieving happiness no matter how many other true principles we live.) If you violate them you will be miserable. No one—scientist, person, group, or entity—made them up. These laws just are. You can’t invent your own, or avoid the consequences when you break them, but you can discover the ones that already exist. If that were not the case, we all would have decided years ago that doughnuts make us healthy.
Reality is real and natural laws govern all of it.
The knowledge that there are laws of nature that even exist and that man can discover them is part of what brought mankind from millennia of dark ages into an explosion of advancements in the last few centuries. Descartes, Locke, Newton, and others united in telling the world that the universe is intelligible and that man can know it and discover the unknown if he uses his faculty of reason. This was known as the Enlightenment era. It only spanned a few brief decades, but it left a nation as its lasting monument: the United States of America. During this time man discovered that life was governed, not by the arbitrary whims of some unpredictable and mystical god or gods, but by predictable, knowable laws.
The two basic laws of nature that man discovered were the laws of identity and causality.
The law of identity tells us apples are food, arsenic is poisonous, and grizzly bears can be dangerous. The law of causality tells us that if we make a grizzly angry we might become an entrée, or if we come in contact with sufficient levels of arsenic we will die. It tells us if we get vaccinated, we won’t get polio. These laws are why we refrigerate certain foods, why we don’t drink drain cleaner, why we put wings on airplanes, and why we wear warm clothing in the winter.
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FREEDOM AND REASON MAKE US MEN
What does man use to integrate the perceptual data he receives from his senses? Reason—the process of logic. Man uses logic, the art of non-contradictory identification, to compare his ideas against facts. This means being able to identify concrete things, like chairs and hummingbirds, as well as abstract things, like justice and theft, without contradiction. A toaster is a toaster; it is not a puppy. Freedom is freedom; it is not slavery, etc. The use of non-contradictory identification is the only way that man can gain accurate knowledge of the world. Not by emotions, wishes, or feelings. Knowledge can only be gained through reason (though the emotions do play a role as a feedback mechanism). Reason is the use of logic in thinking and decision making. This is the first rule of a proper epistemology—the science of how we know things.
(It is important to start with these two philosophic branches in order to arrive at other truths we will discuss in ethics and politics later.)
The basic rule of logic is the law of non-contradiction—that a thing cannot be what it is and what it is not at the same time and in the same respects. A contradiction cannot exist in nature, therefore if a contradiction exists in our thinking we can know for certain that we must be mistaken and need correction.
This does not mean nature is simple. The fact that light has properties of particles and of waves does not mean it is a contradiction—it is merely complex.
The law of non-contradiction tells us that the identifications we make do not change. Rat poison will not become nutritious if we label it “oatmeal”—it remains rat poison.
Over time, mankind continues to learn and more fully understand the laws that govern physical health, positive personal relations, financial prosperity, and spiritual peace. We don’t know everything, but we have the capacity to keep learning and discovering and progressing. Understanding and utilizing the governing principles of existence leads to a life of joy and prosperity. The misunderstanding, ignorance, and violation of natural laws leads to death, misery, and poverty.
As your parents may have told you, “You can choose to do anything you want, but you can’t choose the consequences.” This means that we can live by principles or not, and there are consequences, or results, from either decision. Thomas Jefferson admonished, “Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly”
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Some things are true whether we want to believe them or not.
Other things are true whether we understand them or not.
And still other things are true whether or not we even know they exist.
We often hear that “the truth will set you free.” The truth allows us the knowledge to be able to act while also offering a reasonable promise of the outcome of those actions. For example, we can be free from financial bondage by knowing that we can’t consistently spend more than we make; or free from concussions and DUI’s by knowing the relationship between alcohol and equilibrium; or free from high levels of harmful VLDL cholesterol by knowing how fructose is processed in the liver.
[12] Denying the existence of governing principles makes us captive to seemingly irrational or unpredictable consequences. Imagine how confusing and painful life would be to a pedestrian who was unaware of the frictional properties of ice and banana peels! Knowing the principles of life allows us to achieve the greatest happiness and accomplishments possible.
The alternative to knowing principles is to try and live in a world of shifting whims and partial truths, which are unstable because they are decided arbitrarily or by opinion. It is trying to operate on the belief that whatever people wish to be true is true, and whatever people wish to exist does exist—as long as most people agree on it.
OPINION OR FACT?
Reality and truth are not subjective, but opinions and preferences are. Reality is an absolute. A speck of dust is an absolute, as is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute.[13] What you prefer to eat for lunch is subjective. Whether you have bread in your belly or whether that bread is given to another is an absolute. What sports team you like is subjective—it is a preference. Whether they win or lose is an absolute. As the old Latin maxim says, de gustibus non est disputandum; in matters of taste, there can be no dispute.
Let anyone who claims that existence is subjective try to create a microchip, or launch a satellite under the assumption that nature has no laws and could change at any moment. Try to manufacture fireworks without rigid principles.
A businessman related a story about a time when he was involved in a motorcycle accident. “I learned a principle from that frightening experience: gravity works,” he said. “One can’t disagree with gravity. Imagine how silly it would have been if, while flying through the air looking at the pavement, I quickly shouted, ‘Gravity, stop working!’ But we do exactly that in our economic lives all the time. We say, ‘I’m not really sure what to do; I just hope the stock market does well.”
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As he goes on to point out, many of us act in the same manner today with similar, painful consequences. When a politician passes a law or a bureaucrat issues an order contrary to the laws of economics or human nature, he is wishing reality to be other than it is, to conform to his whims. Such thinking always leads to unintended consequences.
When parents try to raise good children without learning the laws that govern g
ood parenting and proper child development, they are gambling with human life. When we try to get more money without knowing the laws that rule finances and personal economics, we are gambling financially. To paraphrase Jefferson, when people wish to live their lives in freedom, but are ignorant of the laws that govern life and freedom, they are wishing for what can never be.
PRINCIPLES GOVERN
“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.
Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority.”
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- Calvin Coolidge
Principle: a fundamental, primary, or general truth, which describes an aspect of reality, and upon which other truths depend.
Principles often describe a specific application of the law of causality. In this way, “principle” can be synonymous with “law.” For example, one of the principles of physical motion is: If an object is traveling at a certain speed, then it will continue to do so unless acted upon by another force. Notice that principles can be expressed as an if-then statement as above, or as a simple observation of truth: Inertia is a property of matter; people respond to incentives; etc.
If you get nothing else out of this entire book, we hope you take away this most important truth: principles govern. This primary truth—that life doesn’t happen by chance, that every effect has a cause or causes, that every action has consequences, that a thing is itself—will set you free. Free from what, exactly? Free from fear, free from ignorance, free from wishing that your actions had no consequences, free from the confusion of looking at the world and wondering, “Why is it like this?” Life is now simple! If you want something, you simply have to discover and use the right principles of nature to make it happen.