I had wanted to start this thread for some time, but was hesitant to do so as I did not have very clear objectives in mind. Furthermore, the topic has very significant personal meaning for me, and I don't feel inclined to share very much of my private musings in a public forum, even one such as AnimeSuki, with which I am very comfortable.
But, given the constant bitterness provoked by discussions in the religion thread — the same kind of ugliness which also appeared recently in the death and afterlife thread — I decided that enough was enough: The self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics in this community clearly need an outlet to express how they perceive the world, and the meanings that they derive from those views.
It is my hope that, through this thread, people will begin to appreciate how it is much easier to attack other people's beliefs, than it is to build and defend a set of beliefs of our own.
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So, let me explain what a worldview is or rather, perhaps, what I define to be a worldview in the context of this thread.
Broadly speaking, a "worldview" is a conceptual framework that can help individuals structure their experience of life and the world around them. In other words, it's a cognitive model of reality as we perceive it. A worldview, when properly constructed, ought to have explanatory as well as prescriptive power. It should help to organise data from diverse sources in a way that allows individuals to derive meaningful information from the facts they gather. And hopefully, such derived meanings can then help individuals make informed, ethical decisions.
Now, let me make this very clear: A worldview is not a religion, although it could be influenced by it. Neither is it meant to be some kind of incipient world-conquering ideology.
It is, however, based on the concept of Weltanschauung, a term I first encountered more than 10 years ago at university. At the time, it was indeed a very new idea, being the main topic of research at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies set up in 1995.
To quote from the centre's introduction:
In particular, some effort was taken to clarify the distinction between what the centre calls "Scientism" and "Anthropocentrism".
Those of you who have read my posts of late will probably see where I'm getting a great deal of my recent inspiration; why I am robustly against the idea of using science and science alone to explain our world and reality; why I believe in the fundamental importance of taking full account of our emotions, and how they affect the way we perceive our world.
This stubborn insistence on separation of "fact" from "emotion" is, in my opinion, one of the key schisms that divides the world today. Instead of working towards a holistic worldview, we are tearing ourselves apart over many issues that we may, in fact, actually agree on at a more fundamental level.
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So, here's where we'll start. Tell the forum about your "worldview". When trying to describe it, check if it can answer some, if not all, of the following questions:
(1) Perception
What is the nature of our world, as you see it? How do you think it is structured and how does it function?
(2) History
Why do you think our world is the way it is, and not different? Why are we the way we are, and not different?
(3) Beliefs
Why do we feel the way we feel in this world, and how do we assess global reality, and the role of our species in it?
(4) Ethics
How are we to act and create in this world? How, and in what different ways, can we influence the world and transform it? What are the general principles by which we should organise our actions?
(5) Goals
What future is open to us and our species in this world? By what criteria are we to select these possible futures?
(6) Explain
How are we to construct our image of this world in such a way that we can come up with answers to (1), (2), and (3)?
(7) Actions
What are some of the partial answers that we can propose to these questions?
But, given the constant bitterness provoked by discussions in the religion thread — the same kind of ugliness which also appeared recently in the death and afterlife thread — I decided that enough was enough: The self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics in this community clearly need an outlet to express how they perceive the world, and the meanings that they derive from those views.
It is my hope that, through this thread, people will begin to appreciate how it is much easier to attack other people's beliefs, than it is to build and defend a set of beliefs of our own.
===========================
So, let me explain what a worldview is or rather, perhaps, what I define to be a worldview in the context of this thread.
Broadly speaking, a "worldview" is a conceptual framework that can help individuals structure their experience of life and the world around them. In other words, it's a cognitive model of reality as we perceive it. A worldview, when properly constructed, ought to have explanatory as well as prescriptive power. It should help to organise data from diverse sources in a way that allows individuals to derive meaningful information from the facts they gather. And hopefully, such derived meanings can then help individuals make informed, ethical decisions.
Now, let me make this very clear: A worldview is not a religion, although it could be influenced by it. Neither is it meant to be some kind of incipient world-conquering ideology.
It is, however, based on the concept of Weltanschauung, a term I first encountered more than 10 years ago at university. At the time, it was indeed a very new idea, being the main topic of research at the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies set up in 1995.
To quote from the centre's introduction:
Quote:
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We can find our way in our own house. We know how many rooms it has, and how they are used. Knowing one's house thoroughly makes one feel "at home". The world around us can be construed as a huge "house" that we share with other humans, as well as with animals and plants. It is in this world that we exist, fulfilling our tasks, enjoying things, developing social relations, creating a family. In short, we live in this world. We thus have a deep human need to know and to trust it, to be emotionally involved in it. Many of us, however, experience an increasing feeling of alienation. Even though, with the expansion of society, virtually the entire surface of the planet has become a part of our house, often we do not feel "at home" in that house. With the rapid and spontaneous changes of the past decades, so many new wings and rooms have been constructed or rearranged that we have lost familiarity with our house. We often have the impression that what remains of the world is a collection of isolated fragments, without any structure and coherence. Our personal "everyday" world seems unable to harmonise itself with the global world of society, history and cosmos. It is our conviction that the time has come to make a conscious effort towards the construction of global worldviews, in order to overcome this situation of fragmentation. |
Quote:
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Scientism suggests that the positive natural sciences provide the only model of explanation. Anthropocentrism wrongly takes humans as the centre and only purpose of the cosmos. In the past, worldviews have been primarily "cosmocentric", starting with the birth of philosophy in Ionia in the 6th century BC, a bias still present in many non-Western cultures. Since the "anthropocentric turn" of the Renaissance, the Humanists and Descartes, an rather explicit form of anthropocentrism has dominated Western culture. One can rightly ascertain a "discovery of subjectivity" here. But through the evolution of our knowledge in the physical sciences and in the human sciences, we have come to see that humanity can only be understood as part of a larger whole. Scientism and Anthropocentrism, in their extreme forms, are unacceptable. We can, however, agree with Scientism when it claims that the many scientific methods deliver models of explanation that have to be taken into account in any holistic modern worldview. And from the Humanist tradition we can learn how to interpret texts and other cultural products. |
This stubborn insistence on separation of "fact" from "emotion" is, in my opinion, one of the key schisms that divides the world today. Instead of working towards a holistic worldview, we are tearing ourselves apart over many issues that we may, in fact, actually agree on at a more fundamental level.
===========================
So, here's where we'll start. Tell the forum about your "worldview". When trying to describe it, check if it can answer some, if not all, of the following questions:
(1) Perception
What is the nature of our world, as you see it? How do you think it is structured and how does it function?
(2) History
Why do you think our world is the way it is, and not different? Why are we the way we are, and not different?
(3) Beliefs
Why do we feel the way we feel in this world, and how do we assess global reality, and the role of our species in it?
(4) Ethics
How are we to act and create in this world? How, and in what different ways, can we influence the world and transform it? What are the general principles by which we should organise our actions?
(5) Goals
What future is open to us and our species in this world? By what criteria are we to select these possible futures?
(6) Explain
How are we to construct our image of this world in such a way that we can come up with answers to (1), (2), and (3)?
(7) Actions
What are some of the partial answers that we can propose to these questions?