The Guess Worker
The title of this section is, of course, a pun on the expression guest worker. But I am not going to write about my experiences working in a foreign country. Instead I want to seek answers to some of the age-old questions of philosophy and science – What is reality? What is consciousness? Why do humans behave in the way they do? Why do humans sometimes do terrible things? Where do our ideas of justice and morality come from? Why do so many of us have religious beliefs? What is art and why do we make it?
These are questions which have been thought about for many years and, I suppose, you might wonder if I can add anything useful to the multitude of opinions that have been generated. Well, I believe I can because I have a different approach. I start with this question - if we have opinions, ideas and beliefs how can we find out if they are true? My answer is - we first have to know how we form opinions, ideas and beliefs in our minds. Once we know this, then we can make an assessment of how they correlate to reality. In other words, we first have to understand our psychology.
In the articles in this section (see the column on the right hand side) I begin by investigating the psychology (and indeed, physiology) of how we create ideas. Once I've understood this fully enough, I then hope to use what I have learnt in tackling the questions mentioned above. It may take me quite some time, I probably will never find the answers to everything, but I'm going to try my hardest.