As part of an ongoing project of self-reflection, I have enlisted the help of LLMs to explore and document my worldview. I asked the machine god to pose questions to me and to create a summary based on my responses. My original, unedited responses are included at the end.

Last updated: Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Personal Worldview Summary

Fundamental Nature of Reality

  • Primarily materialist perspective: believes all phenomena can be explained by physical laws and processes
  • Guided by science and reason as the main epistemological tools
  • Open to the simulation hypothesis, but skeptical of traditional spiritual concepts
  • Maintains epistemic humility, acknowledging that much about reality remains unknown
  • Values falsifiability in claims about existence
  • Critical of discourse not tethered to reason and rational inquiry
  • Recognizes limitations of human knowledge both present and possibly future

Consciousness and the Mind

  • Acknowledges consciousness as particularly challenging to explain within a materialist framework
  • Views consciousness as potentially emerging from increasing intelligence and brain complexity
  • Considers evidence linking consciousness to specific patterns of brain activity
  • Believes everyday mental processes are essentially brain activity
  • Remains open to the possibility that consciousness could emerge in non-organic systems
  • References the idea that consciousness might be a certain kind of information processing where the substrate is irrelevant
  • Approaches the “hard problem” of consciousness with significant intellectual humility

Morality and Ethics

  • Considers consciousness a prerequisite for morality—moral concerns only exist in a universe with conscious beings
  • Takes a predominantly consequentialist approach, focusing on harm and suffering
  • Believes moral concern should scale with a being’s capacity for subjective experience
  • Views “suffering is bad” as having an objective quality, though acknowledges difficulty in proving its objectivity
  • Influenced by Sam Harris’s moral landscape concept and Peter Singer’s ethics
  • Believes in a moral obligation to prevent and alleviate suffering, including for those physically distant
  • Skeptical of “rights” as objective entities, seeing them as human-created abstractions
  • Critical of moral frameworks derived from religion, social customs, and political systems
  • Advocates for a scientific understanding and rational argument as guides for moral decisions
  • Supports personal freedom when actions don’t harm other conscious beings
  • Recognizes the complexity in fully understanding the consequences of one’s actions (“harm radius”)

Original Responses

What do you believe is the fundamental nature of reality or existence? (For example, is it primarily material, spiritual, a simulation, or something else?)

My understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and existence is governed by what science and reason tell us, so I believe that all phenomena can be explained by the physical laws and processes of the universe, whether or not we as humans ultimately discover those laws and processes. Thus, my understanding of existence would be primarily material, though that does not rule out the possibility that we are in a simulation. Spiritual existence in the traditional sense — that involving souls, spirits, deities, the power of prayer, etc. — is something I view with quite a bit of skepticism, since these concepts often involve unfalsifiable claims and are promulgated through discourse that is not tethered to reason and rational inquiry.

I would say though that I don’t claim to have confidence about the true fundamental nature of reality and existence. I’m sure there’s quite a bit about our universe and existence in general that would surprise me and that future generations of humans will discover or perhaps never discover.

How do you understand the nature of consciousness and the mind? Where do you believe consciousness comes from, and what is its relationship to the physical brain?

Actually, that’s something that I forgot to mention in my previous response: consciousness is among the phenomena that eludes my understanding of existence through the physical laws and processes of the universe (hence, my hesitation to state my positions with a lot of confidence). This is not to say that I find the prevailing spiritual conceptions of the mind and consciousness to be convincing; I just don’t think we’re that close to having answers to these questions, regardless of what philosophical camp you belong to.

I really am quite stumped by consciousness, but I guess I would reason that because humans exhibit behavior that seems to suggest consciousness more than any other organism on the planet, consciousness is something that may arise at some point along the trajectory of increasing intelligence and brain complexity. I believe there have been studies linking consciousness-oriented thinking (thinking about thinking, reflection, etc.) to certain patterns of brain activity, and if those studies have some truth to them, then I would think that consciousness has some relation to the structure of neurons in the brain and potentially the chemical activity going on up there as well. I clearly don’t know.

It would surprise me to find out that consciousness can emerge in non-organic systems, but I think we have to be open to that possibility. As Sam Harris has said before: maybe consciousness is just information processing of a certain kind, and the substrate doesn’t matter.

As for what the “mind” is in the everyday sense? I believe that’s just brain activity.

What is your perspective on morality and ethics? Do you believe there are objective moral truths, or are moral values subjective or culturally determined? What do you think should guide our moral decisions?

I think morality conceptually only makes sense in the context of consciousness; that is, it doesn’t make sense to talk about the rightness or wrongness of things in a universe without conscious beings. There are no moral concerns in a universe full of rocks. Subjective experience seems to be a prerequisite for morality, and I think moral concern scales with the degree to which a being can have subjective experiences of suffering or well-being.

My moral analysis of situations tends to revolve around harm and suffering, i.e. who suffers and by how much. How this tends to play out in the way I look at a lot of social issues is that as long as you aren’t harming conscious beings, you should live your life however you want to. I don’t think it’s truly as simple as that sounds though, because I think it takes quite a bit of research and intellectual legwork to fully understand the consequences of your actions and how far they reach (i.e. the “harm radius”). In this sense, I would probably fall on the side of moral consequentialism, with a desire to follow the consequences as far as they go. Examining all the consequences and discovering their moral value seems to require using rational argument and a scientific understanding of the world.

I find Sam Harris’s claim that the worst possible misery for everyone is objectively bad to be convincing, and the idea that suffering is bad (modulo the kind of purposeful suffering that must be endured to achieve virtuous goals) takes on an objective quality in my mind. I don’t know how to prove its objectiveness though.

It is true that a lot of the moral frameworks that people exercise in practice are subjective or culturally determined, but I don’t think that makes morality subjective in a normative sense. Much of the morality we see on display in public life is incomplete, contradictory, and outright errant. Much of religious morality comes from precepts written in scripture, which people accept as authoritative and sacrosanct. The scripture rarely offers a detailed account of the reasoning process that resulted in these moral directives; often the veracity of the claims hinges loosely on some important person or deity having proclaimed them as truth.

Despite saying that you should live your life however you want to, I do feel that there is a moral obligation to end suffering where it occurs and prevent it from happening. I find Singer’s shallow pond thought experiment to be convincing, especially in a 21st century context where we have the tools available to help those who are physically very far away. However, like the idea of suffering being bad, I don’t know how to make an objective case for the obligation we have to help others; it just has an epistemological-bedrock quality to it.

I don’t think “rights” (human rights, animal rights, etc.) exist. Rights appear to be abstractions that humans created to encapsulate complex moral justifications for protecting the interests of various groups. I believe that actual, utilitarian justifications can be made by reasoning from lower-order principles (like “suffering is bad”), but as I mentioned, I still don’t know how to demonstrate the objectivity of such principles (not that rights are any more objective), and practically speaking, I don’t think such an intellectually taxing exercise will survive in the kind of politicized discourse where “rights” are usually peddled.

Anyway, the short answer to the questions posed: I’m undecided about whether there are objective moral truths, but I think it’s possible to get close to something that resembles an objective moral center through truly exhaustive consequentialist reasoning. Even if morality is subjective, I don’t think the prevailing moral frameworks that derive from religion, social customs, and political systems get it right. Our moral decisions should be guided by a scientific understanding of the world and rational argument.