Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a skeptical or nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy that embraces our desire to live as best we can and the relative and psychological reality of values, free will and other phenomena while recognizing limitations on their foundations and our understanding. Readers may want to start with the first entry. - Marc Krellenstein (personal info here)
If there are benefits to unquestioned beliefs about the universe or morality should we then attempt to become such believers — or optimists, or selectively ignorant — if we are not? Perhaps, if people are able to and so inclined. For many, setting out to believe in something without question is not attractive, and probably difficult to achieve, even if it can happen more or less unintended. It is also hard and unappealing to go back to a state in which one is ignorant of a problem or of the adequacy of a supposed solution. We might recognize such a state as providing greater happiness after it is attained but still reject it because choosing it is inconsistent with what currently makes us happy, such as valuing what we consider to be more (rather than less) knowledge of the world as it really is, or valuing the autonomy that such a state would seem to reduce.