Game Life: Just A Human Being...

Hi again guys. I will go on writing about Game Life. First of all, I would like to remind every one that the series of posts I write under the title Game life are not referring to some video game. It is rather an imaginary account attempting to answer the question "how should one live his life?" I thought it would be more stimulating and more appealing to you to answer this question in this alternative way. I wish you like it so far. Anyway, here is the rest of the manual of how to play Game Life. Enjoy it.

Stages of the game

Game life is a multi stage game. The first stage as argued before is a preparatory stage. In the preparatory stage you acquire the PTE and PACT. Again, you are not evaluated in this preparatory stage. The real game begins in the next stage. Once you reach adulthood, your mental abilities have fully developed and it is in this stage that evaluation of your progress in the game begins. Once the preparatory stage is over, you should pass through three different stages. It is those three stages that count.

First stage: "just a human being"

This stage can be considered as the first stage of the real game. You start this stage with a given starting point. You had a very limited role in shaping this starting point. However, you are supposed to work on this starting point to modify it so that you can achieve the ultimate goal of the game, namely achieving Eudaimonia. This is the main challenge of Game Life. Each player has a different starting point. The details of this starting point consist of the following:

· You are a member of various societies of other players. Those societies range from your family, the institution at which you work, circle of friends, marriage, partnership, recreational institutions and so on. In addition you are a citizen in a particular state. On the other hand, in today's current form of Game Life, you are also a member of a developing international society that extends to include the entire globe. Any of those societies might be more or less well defined. What makes a society or a group of players well defined or not is whether at least some of the players involved in this society have managed to constitute a well defined PTE or not. Any society with a well defined PTE would have a corresponding more or less defined PACT. This PACT might be well defined or not in the same manner as the PTE. In addition PACT might be successful or not depending upon whether it does in fact allow the realization of the corresponding PTE or not. Whether any of the societies you are involved in have a well defined PTE and PACT or not, and whether you recognize those social PTEs and PACTs or not, and whether those social PTEs and PACTs are consistent with your individual PTE and PACT might all vary in your starting point.

· You have a particular set of abilities; physical and mental. Those abilities together with the PTE and PACT of the societies you were involved in while in the preparatory stage have formed your own initial PTE and PACT.

· In addition to being a member of various societies, you also exist in a physical world. This world has its own form of behavior. This behavior has been explained best by the science theory developed by other players in the game. Taking this theory in account is essential for any successful PACT. The physical world you live in has a large impact on you in Game Life. All objects available to you in Game Life belong to the physical world and are governed by its form of behavior. Your body itself belongs to the physical world and similarly it follows its form of behavior. That's why having at least a primary grasp of the world surrounding you is essential for any successful PACT.

Clearly, your starting point in Game Life is complicated. Game Life is hard but don't give up on it, playing it properly would prove worthy of the effort invested in it.

Your ultimate goal in Game Life as mentioned before is to achieve eudaimonia. This ultimate goal can be achieved through fulfilling the tasks of each stage. In "just a human being" stage your tasks are the following;

· Grasp your initial PTE. The general PTE is the theory that is shared by all players of Game Life even though not recognized by them all. General PTE conceives happiness as a concept that can be reduced to various valuable concepts. According to general PTE, happiness or Eudaimonia can be achieved when one achieves friendship, understanding, practical reasoning, accomplishment and pleasure in his life. However, most of the players in Game Life start with an initial PTE that recognizes only one or some of those values but not all. This is again because in the preparatory stage your abilities, the societies you were involved in, and the world behavior surrounding you made it seem more possible for you to achieve one of those values rather than others. However, all that is required from you in the "just a human being" stage of this game is to recognize the value which is so important for you. Some might take friendship to be the most important thing; others might take accomplishment to the best thing in life, and certainly most would take pleasure to the most crucial in a happy life. Don’t resist your initial PTE. Take it as it is. Remember that what is required from you in this stage is to know what is the most important to you even if you have short slightness.

· Once you have determined the most important value to yourself, it will be time to move to the second more difficult task. The second task is the construction of an appropriate PACT. Knowing how to achieve what you take to be the most valuable is not an easy job. Lots of considerations must be put in mind while planning your action plan. This task can be broken down into the following more direct tasks.

· It is all about the activities you are involved in. to achieve your most valuable you must be involved in an activity within a social group that aims toward the actualization of this value. You can never achieve your most significant value in isolation.

· If the activities you are involved in are not adequate for the actualization of your main value, pick up new ones and get into them. You might even have to develop a whole new kind of activity directed toward the actualization of your main values. However, you will have to get others involved in this kind of activity. Together you will have to develop a well defined PTE and PACT of this new kind of activity.

· There are lots of challenges which will face you in actualization of your main value. Those challenges might be imposed by the world you live in, or by the social groups you are a member of. Manage those challenges as much as possible.

· Mange your time properly

· Mange your health situation

· Even if you don't accept the general PTE, you should try to remain away from any conflict with the PACT corresponding to this general PTE. Try as much as possible to avoid conflicts with others. If there is something you don't like about the behavior of others remember that what you are concerned with in this stage of the game is to actualize your main value. Affecting the general PTE and the corresponding PACT is left to the next stage of the game.

· In lots of times you might loose your motivation to pursuit your most significant value. Those are the times known as Pauses in Game Life. They might arise because of exhaustion or because of problems facing you. Remember that taking adequate care of your health status and solving problems imposed upon you by the world or by others is so crucial to avoid Pauses. However, most of the pauses are caused by neither exhaustion nor problems. Most of the Pauses are caused by lack of adequate habitual pattern. Your performance in Game Life depends to a large degree upon the kind of habits you have developed before. That's why you should develop a pattern of behavior that actualizes your most significant value and try to commit to it as much as possible to develop the adequate habitual pattern. By time Pauses will be encountered much less.

· Your performance in this stage can't all be devoted to the only one value you take to be the most significant. You will find yourself inclined to pursuit other values as well. After all the general PTS is still implanted in your head, its just lack of realizing it that prevents you from recognizing that all of its values are equally important. Don’t resist your desire to pursuit of other values. Instead learn from such tendencies. Learning from them will make you get more and more in contact with the general PTE which is very important for the next stage of the game. Allow your self to pursuit other values but without wasting so much time and effort. Save most of your time and effort to actualization of your most significant value.

· In Game Life, there are various supplementary games like sports, video games and so on. All of those supplementary games are great arena for training. They would allow you to develop the right sort of realization of a goal and rules in any game. They would also allow you to notice how being committed can help you greatly in playing this game.

By the end of this stage you are supposed to actualize your main value to a large degree. You should realize the general PTE and the importance of other values in your life. This stage of Game Life is not easy. However, when ever you feel like over whelmed by it, then this would be a good time to relax and focus on other values than the one you are most occupied with. After all it is just a game.

Before moving on to the next stages of the game, here is the summary of your task in the "just a human being" stage; know yourself and what is most significant to you whether knowledge, accomplishment, friendship, practical reasoning, pleasure or a group of those values. Remember that values can't be actualized except through interaction with others. Manage challenges facing you and focus on your goal. Develop the right habitual pattern needed for actualizing of your goal. Remember that Game Life is not easy but it certainly worth it

Game Life: The Ultimate Goal

In the last post I started conceiving life in a totally different imaginary way. Life is a game. I called this game "Game Life". Game Life is the game we all play. Whether we liked it or not we have no choice but playing it. I promised you that the manual of this game will be delivered to you soon. So here it is; the manual of Game Life.

Goal of the game

The ultimate goal of this game is to achieve Eudaimonia. You don't know what Eudaimonia is? Eudaimonia is an ancient Greek term commonly translated as happiness, flourishing or wellbeing. Why is the goal of this game stated as Eudaimonia rather than happiness? It is because the term Eudaimonia emphasizes the most adequate account we can offer of happiness. It emphasizes that happiness is the supreme good of any of your actions. It also emphasizes that achieving happiness can only be conceived as the realization of a list of irreducible values. Those values are friendship, understanding, accomplishment, practical reasoning, and last but not least pleasure.

Game Life is a multiplayer game. As a matter of fact more than 6 billion other players share this game with you at the moment. Millions of other players have played it long ago and those past players have contributed significantly to building this game and to your current situation in it. It is expected that many more players, more than what you might be even able to imagine will play this game in the future. Similarly, they will continue to influence this game.

To achieve eudaimonia, you must interact with other players. Interaction with other players is crucial for your progress in this game.

PTE & PACT

In this game each player must start with two different theories interacting together. First you must have what is called in this game the primary theory of Eudaimonia or (PTE). In addition you must have a primary theory of action or (PACT). PTE is a primary theory you hold of what you should achieve in this game. It is your initial vision of the goal of this game. PACT on the other hand is your initial theory of how to achieve the goals determined by your PTE.

In this game you pass through a preparatory stage. It is a stage corresponding to the childhood and adolescence stages of human life. In this stage you get, through other players, whether playing the role of parents, friends, celebrities, authors, or media figures, to form your PTE. In this stage you are not evaluated. Once you reach the adulthood stage, the real game begins.

In the preparatory stage, other players guide your actions. You are programmed to develop habits. Those habits will form your PACT. Your PACT aided by your built in ability to conceptualize will allow you to build your PTE. PTE and PACT interact together. Fist PACT form PTE, then PTE might change PACT. Again changes in PACT enforced upon you by surrounding circumstances or by the development of new habits might change the PTE which might again change PACT and so on. This continuous process of interaction between PACT and PTE is what is called learning. This process starts in the preparatory stage and goes on through all but the stage of the game. However, you will not be evaluated in this game until you pass the preparatory stage. It's PACT and PTE held by you then that counts the most.

Ancient players of this game had a PTE that was focused on mere survival and bonding to as much other players they can communicate with as possible. Through several generations of players, PTE has evolved into the form defined above. Current PTE held by most players conceives Eudaimonia as the realization of the above mentioned values. Unfortunately, lots of current players while holding this most recent form of PTE don't recognize that they do. In today's state of Game Life, lots of current players while in the preparatory stage get to develop a PACT that focuses mainly on the value of pleasure. This affected their PTE which similarly takes pleasure to be more important than other values. Such inappropriate PACTs and PTEs might have been facilitated by the relative easier possibility of gaining pleasure compared to other values in today's state of Game Life. Your very first task in Game Life might be to recognize the PTE that you really hold and develop a suitable PACT accordingly. More about this task will be explained later in the manual when tasks are explained.

There is an additional precaution which you must hold on your mind while playing this game. As it has been mentioned before, interaction with other players in this game is the most crucial part of the game. You have no choice but accepting the PTE and PACT formed in you by others in the preparatory stage. You can only develop the PTE and PACT you hold upon reaching adulthood. You can never discard them and start from scratch. If you do so, you have lost this game and game will be over for you. Developing the PACT and PTE you hold by the end of the preparatory stage is the main way through which the ultimate goal of the game can be realized. Again as mentioned before and as will be explained downward, developing PACT and PTE can only be achieved through interaction with other players.

Ok, guys, I think that's enough for now. I hope you like this imaginary line of thought I follow to consider how one should live his life. I will go on imagining in next posts. Till then, good luck…

Game Life: Wanna Play??

Through the last series of posts, and through the last post in particular, I offered what I think is the most coherent account that can be offered for happiness. The theoretical work is done. What I want to consider in this post is how this account can be applied practically in the life of each one of us.

The answer I offered to the question "How should one live life?" signified the importance of values in our life. However, arguing that one should live his life attempting to become ideal and reducing happiness down to morality might seem less motivating and more exhausting to lots of us. That's why I would like to describe the practical implications of this theoretical account of happiness in a totally different way. This way certainly depends on the utilization of the most significant faculty we humans have, namely imagination. So, I am asking you to open up your mind and let your imagination takes you to conceive life in a new way.

I am introducing to all of you the most fascinating game you could ever play. It's Game Life. Game Life is a virtual reality game. This game is not just a high quality third person game you get to play on X-box or play station. It is designed in a way that would allow your senses to be so soaked totally in it. It is an experience that is so vivid and real. It is so real that you can't distinguish it from reality itself.

You are not motivated to play Game Life just by the mere sake of having fun or by commercials surrounding you every where convincing you that is so pleasurable. Your motivation to play this game is the very basic essence of your own well. Your well screams upon you to play this game. You can't escape it. Even when you think that you have given up on this game and when you believe that you have reached the decision that it just doesn't worth, all you are actually doing is that you leave one tournament of it to another, gave up on one of its goals just to seek another. This game is you and nothing less than you.

Game life is not easy. It is the hardest game you might ever play. But while it is hard, it is certainly amazing and very much rewarding. It is a multistage game. None and I mean none has ever passed the first stage of it. However, every one is so eager to reach its end stage. Players are just crazy about it. Even though, most of them have recognized that its end stage is so difficult to be reached and might even be impossible, they keep on trying. They keep on transmitting their knowledge about how to play this game from one generation to another hoping that one day in the future some one might just do it. This game requires you to think and act, but above all it requires you to imagine. Some players imagined things so wonderful that have just enriched the game and made it much easier. Others let their imagination take them to wicked places and the results were awful. Even though imagination is essential to get through this game, it might have terrible consequences. However, with the basic urge of the players to survive, with reason, with hope, and with being open to learn, you will get to mange the dangers involved in playing this game.

So, are you ready to play this game? Whether your answer is yes or no, you have no choice but to play it. You are already playing it as you read this post. So, instead of resisting it, it is better for you to learn about its stages, tasks, rules and goals. You will have your manual in the next posts. For now, be patient….

Happy New Year.... :)

Happy new year every one. You can easily realize from my posts that I certainly believe that values and virtues play a significant role in our pursuit of happiness. The most recent branch of psychology, called positive psychology, emphasizes the importance of them as well. I intend to write a lot about this fascinating branch but I will do this later.

What I am planning to do in this post is to offer you guys a little gift for the New Year. Positive psychologists have developed various examination methods to help us in realizing the values and virtues which are the strongest in us.

This is a link to one of the most respectable questionnaires to guide you in discovering what positive psychologists call character strengths. http://www.viacharacter.org/SURVEYS.aspx Character strength is an alternative name of virtue. You will discover through this questionnaire the most significant personality traits about you which have been shaped by what you take to be the most valuable.

I think it would be great for each one of you to start the New Year while knowing his most significant routes to being happy.

From Scratch to Solid Ground: Live According to Your Will but Make Sure That This is What You Are Doing!!!

It is amazing how apparently simple questions can be very difficult to answer. The question "how should I live my life?" is certainly one of those questions. I think the reason why such questions might appear both simple and difficult in the same time is that while, the answer to such questions can be easily provided intuitionally through common sense, further reflection upon those answers clarify that that there are several inconsistencies in them which requires management. Grounding our intuitions might be so difficult. However, sincere efforts can finally provide a full blown theory that explains our common sense and answers our most basic questions.

This is exactly what I have been trying to do in the last few articles I posted. It is here in this post that I will try to put an answer that I think is the most coherent up to this point. Lots of what I will state here has been stated repeatedly by me before. However, at least I would benefit from rewriting the whole thing for one more time. So, here it goes.

I am a human being. I am naturally equipped with biological drives, shaped through centuries of evolution to ensure my survival. Those drives are the basic drives of seeking food, sex, shelter, security and most importantly to bond. The particular drive of bonding that makes me a social animal might be the most important among other drives in shaping the next stage of evolution that human beings have undergone through, namely cultural evolution.

It is through cultural evolution, that I now posses drives other than those biological ones. Those drives are my values. Those values constitute my personality. They go all the way down in me. They don't only drive my actions but they shape my emotions, my reactions and my judgments and so on. Those values and biological drives don't only drive my will but they constitute the very essence of it. Even though, through the theory of evolution I can explain how such motive came to exist, I can't justify them. Again, reason can never justify my passions. I just have to follow them or more precisely act upon them. Passions constitute the essence of my will and who I am. Justification is not need for them; it is only needed for managing them.

Among the values I hold and I think all of us hold are the values of understanding and practical reasoning. They are the motives for writing those particular articles. The value of practical reasoning moves me to do the following;

· I need to understand my self. In other words, I need to understand the motives which constitute me. It is easy to understand my biological drives. However, understanding my values require reflection upon my actions, my emotions, my reactions and my judgments. The broad ideal account which I accepted as the theory the describes my actions, emotions and judgments convinced me that my values can't be reduced to only one value but rather a list of irreducible different values that primarily consist of understanding, friendship, accomplishment, pleasure and practical reasoning.

· I need to understand the world I live in. I need to understand not only the environment I exist in but the people that I share my life with. I need to construct a theory that explains the behavior of the world and of other people. Such theory would allow me to appreciate the situation I am in and to determine the best chances available to me to achieve my motives.

· I need to use this knowledge together with reasoning to make my decisions and choices. Knowledge and reasoning would allow me to choose to get involved in forms of practices already developed by the society or to develop a whole new form of practice that I have to imagine and come up with.

· I need to be able to implement my choices and decisions voluntarily without being coerced by anyone else but my own self.

It might seems that since the values of practical reasoning requires understanding of myself and the world I live in that this value can after all be reduced to the value of understanding. However, all that is required by the value of practical reasoning is just having a set of beliefs about my self and the world. Putting the further condition of those beliefs to be true is something not required by the value of practical reasoning but instead required by the value of understanding. So, those two values are distinct from each other after all. However, since I value understanding as well, I need those beliefs to be true. I think science provides me with the most coherent, accepeltabe, adequate, and successful theory that explains the world. On the other hand, I think psychology based on the broad ideal account is the best theory to explain the behavior of other humans.

However, there is a point which I need to consider when it comes to understanding myself and when it comes to understanding others. I have concluded that each human being acts according to his own values. But what about variations among our values? If we are not justified in holding values, and if values are mainly the creation of human culture, then our values might differ and accordingly I can't secure any understanding of human behavior. It is here where morality plays a crucial role.

Cultural evolution didn't simply develop values as an integral part of my nature. It developed a whole moral theory based on values shared by all the others in the sphere of my culture. Those values stemmed from shared social forms of practices. Those values are not only a part of me but rather a part of an ideal person that has been drawn through generations of human beings. As I act upon my values, I get to realize the criteria of this virtuous person that I don't only aspire for but as a matter of fact all of those surrounding me aspire for. What I am trying to say is that my values can't be isolated from the values of others. They can't have ever been developed in me unless at least it was shared by the culture I grew up in.

But, this moral theory that shaped my values is not static. The culture that produced it is continuously changing. In today's world, there are many states with different histories and different forms of culture. In each state there are many different social groups with different situations and different chances. On the other hand, science develops and it brings out new discoveries and it changes our vision of the world. Economy fluctuates and the whole environment we live in change every single day. How can values be anchored in anything if every thing that constituted them changes almost every single day?

Even if values might change, there is something about human beings that can't change in us unless we ceased to be human beings. It is our basic drive to bond. Bonding is another biological drive in us that was shaped by evolution to ensure our security and our survival. We are driven to bond with all other human beings who are within the sphere that can affect us. In toady's world this sphere has extended to involve the entire globe. All of us need to bond together. This in not a mere act of preaching. It is a fact enforced upon us by our nature and by the world we live in today. Fortunately, our history extends for so long. We have started affecting each other long ago. We share lots of core values. It seems that we only dispute over the more trivial ones. Our dispute is more related to how we might realize our values rather than what is most valuable in our lives.

To sum it up, I should realize my values. I should cultivate them and allow them to grow in me so that I can become happier. I should not act in ways that would violate those values. I should be open to learn about the best ways to realize my values since my knowledge is certainly still limited. Whenever, there is an apparent conflict with others, I should realize that there are ways to resolve those conflicts. Morality is an integral part of me and all of us. It doesn't allow us only to be happy but through its share in the construction of our values it constitutes the very essence of happiness itself. With the mere exception of sociopaths, we all share the values of pleasure, understanding, practical reasoning, friendship, and accomplishment. Any conflict among us is only due to limited knowledge and not being open enough to understand others.

Here is my final advice to myself and to others. Happiness is nothing but realizing your values. Realizing your values can't be done unless you have proper understanding of yourself and the fact that you are made of values which are not only a part of yourself but rather the main part of a whole theory made by others. In addition, realizing your values can't be achieved unless you have proper understanding of the world you live in. you might be prevented from achieving your values by the people surrounding you. It is time in such cases to remember that you share with others more than you might think. On the other hand, the world and circumstances might be an obstacle in achieving your goals but in such cases it is again that you can't do any less than changing the world you live in. after all it is your values that constitute your will. Failing them would only fail your own will.

The Rise of the Virtuous Man

In the last posts I have reached the conclusions that passions can't be justified. Passions don't only include those biological drives of survival but they include values as well. Each human being has an over driving force to act. We don't have a choice when it comes to our well but to act according to our motives. Biological motives and the more socially constructed values have an equal footing when it comes to driving our actions. I think understanding that values are of no less importance in driving our actions has a significant impact on our choices. I will show why by the end of this series of posts.

Before going on through my line of thought, I would like to write a little bit more about values. Human beings are born with a set of biological drives of motives. Those motives have been shaped through years of evolution to ensure better chances of survival. Motives have an over driving force over our minds. They constitute the essence of our well. Humans are not only equipped with the basic biological drives of survival, but they are equipped in addition with fascinating abilities. Our abilities include various physical and mental abilities. Among those abilities are our abilities to perceive, conceptualize and even more importantly to imagine and innovate. Our unique abilities, allowed us to start our very own process of cultural evolution which goes much faster than biological evolution. Humans have managed to construct bigger societies. In those societies, more innovative practices have been developed to further our over all well being and survival. Each one was assigned particular roles in those practices. Those practices had specific rules of action that would again ensure better chances of survival. As societies got even bigger, humans managed to figure out alternative ways to fulfill their roles. Those alternative ways represented ways to break from the conventional rules of actions. Some of those ways were more successful and some were worse. Long before the development of big societies, humans have managed to develop the practice of language communication. Language allowed humans to further increase their abilities to conceptualize. It made them not only able to conceptualize about the objects of their perceptual experience but to conceptualize about their practices. As humans practices became so diverse, and with the expansion of the alternative ways of managing their rules of actions, humans had to conceptualize about the goals of those practices or of the various ways to fulfill a particular role within those practices. Through years of cultural evolution, humans were able to conceptualize those ends or goals of their various practices into more and more abstract concepts. However, just as wide as our imagination can go, the practices human societies invented became so diverse and so are the goals of those practices. Again some practices were more successful than others in improving the chances of our survival. This lead to a conflict between the goals of those practices. Some goals were thought to be so essential. Human societies had to make those goals important. Through reciprocal sanctions and human sympathy, the concepts of those ends or goals were transmitted from one generation to the other. And those ends through time became not only mere goals but they became important in conceptualizing our life as good. In other terms they became values.

Values are concepts of what makes life good to us. They are raised in our minds as we grow up. They are now not only essential for having a good life but they constitute the meaning of a good life. We can't understand any goodness about life except through them. As we grow up we face sanctions when we behave in a way that is in conflict with the common social practices. And as we grow up, we learn to conceptualize and rationalize between those concepts. Once, we are grown we found our selves we find that we have attained concepts which don't only explain the meaning of a good life but that have an over riding forces in directing our actions. Humans born in today's world don't only have biological motives of survival but they have values constructed through years of cultural evolution. Those values as I have mentioned before can never be distinguished in their importance from those basic biological motives. Again, as I have mentioned over and over, even though you might be aware of the causal process involved in the construction of those motives, you are not justified rationally in holding them. It is just something that constitutes your nature and you simply have nothing but to follow them.

So, values such as love, friendship, or mercy are just culturally innovated concepts. This view runs against a common view that conceives values as entities existing independently of the human experience. Some might argue that love is good, even if there were no human beings to experience it or act according to it. Such an objectivist view is not consistent and it has limited power of explanation. I will not argue against this view here. There are arguments against this view raised by so many philosophers and there is no enough space here to manage this matter.

However, this relativistic view of our values opens the door for so many problems. I will get into the heart of the matter. There are values held by human beings which are conceived by other as bad or even evil. Nazis and terrorists provide a clear example. It would be naïve to think that such people are moved by any thing else other than values. They behave in such a manner sincerely believing that they are at least making their own lives better or even the lives of others as well. If we allowed it that such people have nothing in their choice but to follow their values just as all humans have to follow their values, we would loose the significance of morality. It seems that we must have the ability to judge actions as either wrong or right. Judging some actions as right or wrong is not simply because of holding different values between us from one side and others on the other hand. It might seem that if we accepted the idea that values lack any justification in holding them, then our judgments of right and wrong are only subjective and lack any power of compelling others to behave in a particular way as long as they don't share our own values.

However, things are not like this. Even though, reason can't justify the values we hold or drop, it can investigate and judge the conceptual links between them. Humans might hold values different from each other, but they all agree in conceptualizing them as being essential to a good life. Now, think of a rational being that holds all the values that has ever been developed through the human culture. Such a rational being to be considered as understanding the meaning of those values must be able to provide the conditions required for them to develop a good life. In other words, he must be able to explain how a particular value can be realized without losing another one and so on. Let's call this rational being the virtuous man. The virtuous man will certainly find lots of contradictions between those many different values. However, following rules of reason, those contradictions can be solved. Guided by knowledge of how those values came to exist in the first place and by knowledge that they are not any supreme to our existence as humans' beings, it can be concluded that some value can be reduced to others, and that some need to be qualified into a different concept. We might even find that the problem lays in the kind of practice we are following to realize a particular value and that this practice while may be realizing one value is demolishing another.

The virtuous man first conceived by Aristotle many centuries ago can solve the problem of contradiction between our values. Reason might never be able to justify why we became to hold some values but it can direct us in better understanding of those values. Through better conceptualization of our values we would be able to construct a moral theory that explains the meaning of a good life depending upon a consistent explanation of our various values. The virtuous man exists in many among us. It whispers to us through our intuitions to direct us to what is good and what is right. Through clear thinking, we can become more aware of him inside us and his judgments would become more than ungrounded intuitions. Appeal to him would construct a moral theory that we might all agree upon. Morality can thus be developed through being open minded, communication with others, and understanding of the meaning of our values.

Anyway, the virtuous man or the virtue theory of morality might still face problems. There are situations which might prove challenging for the success of such a theory in guiding our actions. I will consider this theory, its implications in our life, and objections that can be raised against it later.

One Step Further: It's Passion Over Reason

So, in the last post I have reached the following conclusions:

· There are other motives for actions than values. Such motives mainly include those natural drives to ensure survival. Mere survival is not good. Therefore, if I understand values as those concepts which makes life good. Survival is essentially not a value.

· However, I find myself so much driven by survival that I can't think of any other choice but to use the instrument of rationality to guide my life in the world I exist in to just continue living.

· The use of rationality to guide my choices so that I would go on living doesn't satisfy the definition of the value of practical reasoning. Having drives such as that of survival doesn't justify me in holding the value of practical reasoning. Again I am left with the fact the values themselves can never be justified.

· On the other hand, the use of the drive of survival as the main motive fro being rational regarding your choices can not be generalized to all humans in all different circumstances. It is just so in my case and I think in the cases of many other human beings. Yet it can't be considered as a universal explanation.

So, up till now, all I can say is that I really want to survive. The world I live in forces to use the best instrument available to me which is rationality to make the right sort of choices regarding my actions to ensure survival. Simply, I have to rationally get a job that will provide me with the chance of having food, shelter, and sex. I will commit to the rules of actions set by the society only to the extent that rationally would allow me the best chances to get those conditions of survival. But is this really what life is all about?

I think not. I still want other things in addition to the mere survival. I want to have a good life. I can't be aware of the possibility of having a good life or a better life than this required only by survival unless I already hold on particular concepts that I think make life good. In other words, I can't claim that there is a possibility of a better life than the one I have just mentioned unless I hold other values. So, what are those values that underlie my preference of having a better life?

I have mentioned before that even though I can never be justified in holding a value, I can be justified in holding beliefs about what values I already hold. Reflection on the history of my actions and reflection on my primary theory of practical reasoning I can be justified in arguing that I hold particular values. I think I am justified in arguing that I hold the values of practical reasoning, understanding, accomplishment, friendship and pleasure.

Now, there is a question which I have to face. If I allowed it that invaluable motives such as those of survival can direct my actions depending on the claim that they are so basic in my nature that I can't choose any other thing but following them, then why can't I allow the same thing for my values. They are so basic in my nature just like those of survival. They might have been caused in me by a much greater amount of social intervention when compared to the natural motives of survival, but why would this make them any less significant than the natural drives of survival? Whether the causal chain involved in forming a human motive is formed only of events of biological evolution or of cultural evolution in addition doesn't make any of those motives more or less justified.

So, justification wise, there is no difference between what I can call the purely natural drives of survival and the more culturally innovated drives of what I hold valuable. However, this is a difference after all. Survival drives are more compelling than those of values. It seems very difficult to me to choose any thing else but survival. However, it seems more possible to choose not to follow the motivation based on my values. I can choose not to have a good life but it is very difficult to choose not to live. But is this true? At least, I have to admit that this claim can't be generalized to all human beings. There are lots of people who upon the loss of what makes life valuable for them choose to put an end to their life. There are others who might sacrifice their own life for the sake of what they value. This fact makes me suspicious even of my claim that I personally would be more determined to survive but less so to seek my values. I think I can't be justified in arguing that survival is more compelling than realizing my own values. I can only be justified in such a claim if I was given the choice between mere survival and value realization and yet I choose mere survival. If I was giving the choice between being transformed into a unicellular bacterium that would survive forever and the life of a philosopher making significant contribution to knowledge but would last only for forty years, I think I would certainly choose the life of a philosopher. I have to admit that values might be just as compelling as survival.

So, I can't think of anyway through which I can distinguish natural drives from values. If I allowed it that I can act directed by natural drives, I have to admit that I can act driven by my values.

Things are just like Hume stated. Reason can't be but the slave of the passions. Reason is useless when it comes to determining your ends. All you have to do is just to stop thinking when it comes to your main motives. You simply have to follow them.

But if I accepted my values just as they are and realized that I have no choice but to follow them, won't this be at least in some situations dangerous? Aren't Nazis and terrorists moved by values and motives? It seems just wrong to accept that they can be allowed to follow such values. There are values I might hold which can affect the lives of others in a negative way. On the other hand, the world I live in might show that I can't realize all of my values and that I have to choose between them, how can I choose between them if I can't reason between them? Furthermore, it seems that the very nature of some of my values might contradict the realization of other values, again how can I choose between them?

The fact that reason is useless when it comes to deciding upon which values I should hold and which I should drop and the fact that I can't do anything about my passions but to follow them might be problematic after all. However, up to this stage I am satisfied with the conclusion that the well to act itself is so strong in me that I can't neglect and that I can't reason with this well, I simply have to follow it. I am also satisfied with the fact that values are just as important as my natural drives. They stand on equal footing. It might be true that natural drives are shaped by nature and that's why they are more shared by almost all human beings, while values are shaped more by cultural evolution and that's why they involve greater amount of contradictions, but both of them are strong in each one of us. How to solve the contradictions between values is a problem that I should figure out. I will try to do this later.