Enthalpism

The aliens' basic philosophy, that motivates most of their actions. Elements:

• Key point: the universe has no intrinsic meaning of its own. It only acquires meaning through the actions of sapient beings.
• Enthalpy The aliens use the term in a broader sense, referring to the creation of order and things of cultural value. One should seek to create the maximum amount of Enthalpy for the minimum amount of Entropy. This produces a work ethic that is a strong driver of the aliens' economic activity.
• The aliens are skeptics and never assume they know the absolute truth. They use rational empiricism to derive workable approximations of how the universe works, and use these to develop their technology.
• Empirical, quantitative approach to what humans call the "soft sciences:" psychology, sociology, and economics. These are just as "hard" as physics to the aliens, though given the chaotic nature of the sapient mind, these sciences are probabilistic rather than deterministic..
• All branches of science are unified under a single system of reasoning. Ethics is considered a branch of economics, and esthetics is a branch of evolutionary biology. Hyperspace navigation involves such topics as Applied Solipsism (a method of dealing with relativistic weirdness) and Theodynamics (the study of "God" in physics). Metaphysics is a branch of physics.

Conflict with "humanism." The term is in quotes because I'm not sure what I'm thinking of is the same as philosophical Humanism. I'm thinking more of the values associated with Western (particularly American) Liberalism and beliefs associated with "New Age" philosophy and mysticism, and values espoused by pop-culture media.

• Noble savage NOT. Sapient beings in their "natural state" are not automatically moral. Generally, the strong dominate the weak. The same is true of Galactic society, but they claim to be a lot more civilized about it.
• Sapientist: sapient beings > non-sapient beings. Note that some of the aliens don't consider humans to be "fully sapient" because humans' reasoning skills are generally poor.
• "Nature" is not intrinsically good. The aliens do not believe in preserving natural environments for its own sake.
• No mind/body dualism. Thinking is a body function. Oddly, though, there is a belief that a record of one's mind persists in the Information Field after physical death, and that this record may continue to have subjective experience after death.
• Anti-hedonistic. The aliens question whether the human concept of "happiness" even has a meaningful referent. Seeking pleasure for its own sake is Entropic (bad). Anti-consumerist.

Reference: Philosophy

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Copyright © 2008 by Richard C. McCluney, III