Mike's Philosophy

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

In my writing, I employ a philosophical approach that draws from multiple traditions while attempting to create something distinctive. I'm particularly interested in how form and content can work together—how the structure of an argument can itself be part of what I'm trying to communicate.

My Postmodern Naturalist Stance

At the core of my philosophy is postmodern naturalism—a position that reconciles seemingly contradictory philosophical traditions. While many see postmodernism and naturalism as fundamentally opposed, I view them as complementary insights that together offer a more complete understanding of human experience.

Many naturalists reject postmodern insights about social construction as leading to relativism or nihilism. I believe this rejection stems from a fundamental misunderstanding. What poststructuralists are actually demonstrating is precisely what David Hume identified centuries earlier with his famous guillotine—the unbridgeable gap between descriptive facts and normative values.

Hume showed that we cannot derive an "ought" from an "is"—that no amount of empirical observation can, by itself, tell us what we should value or how we should live. This doesn't undermine empiricism; it simply recognizes its boundaries. The physical world operates according to natural laws that we can observe and understand, but meaning and value emerge from human consciousness and social interaction.

My epistemic liberal theory reconciles these seemingly disparate ideas. It accepts the full force of empirical investigation into the physical world while recognizing that our normative horizons exist in an intersubjective space. This isn't a retreat from reason—it's a recognition of reason's proper domain and limits.

What postmodernists call "social construction" is simply the manifestation of Hume's insight that values aren't discovered in nature but emerge from human communities. This doesn't lead to nihilism; rather, it centers the importance of human agency in creating meaning. We aren't passive receivers of predetermined values; we're active participants in shaping the normative landscape we inhabit.

This is where human meaning lives and thrives—in that intersubjective space where we negotiate values, purposes, and meanings. It's where humans find joy and purpose, not by discovering absolute truths written into the fabric of reality, but by collectively creating frameworks of value that give life direction and significance.

My Unpublished Work on Normative Harmonies

One of my yet-unpublished essays explores what I call "the praxis of normative harmonies"—the idea that human flourishing emerges not from the victory of one value system over another, but from the productive tension between seemingly opposing forces.

I argue that there's an ancient philosophical battle between reason and emotion, and that both rationalists and emotivists make the same fundamental error: they believe flourishing comes from one dominating the other. The rationalist seeks to impose structure and coherence on the chaos of feeling, while the emotivist rejects reason when it threatens deeply-held narratives.

My central thesis is that true flourishing is found in their reconciliation—not in eliminating contradiction but in elevating it into productive harmony. Where reason and passion are harmonized, humanity thrives. Where liberty and constraint find equilibrium, society is just.

My View on Reason and Emotion

This balance between reason and emotion is a central theme in my philosophy. I don't believe in privileging one over the other. Instead, I argue that human flourishing emerges from their productive integration.

Pure reason without emotional grounding becomes mechanical nihilism—cold abstractions that care nothing for the human soul. Pure emotion without rational discipline becomes unmoored—collapsing into tribalism and reactionary impulse.

I'm attempting to challenge both pure rationalism (which can become detached from lived experience) and pure emotivism (which can reject inconvenient truths). The philosophical challenge isn't eliminating tension but transforming it into something constructive.

My Mimetic Approach to Argument

One distinctive feature of my philosophical method is my use of mimesis—replicating a style or approach in order to critique it from within. This allows my arguments to function on multiple levels simultaneously. Rather than simply stating a position, I try to perform my conclusions, creating what philosophers might call a "hermeneutic experience" where readers undergo a shift in understanding.

I demonstrated this in my critique of Curtis Yarvin, where I employed The Matrix as a philosophical framework. I don't see cultural references as mere illustrations but as robust philosophical tools that can help us understand complex ideas. By reclaiming and inverting the "red pill" metaphor, I attempted to show how philosophical analysis can dismantle rhetorical manipulation.

My Engagement with the "Is-Ought" Gap

My work engages with what philosophers call Hume's Guillotine—the idea that you cannot derive an "ought" (moral values) from an "is" (factual statements). I suggest that this gap is not a philosophical problem to be solved but a productive tension to be navigated.

This perspective appears in a note I recently sent to a friend discussing our personal struggles in this frightening and uncertain time: "The tragedy of our existence is that paradise will always be beyond reach. But the paradox of a meaningful life is that it is defined not by ease, but by struggle." I believe meaning emerges precisely from the gap between current reality and aspirational ideals.

My Epistemic Approach: Truth, Meaning, and Manipulation

My critiques demonstrate my interest in epistemology—how knowledge and belief function. I examine not just what is being argued but how arguments function to shape perception. I'm concerned with what philosopher Michel Foucault called the relationship between knowledge and power.

By exposing how complex rhetoric can create illusions of depth, I highlight how certain types of discourse are designed not to reveal truth but to manufacture intellectual submission. This analysis extends beyond critiquing particular arguments to examining how meaning itself is constructed and manipulated.

My Multi-Dimensional Philosophical Approach

My philosophical approach is characterized by its multi-dimensionality—operating simultaneously across logical, rhetorical, metaphorical, and experiential planes. I believe philosophical thinking isn't limited to abstract reasoning but can integrate cultural analysis, political critique, and rhetorical strategy.

This positions my work within broader philosophical traditions that seek to understand how meaning emerges from tension rather than from resolution. Whether discussing the balance of reason and emotion or analyzing rhetorical manipulation, I consistently suggest that understanding requires engagement with complexity rather than reduction to simplicity.

My Romanticism: The Cognitive Revolution as an Act of Faith

At the heart of my philosophy lies an Enlightenment romanticism—a conviction that reason and imagination, fact and meaning, structure and feeling, are not opposed forces but necessary partners in the pursuit of truth.

This is where my cognitive revolution takes on its deeper, almost spiritual dimension. While my epistemic commitments are grounded in naturalism, my moral sensibilities are unmistakably romantic. I do not believe in a world where human beings are mere passive processors of information, where reality is reducible to data, or where history is a mechanistic unfolding of material forces. I believe in the agency of human will. In the capacity of individuals to grasp truth, to remake themselves, to transform their world—not as atoms in a deterministic system, but as meaning-making creatures bound together in a shared moral landscape.

Romanticism, as I see it, is not mere sentimentality or aesthetic indulgence. It is the recognition that human life is animated not just by reason, but by ideals—by the longing for justice, by the will to defy, by the dream of a freer world. It understands that what is rationally possible is often determined by what is imaginatively conceived. The moral imagination precedes the political reality. The great revolutions of human history were not born out of statistical analysis but from acts of creative defiance—moments where individuals refused to accept that the way things are is the way they must always be.

This is why I reject both reactionary cynicism and hyper-rationalist fatalism. The reactionary tells us that all struggles for freedom are illusory, that all power is merely domination, that history is an endless cycle of elites replacing one another in a fixed pattern. The hyper-rationalist tells us that human will is an illusion, that material conditions alone shape outcomes, that the forces of history operate with mechanical inevitability. Both of these positions share a fundamental pessimism—an assumption that the moral striving of individuals and communities is ultimately futile.

I reject that.

The cognitive revolution I call for is not just an intellectual shift—it is a reawakening of faith in human possibility. It is an insistence that even in the face of overwhelming power, of institutionalized deceit, of creeping authoritarianism, the human spirit is not easily extinguished. And it is a reminder that the struggle for truth, for justice, for dignity, is not just a political task but a moral vocation.

To live with this conviction is not always easy. It means rejecting the comforting retreat into nihilism. It means embracing the burden of responsibility. It means committing to an ethic of resistance that does not waver, even when it feels like the world is moving in the opposite direction. It means, in the most fundamental sense, believing that the future is unwritten, that history is not a closed loop, and that our choices—our courage, our defiance, our capacity to hold onto truth—matter.

This is my romanticism. Not an escapist idealism, but a radical faith in the power of human beings to confront reality and shape it anew. It is the belief that even in an age of cynicism, the most revolutionary act remains the simplest one: to tell the truth.

My Role as a Metaethical Prosecutor

I am a metaethical prosecutor. I take my normative stance as it is. You see where I’m coming from. This is where I stand. This is it. This is my authentic self.

You are, of course, part of the jury. And I, too, sit in the jury of those who would prosecute you. Or me. Or anyone in between. That is the nature of this trial—not of law, but of reason, of conscience, of the shared project of truth-seeking.

These are the stakes. Each step we take, one after the other, every minute of every day, is a reckoning with them. We remember that two plus two equals four. And there are only twenty-four hours in a day.

My Meaning of Life

There is comfort in seeing clearly—even when what lies ahead is terrifying. Clarity does not erase danger, but it steels the will. To know the truth, even in its harshest form, is to be grounded. It is to stand firm in the storm rather than be tossed about by illusion.

The will to take each step is not a matter of blind optimism, nor of naive hope. It is pushed forward by a gathering wind of purpose. A force born not from certainty of outcome, but from the certainty that action itself is necessary. That to move is to affirm, and to affirm is to exist with integrity.

There is a realization, unmistakable and inescapable, that some things are simply true. That two plus two equals four. That there are twenty-four hours in a day. That what is right does not cease to be right simply because it is inconvenient, or costly, or dangerous.

And so, the music must go on. Not because we expect victory, nor because the song will never end, but because to play is to be fully alive. To give voice to what is true. To carry the melody forward, even into the unknown.

On Souls

I mean, I am playing with a kind of secular spirtualism. Because I think we do have to save our souls in a sense. Our soul is meaning. Constructed, such as it is.