FluidMind.org is the personal website of Dan Delaney, a professional computer system administrator, application developer, singer, artist, and sociology researcher in Louisville Kentucky. It exists simply for topics of my personal interest, such as Linux system administration, database design and application development, singing, juggling, philosophy, religious studies, ancient mythology, sociology of religion, and statistics.
My current research interests lie mainly within the areas of sociology and psychology of religion, spirituality, and morality:
Sociology of morality is unfortunately a neglected field of research. Durkheim was one of the first to inquire sociologically about morality, but few in the field since him have taken up the topic. This seems peculiar to me considering that morality itself—the very idea of asking whether our actions are right or wrong—only arises due to the fact that we are not alone, that we are social beings and that our actions affect other people. Philosopher Simon Blackburn once wrote:
Philosophy is certainly not alone in its engagement with the ethical climate. But its reflections contain a distinctive ambition. The ambition is to understand the springs of motivation, reason, and feeling that move us. It is to understand the networks of rules or ‘norms’ that sustain our lives. The ambition is often one of finding system in the apparent jumble of principles and goals that we respect, or say we do.
I certainly agree that the ethical climate is not (and should not be) the exclusive domain of philosophers. I do not agree, however, that the ambitions he enumerates are distinctive to philosophy. On the contrary, those ambitions sound far more like those of social scientific inquiry than philosophical reflection.
The concept of a "fluid mind" expresses my own epistemological point of view. We all hold a set of beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. These beliefs determine who we are and how we behave. When we're young, our belief system is exceedingly fluid and malleable. New ideas come in easily, and old beliefs fall away with little fuss. Our full rational capacities still undeveloped, we accept the existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy without question, and just as easily drop those beliefs once we realize their implausibility. Until our brains develop the ability to reason, we have a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality.
As we grow and learn, and become more rational, those beliefs we feel most certain of begin to form a firm core in the center of our minds from which we base our decisions, and against which we evaluate new ideas. On the periphery lie those ideas we're not quite convinced of, forming a fluid boundary where we consider new ideas, accepting some and rejecting others. A fluid mind will use critical thinking and rational reflection to evaluate new ideas in order to determine whether to reject them or to synthesize them into the core of our beliefs.
As we become more convinced of an idea it moves closer to the central core of our belief system. The deeper it gets, the more difficult it is to dislodge. But even those beliefs in the core should never be beyond rational scrutiny, never be dogmatically unquestionable. A new idea floating around the boundary might very well call into question some of our deepest, most cherished beliefs. If those beliefs in the center become so solid that we never allow ourselves to question them, our development gets bogged down in the muck of those beliefs, and they eventually solidify into a hard mass from which it is almost impossible to escape. The only way we can be free to learn with open minds is to maintain a belief system that is fluid rather than solid—one that flows with the ebbs and tides of our intellectual and emotional explorations.
Copyright © 2012 Daniel G. Delaney