Life is filled with decisions, from the mundane and the trivial, to the intricate and involved. The more complicated the circumstance, the more effort it requires to make a decision. In an effort to mitigate our effort, we devise systems, frameworks, and shorthands to simplify complicated situations. These frameworks, informed by values, principles, and concepts, ideally reduce the intricacy of circumstances by mapping the details of things to already understood means. Everyone, whether they realize it or not, operate in these terms.
Determining whether a principle is relevant or not, is dependent on these frameworks. However, the drawback of both principles and frameworks is that they are limited in their application. Either, a principle competes with another for relevance, and we might choose a principle that is not nearly as applicable as another or we expand our framework to encompass more circumstances than it is capable of addressing. This dilemma raises two interesting questions. First, if frameworks are a means of determining what principles are relevant when making a decision, then deciding what framework accomplishes this is itself a decision which a framework ought to satisfy. We thus can seek after a “meta” framework that informs what base framework to use. Secondly, how much of life a framework encompasses raises the question of how we might decide if a framework has overstepped its bounds and whether or not a framework can be comprehensive. This comprehensive framework actually has both the characteristics of all-encompassing principles, and acts as a meta framework, while also containing the unique property of being self-referential. This explanatory power of comprehensive systems makes labeling any system we use as comprehensive especially tempting. We hold a hammer in our hand and suddenly believe that everything is a nail.
Practically speaking, this happens most deeply in adopting philosophic or ideological schools of thought. The Marxist will assert that all problems are reducible to economic conditions and prescribe economic revolution through their ideological framework to rectify these conditions, regardless of its connection to reality. What causes us to accept these systems, I am ill-equipped to answer. The physiological need for the aforementioned simplifying systems is the general explanation, but this need can play out as one where the individual acquires a high level of catharsis, nostalgia, enthusiasm due to their exposure to certain explanatory systems. It is precisely because of these varied causes that the prescription to this problem has to be general rather than specific.
As we learn about the world, we acquire a description, if only internal, about how the world works. With both experience and repeated testing of our internalized description, we (hopefully) learn a wiser harmony in life. The two key elements of this learning are first the acquisition of theoretical knowledge, and secondly the exposure of (in)validating experience. The acquisition of theoretical knowledge aids in the quick building of mental systems, but often at the expense of making young men ideological. The more monumental the explanation in our theoretical systems, the more enticing it is for its power, but the harder it becomes to invalidate through experience from the onset. There may be edge cases to the system that are not readily apparent, and thus the system will be applied to these edge cases, because we have no way of knowing better. For example, a young man who adopts libertarian ideals may believe that it is the panacea of all governmental issues, yet fail to see that it is still a government which he wishes to be libertarian. Thus he must adjust the system either in the direction of “small government” or in the direction of anarchy, but in either case he must then reconcile why it is that humanity has governments in the first place. As the mental system progresses, its explanations would be a never-ending patch job of repairing the assumptions of the beginning beliefs, until either the ideology is abandoned or the person goes insane from holding the labyrinthian mental construct attempting to make it consistent and tenable. In most cases, the passion invoked by the power of the explanation makes it too tantalizing to abandon or update, thus pride dooms us to destruction as we man a sinking ship.
If we are haphazard with internalizing our learning, we will easily arrive at contradictory explanations. When these contradictions are held for too long and are eventually exposed. This is what is often referred to as cognitive dissonance. For example, if we have been conditioned to believe that a particular politician is evil and irredeemable, but then are also conditioned on certain political actions as being moral and upstanding, we are left unequipped to reconcile when this politician performs those actions. Or if a child believes that they ought to obey their parents, and their parents tell them not to steal, what are they to do when they see their parents stealing? These values are in clear conflict. Similar to the problem of theoretical knowledge, our experience is powerful enough to correct us only as much as we let it. Either we accept the more noble of the two disparate values or we hide our head in the sand. In the very best of circumstances, we will look at the experience we have encountered and proceed with due-consideration: how does what I am experiencing integrate with what I know to be true? Does it somehow debunk a pet-theory of mine that does not align with reality?
This reflection on how to properly respond when our frameworks fail actually gives us a beautiful insight to our original problem. Notice how our refining questions orient our mental system towards a comprehensive framework. Although it might not achieve it directly or immediately, it points in the proper direction. It suggests both a component of a meta-framework that informs an immediate framework, and these same questions can be applied to themselves. I can ask: do THESE questions help my mental systems to integrate with what I know to be true? Do THESE questions debunk themselves and misalign with reality?
Observing the questions, we might wrongly deduce that it is questions themselves that give rise to comprehensive frameworks. This is the answer given by the skeptics. However, this never terminates, and leaves those of use desiring to find the right way to life staring into a cold indifferent void. In the same way that incomplete base systems continually require accommodation of ever increasing edge cases, the meta-framework based on questioning itself will always ask a question which raises more questions. This is precisely why philosophy does not provide a comprehensive and satisfying system in itself.
Instead, look again at both the question and the scenario that raised it. It was the recognition that pride so easily blinds us that caused us to doubt our alignment with the truth. It is humility that leads us to genuinely ask the questions. Bringing this to its logical conclusion shows that our comprehensive system must contain the fullness of virtue. This is, perhaps, self-evident once we consider both our problem and what virtues are. We set out to find a system that guides us, and virtues are those things which we ought to express (if you can forgive the tautology), it arises naturally that such a system both indicates and utilizes what we ought to express. Thus we can conclude two important points, first that any base-framework must be expressed in such a way as to express what is morally upright (and specially in humility) and secondly that any meta-framework must explain virtue.
Reasoning about a comprehensive framework will only be able to provide general qualities and characteristics of a comprehensive system, it cannot provide the specific system. If that were true, philosophy would have the necessary components of a comprehensive system, which, you will note from earlier, philosophical inquiry is insufficient for a terminal comprehensive system. Thus there is something else which must have all these properties which we are unable to obtain ourselves by our own strength. If we could obtain it, it would have been obtainable by reasoning alone. Thus, such a system must also be given to us. This suggests that divine revelation and angelic messengers are a more valid basis for religion as means of guiding our lives than a secular society gives it credit, even on secular societies' own terms. This idea will be explored later.
To conclude, with regards to the simple systems which guide how we make decisions, it is clear that as helpful as these systems may be, we are called to a deeper responsibility, not merely outsourcing our decisions to simple and easy explanations but instead to the full weight of wisdom required of good and righteous living.
P.S. There is likely more to say here, and I'll be refining this post in the future.