We girls can be pretty neurotic, obsessing over situations that happened days ago, hypotheticals that will never happen or metaphysical concepts that are unknowable to the human mind. I know, we worry too much, but we just can't help it when the nature of knowledge is concerned! Here are seven things that every girl I know thinks about on a daily basis, if "thought" is an epistemologically feasible activity.
1. Does free will exist?
All girls wish they knew whether or not their choices were their own or whether they are just a product of their environment! Does each event lead to a fork in the road with multiple paths or is it all an illusion because we can't possibly know all the circumstances that cause something to happen? #TFW all your friends are hard determinists.
2. Is there any such thing as truth?
What girl hasn't questioned the nature of a verifiable fact? Lots of girls I know freak out about this on a regular basis. After all, what is objectivity but a series of combined subjectivities, am I right?
3. What is good, and by extension, what is evil?
Have you ever had one of those days where you just weren't sure if you were living your life by a reasonably moral standpoint? It's a little known fact that women, at any given moment, are probably thinking about the relativity of ethics. Like last Thursday, I was contemplating whether lying was permissible in a life or death situation or if it would compromise my integrity for hours before a party.
4. Could the nature of knowledge be an illusion?
If you’re like me, ladies, you’ve asked yourself this countless times! Most of the women I know spend a lot of their time considering that, if a dream can feel just as real as being awake, then how is it possible to believe anything that is derived through the senses? A lot of girls I know are absolute skeptics because of this!
5. Is it possible for a thing to be more than the sum of its parts?
Honestly, my first thought when I get out of bed in the morning is how my body is nothing more than bundle of atoms defying their inevitable entropy. Am I any more than that? My friend group is always trying to affirm one another that we are still the same person even if our cells have regenerated multiple times since our birth, but secretly, we have the same insecurity ourselves. If any girl says she hasn’t considered the Ship of Theseus problem in the past week, she is totally lying!
6. Hypothetically, if a train was about to run over five people and I could change the direction of the train by pulling a lever, but the other track has only one person tied to it, would I pull the lever?
Girls think about the disparity between utilitarianism and agency literally all the time. Raise your hand if you've heard this before: "Sorry I'm late, I was deciding if it was better to do nothing and deny responsibility or make an action for the greatest good of the greatest number." It's natural for a girl to worry about this, but if she starts throwing in variables about the nature of the theoretical people on the tracks, gently remind her that her decisions are her own to make and her justifications are just as valid as anyone else's!
7. Is time real?
If a girl seems lost in thought, it’s probably because she’s considering that all events are relational to one another, but not to any one fixed point. She's probably convinced herself that her existence just so happens to be an event that coincides with other events, and that "past" and "future" are only tools used to describe the "present"s of other things. We try to use timekeeping and measurement to get around this most of the time, but inside, we all totally know that's just a construct created by the human race!
