Ethics with regard to tulpa creation.

[Luminesce]

We haven't been talking about tulpas for a long while now. Don't feel inclined to participate in this discussion if... well, in general. You can still ignore us and talk about the actual thread's topic though. This is just where that led us.

 

 

Well, I myself am kinda lost on the whole belief/subjective/not actually beliefs/not actually not objective stuff. Like I don't really know how to explain what I'm thinking anymore because you see it so radically different. Doesn't seem like a problem though, don't feel like we're conflicting here, so my normal urge to come to an understanding isn't applying.

 

As for the determinism thing, I appreciate the effort of trying to try to understand lol. I've got soup getting cold so I'll just throw some words out there real quick. Basically, I'm a perfectionist when it comes to things like learning new skills or creating art, which often leads me to not do them at all as it's too stressful not being able to become proficient quickly or account for all factors. This also applied to my beliefs however (starting to be afraid of using that word around you, just like "subconscious" with Sands), so I've never been able to feel secure about believing/thinking a certain way unless I could explain it logically to myself. So when it came to going from my very comfortable "The world's pointless, humans suck at making it a good place to live in, and it's really not worth applying any effort to try and help since I'll make no difference" to Reisen's "The world is perfect, every human is trying their best in their own way and is also perfect, and every little bit counts so do what you can and it'll be fine", I had a friggin' chasm to bridge. And the way I ended up doing that (becoming comfortable with adopting Reisen's much more attractive beliefs on life) was through basically logically nullifying all opinion and subjective beliefs. Because mine made sense. So I had to figure out a way to adopt beliefs that didn't make sense to me, by making them make sense. Determinism sure helped, though I didn't know it was called that. I figured out through Reisen's unconditional love that nothing really got worse with that belief compared to my own, and from that that everyone in the world had different ways of thinking about it and each other and they all seemed to maintain stable perceptions of reality (for the most part). So I realized that there was no "correct" way of thinking about things, and with the idea of determinism ie all morals and beliefs and experiences are only the way they are because that's how they ended up (as opposed to any greater sense of right or wrong I suppose? Dunno, I've honestly lost myself here), decided that it made logical sense to choose the beliefs that would most benefit me and my life and my basic values. Which basically consist of "I want to be happy and fulfilled and I'd like to help others be happy and fulfilled wherever possible". I suppose determinism helped me realize how meaningless everything really was, which in turn meant that it was up to me (and everyone else who experiences sentience) to create my own meaning. Whereas prior I was deluded into thinking everything was just bad and not worth trying to fix. Man I don't know, I'm ultra done trying to discuss my own philosophy lol.

 

 

Basically, I had to disillusion myself with the belief that everything sucked through realizing that reality is subjective (as seen by so many different humans maintaining different personal realities) in order to allow myself to adopt the beliefs Reisen had which, taking place in my own mind, seemed so much more promising. Whereas when simply seeing another happy person in real life is subject to, you know, pessimism and believing they're ignorant and all that. I couldn't deny Reisen's views because I couldn't find anything wrong with them and they seemed so good compared to mine. If I haven't yet reached the point where you can't figure out how to reply anymore, then I think I give up. For my and everyone elses' sake I'm gonna stop this line of discussion because I can't make what I want to say make sense. And my soup is cold.

[waffles]

Mistgod and I really don't put a lot of weight on the ethical consequences of others creating imaginary peoples in their own minds. But, by all means, carry on. The conversation is amusingly pointless.

 

Then you've presumed the answer, haven't you? You assign tulpas no ethical weight, but you don't defend the position. Besides which ethics are in general definitely very important. Like, trivially, you're not going to be the one saying that we shouldn't be thinking about the ethical consequences of actions. That's fucking stupid.

 

 

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Well, I myself am kinda lost on the whole belief/subjective/not actually beliefs/not actually not objective stuff. Like I don't really know how to explain what I'm thinking anymore because you see it so radically different. Doesn't seem like a problem though, don't feel like we're conflicting here, so my normal urge to come to an understanding isn't applying.

 

Fine, yeah. I guess I mostly try to put it out there as an acid test. I'm not really alone in it but I don't tend to get much support among others. I think we conflict but yeah, it's fine.

 

 

I couldn't deny Reisen's views because I couldn't find anything wrong with them and they seemed so good compared to mine. If I haven't yet reached the point where you can't figure out how to reply anymore, then I think I give up. For my and everyone elses' sake I'm gonna stop this line of discussion because I can't make what I want to say make sense. And my soup is cold.

 

I mean, yeah, I basically get what you mean. In a certain sense these beliefs are not really assailable either way (the fact that there was nothing wrong with those beliefs but you also didn't believe them should flag this), but the consequences on outlook still matter. Well, yeah, it's the metabelief which is fine, and I guess it makes sense, so, ok.

[Saylin]

I most apologize for not jumping on this bandwagon of derailment- I wouldn't have much to contribute anyway. However, in response to OP, I dislike the thought of creating a Tulpa for sexual reasons, or to just have a mental punching back to take your stress out on. I feel, whether you're one to say they're real people just like us, or one to say they're just imaginary, they deserve the respect we'd give to any other person.

 

However, in the end, the Ethics don't matter. No matter how Independent a Tulpa is, they only have access to your mind and the knowledge you put in it. If you create them for a reason you believe to be completely just, without any doubts, your Tulpa will never know any different unless you were to change your mind. As far as they'd see it, whatever reason you picked was completely normal and good with no ill-intentions. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and while we might find it wrong, if the Tulpa is happy there's not much to say about it.

[Drakaina]

However, in the end, the Ethics don't matter. No matter how Independent a Tulpa is, they only have access to your mind and the knowledge you put in it. If you create them for a reason you believe to be completely just, without any doubts, your Tulpa will never know any different unless you were to change your mind. As far as they'd see it, whatever reason you picked was completely normal and good with no ill-intentions. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and while we might find it wrong, if the Tulpa is happy there's not much to say about it.

I rather like this part of your response. It points out that the world tulpas are limited to what our mind can percieve. And the world they live in isn't entirely (or at all depending on how disassociative your mind can get) our world. So it doesn't hold to our rules. Very inception like. I'm envisioning a wonderland where water flows up and sunlight makes it dark.

[Guest Anonymous]

What about hearing from some tulpas about the ethics of tulpa creation? I am seeing a lot of hosts saying a lot of things, but what do the tulpas themselves have to say on this? I am not the right one to speak for the tulpa perspective as I may not be a tulpa.

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Tulpas are people right? We are talking like they are not in the room again. This is a frequent occurrence on this forum I noticed.

[Drakaina]

What about hearing from some tulpas about the ethics of tulpa creation? I am seeing a lot of hosts saying a lot of things, but what do the tulpas themselves have to say on this? I am not the right one to speak for the tulpa perspective as I may not be a tulpa.

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Tulpas are people right? We are talking like they are not in the room again. This is a frequent occurrence on this forum I noticed.

 

Lol, this is true. Isa isn't quite developed enough, and I'm not good enough at hearing her yet to be able to weigh in, but I would love to see what other tulpa might have to say.

 

I am curious what you would say though, Melian. Officially tulpa or not you're still very clearly a self aware thought form. What's your opinion?

I know you made a "my host and I think..." post a couple pages back, but it almost sounded like you were proxying more for Mistgod, than voicing your own opinion.

 

I could be totally off base though. That's just the impression I got. :P

[Guest Anonymous]

Whenever we go off about sentience or not sentience or illusion or not illusion, you can place your bets that it is "Melian riding the Mistgod horse" as someone once put it. Yeah, that is pretty intuitive of you on that one.

 

How do I feel about it? Well in my personal case, it was never a deliberate conscious decision. So ethics of deliberately creating me don't apply. As for other tulpas, I think that, regardless of whether or not tulpas are real people or whatever, the host is going to treat them as real. That has a psychological and emotional impact on the host no matter what. So, you had better think it through carefully and be ready to treat the tulpa right. David and I made a good point that maybe ethics don't matter for something imaginary, but this is a quite a bit more than that isn't it?

 

Okay let me put it this way. Davie does have ethics when it comes to how he treats me. Even if he thinks I am imaginary in nature, he treats me as person. He would feel awful about treating me with cruelty or neglecting me. He just could not do it.

 

So there you go Drakaina, you are very shrewd and clever going for Davie's feelings bout me by asking me and not him. That changed our whole direction on this thread d'nt it?

[Luminesce]

You'd get a different style of answer depending on which of my tulpas if you asked if simply creating tulpas was ethical. But they'd all say basically the same thing: yes, of course. Everyone in the thread has been much more grim than any of my tulpas would be, including myself. Even Tewi who's more prone to logical analysis than I am has some base instinctive bias here, because regardless of the ethics she's still a tulpa and wouldn't exist if I hadn't made her. Lucilyn would probably go off on everyone in this thread a lot worse than you, Melian. She's got a knack for ignoring all the complicated in-depth discussion in lieu of a much simpler answer. I imagine it'd be something like "I'm right here! It would be unethical NOT to make me! Why are you guys acting like creating us is a bad thing when if you didn't we could never have had fun or be happy at all? If you're up to it and have time and stuff then there's nothing wrong with making a tulpa. All of the problems you discussed are yours, not ours."

 

It would be much more than that though, so I'm sparing you a Lucilyn rant. Reisen would be a little more fair with respect to situations you should and shouldn't make a tulpa in, but of course she's very optimistic about these things and would encourage it if it was likely to make you and the tulpa happy. Flan would defend the companion aspect, because she believes no matter how the tulpa turns out they're still going to feel something towards you if you're always caring and nice to them, even if it's only basic friendship.

 

Not sure what Tewi would say, but you may get a response from her herself in the next few days.

[Linkzelda]

-What do you consider an ethical reason to create a tulpa and why?

 

If we generalize ethical as in avoiding activities and such to avoid harm to someone, I’d support whatever reason that involves having a flourishing relationship; there’s such a large sense of liberation one can experience with a tulpa that it’s led me to believe it’s somewhat contingent on what they will define as flourishing. But, it can get a little tricky since whatever “harm” that may be done would mostly be some kind of mental, inner turmoil with a tulpa (probabilities with possession/switching expands that apprehension of finding a right and wrong).

 

And, if we used the treat as sentient philosophy as a base, I would see it as any activities and experiences that cultivates the yearning in them becoming a conscious accompaniment in some way. In other words, any strive to match that yearning ends up with the individual figuring out what it means, to them, on how one should do this, that, etc. in context of tulpa, i.e., applied, normative, and metaethics

 

-Are there any motivations behind creating a tulpa that you consider unethical?

 

For me to figure out what would be unethical, especially when it comes to what a person does in their own internal, private experience, the only rudiment that comes to mind is just that. Things like switching, and the implications with presumably having a conscious accompaniment take control of the body, and the potential harm that may ensue should there be ill intentions for such. Or, just about anything that an implied, conscious accompaniment would have to bear with in being sentient.

 

However, some of those experiences at best, excluding circumstances with possession/switching, would just be imaginary. But at the same time, whatever mode of existence/awareness a tulpa and host shifts into (mentally, or in this reality), even if the potential consequences don’t seem so horrifying, the experiences nonetheless could make them develop tendencies that aren’t in favor for flourishing in some way.

 

But, this isn’t to say that one has to find a way to make their minds internally consistent towards the notion of flourishing; the inner turmoil, and other metaphorical contexts of the mind could be useful supplements for that yearning. This flexibility makes the moral and ethical horizons stretch out to where it may get easy to get lost in your way of finding what’s right and wrong.

[Drakaina]

Whenever we go off about sentience or not sentience or illusion or not illusion, you can place your bets that it is "Melian riding the Mistgod horse" as someone once put it. Yeah, that is pretty intuitive of you on that one.

 

How do I feel about it? Well in my personal case, it was never a deliberate conscious decision. So ethics of deliberately creating me don't apply. As for other tulpas, I think that, regardless of whether or not tulpas are real people or whatever, the host is going to treat them as real. That has a psychological and emotional impact on the host no matter what. So, you had better think it through carefully and be ready to treat the tulpa right. David and I made a good point that maybe ethics don't matter for something imaginary, but this is a quite a bit more than that isn't it?

 

Okay let me put it this way. Davie does have ethics when it comes to how he treats me. Even if he thinks I am imaginary in nature, he treats me as person. He would feel awful about treating me with cruelty or neglecting me. He just could not do it.

 

So there you go Drakaina, you are very shrewd and clever going for Davie's feelings bout me by asking me and not him. That changed our whole direction on this thread d'nt it?

 

Thanks for your response.

This is your account, so I kind of assumed your responses would be yours. But it's nice of you to give your host a voice in it too.

 

(Thank you for the "shrewd and clever" compliment. :3)

 

Lucilyn would probably go off on everyone in this thread a lot worse than you, Melian. She's got a knack for ignoring all the complicated in-depth discussion in lieu of a much simpler answer. I imagine it'd be something like "I'm right here! It would be unethical NOT to make me! Why are you guys acting like creating us is a bad thing when if you didn't we could never have had fun or be happy at all? If you're up to it and have time and stuff then there's nothing wrong with making a tulpa. All of the problems you discussed are yours, not ours."

 

It would be much more than that though, so I'm sparing you a Lucilyn rant.

I think I like Lucilyn, and her way of thinking. ^^

 

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@Linkzelda

It's interesting you referenced possession and switching so much in your responses. I've kind of thought of them as optional, something that can be learned if the tulpa wants to. It seems like a lot of peoples' wonderlands are far superior to the world we (hosts) have to live in.