Alan Watts - Philosophy and existence (Great talk) - (The relevance of oriental philosophy) Cambridge Nights | Conversations about a life in science. Is Death Bad for You? - The Chronicle Review. By Shelly Kagan We all believe that death is bad. But why is death bad? In thinking about this question, I am simply going to assume that the death of my body is the end of my existence as a person. (If you don't believe me, read the first nine chapters of my book.) But if death is my end, how can it be bad for me to die? People sometimes respond that death isn't bad for the person who is dead. Story 1. Story 2. Story 2 is worse. In thinking about this question, it is important to be clear about what we're asking. Maybe nonexistence is bad for me, not in an intrinsic way, like pain, and not in an instrumental way, like unemployment leading to poverty, which in turn leads to pain and suffering, but in a comparative way—what economists call opportunity costs.
Despite the overall plausibility of the deprivation account, though, it's not all smooth sailing. If death has no time at which it's bad for me, then maybe it's not bad for me. Suppose that on Monday I shoot John. Hmm. Wait. It All Goes Back In The Box. Tyler Cowen: Be suspicious of stories. We Are All Princes, Paupers, and Part of the Human Family - Facts So Romantic. I recently discovered that my 10-times-great-grandfather bought a good chunk of Brooklyn from the Lenape Indians. He was one of the first Dutch landowners on this continent, a man who had run a laundry bleaching business in Holland but had traveled under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company to become a farmer in the New World. The deed in question, written in Dutch in 1636, is the first record of any land being sold on Long Island. Pretty neat, right?
But as I realized almost immediately, this isn’t much of a distinction. Chances are, if you have a famous ancestor far enough back that finding out about them is a surprise, you share them with a small city of other people. Now, there’s another important implication of these studies: Most of the people you are descended from are no more genetically related to you than strangers are. Luke Jostins”> So computer models and analysis of real genomes show that everyone’s distant ancestors are the same people. Untitled Document. Funny monkey experiment.
Posted on February 7, 2012 in Humor If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook or Twitter . Thanks for visiting! Rate this Post Loading ... So... What do you think? Check this out on our Partner Network. The Meaning of Life. (or, What's it all about?) Now available in Spanish!
(Traduccin de hsu - midipaj@arrakis.es ) Let's step back a moment... Why do you want to know the meaning of life? Often people ask this question when they really want the answer to some other question. Let's try and get those people back on track with some "pre-meaning of life" advice: If you're questioning the meaning of life because you've been unhappy and depressed a good bit, click here. On a related note, if you want to know the meaning of life because you feel useless and worthless, click here. If you want to see our answer so that you can prove your intellectual prowess by poking holes in it, click here.
If something awful just happened to you or someone you care about and you don't understand why bad things happen to good people, click here. If you would like to help the world but most of the rest of the world seems completely insane, click here. If you wonder why there is so much hatred in the world, click here. Comments? The Meaning of Life. 1. The Meaning of “Meaning” One part of the field of life's meaning consists of the systematic attempt to clarify what people mean when they ask in virtue of what life has meaning. This section addresses different accounts of the sense of talk of “life's meaning” (and of “significance,” “importance,” and other synonyms). A large majority of those writing on life's meaning deem talk of it centrally to indicate a positive final value that an individual's life can exhibit. That is, comparatively few believe either that a meaningful life is a merely neutral quality, or that what is of key interest is the meaning of the human species or universe as a whole (for discussions focused on the latter, see Edwards 1972; Munitz 1986; Seachris 2009).
Most in the field have ultimately wanted to know whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning, a certain property that is desirable for its own sake. 2. 2.1 God-centered Views 2.2 Soul-centered Views 3. 3.1 Subjectivism 3.2 Objectivism 4.