Drugs and the Meaning of Life
(Photo by JB Banks) (Note 6/4/2014: I have revised this 2011 essay and added an audio version.—SH) Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness.
www.math.rutgers.edu/~lenci/jokes/chicken
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? Plato: For the greater good. Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Allegory of the Cave
Plato realizes that the general run of humankind can think, and speak, etc., without (so far as they acknowledge) any awareness of his realm of Forms. The allegory of the cave is supposed to explain this. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk.
Philosophy In 90 Minutes
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Rationally Speaking
The Good Guy Contract
Twenty years ago, the first woman I ever loved broke my heart. Like many break ups, the end came in stutters and sine waves rather than as an abrupt but mercifully irreversible amputation. However, for reasons I couldn't understand yet quickly began to resent, my ex-girlfriend continued to ask favors of me. And I continued to grant them. Then one morning while chanting I found myself ruminating about how inappropriate it was of her to keep asking, and the more I thought about it, the more irritated I became.
axioms
Contents Contents | rgb Home | Philosophy Home | Axioms | Other Books by rgb: | The Book of Lilith | Axioms is a work that explores the true nature of human knowledge, in particular the fundamental nature of deductive and inductive reasoning.
Free will?
CONGRATULATIONS. You have just taken an action which is not determined by anything else (since the figure can be seen either way) and which you controlled (since you decided which way to see the figure). The observations not only suggest that you have free will (a useful thing to know in other, perhaps more earth-shaking situations), but reveal some additional interesting characteristics of this attribute. There is some chance that when you first saw the figure together with the two buttons, you did not in fact immediately see the arrows pointing in the direction in which you had decided to see them pointing. What this indicates is that the power of free will does not extend to determining what you see; what you see at any given time is determined by actions of your brain which you cannot fully control (and of which you are not aware).
11 ways you are thoroughly (but interestingly) wrong
The folks at Your Logical Fallacy Is have compiled a list of 24 common ways that you and I are often mistaken in the way we think. I have to say that looking through their site is perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had being told how wrong I am. And not just wrong in a certain instance, but consistently and fundamentally flawed in the very way I think. Fun, right? I thought so.
Mind-Blowing Story: “Talking to God…”
I met god the other day. I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god? Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.
Are You Living in a Simulation?
Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race.
10 Mind-Blowing Theories That Will Change Your Perception of the World
Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean. 1. Great glaciation.
Meeting God
You were on your way home when you died. It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail.
