Tag Archives: philosophy
Instant Karma: Doin’ the Math
One of the great themes in religion is compensation for virtue (not to be confused with another great theme: compensation for misfortune). The classical model of compensation for virtue, Heaven and Hell, is perhaps best attributed to Zoroaster. This model may not seem terribly enlightened, but we should recognize that it was probably conceived for [...]
Searle vs. Spinoza
I’ve been discovering podcasts lately, and stumbled across a great Donald Rumsfeld impersonator that I ran into a few years back. His name is John Searle, a philosopher at UC Berkeley. I don’t believe he means to be impersonating Rummy, but he does a great job nonetheless. Professor Searle has an amusing way of dropping [...]
Haunted Mansion
Science is a wonderful thing. It has discovered a great many truths that had before lay hidden beyond the horizons of the imagination, and who should dare circumscribe the domain of future science? Where shall it send us? Annihilation, perhaps, but we will die in any case. Perhaps it will carry us to the very [...]
Morality and Cosmic Dualism
When we look into our basic perceptions, it seems that every slightest perception is in some way pleasurable or painful. Objectively, we can describe the mechanism of pleasure and pain, but we cannot explain the ultimate fact that there is an observer. It is the I am. Whether it is the I think is a [...]