Reading Time: 3 minutes Another thing I wanted to add was the idea that the mental, the experiential, supervenes on the physical. This means that the physical in some way defines and is necessary for the mental.
This is becoming more and more evident. Let me exemplify:
How much do you love your mother?
Reading Time: 3 minutes My twins had their birthday the other day so we went to Paulton’s Park, a local theme park for young children with a section called Peppa Pig World, and my boys love Peppa Pig.
All sounds rather unphilosophical so far. But that was until we pulled off the M27 and hit the short dual carriageway to a roundabout which led to a single carriage road to the park itself. The drive would normally take somewhere in the region of a minute. Or less. Apart from it took us an hour. One whole hour of my life I will never get back.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Atlas Shrugged, part I, chapter V Although the most vivid (and creepiest) scenes depicting Ayn Rand’s views on love and sex are still to come, this chapter offers a preview, as we find out in flashback that Dagny and Francisco became lovers during their college days. The first hint of this comes on a summer […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Last night’s meeting at Portsmouth Skeptics int he Pub was great fun. Rather than have a single speaker, previous speakers were asked to come back and host tables on whatever subjects they deemed fit and interesting. I hosted a philosophy table and primed people with a few questions on a sheet: What makes you you? […]
Reading Time: 14 minutes Due to the fact that wiki has some great starter articles, and I don’t necessarily have the time to write some of my own, but feel that there are some people who deserve greater notoriety. As a result, once in a while, I will randomly copy over an interesting wiki article and perhaps promote discussion on these people.
The first subject is someone important to our network here at SIN. Hypatia of Alexandria is our figurehead and is incorporated into our logos. She is an iconic role model for secular female intellects, and for all humanity. Here is a little more about her:
Reading Time: < 1 minute Dan Fincke, philosopher and atheist blogger, is offering private philosophy classes.
Reading Time: < 1 minute [Note: This month, Patheos is organizing a “Why I Am A…” blog series, challenging contributors to explain the basis for their philosophy in 200 words or less. Here’s my contribution. —Adam] I’m an atheist because personal experience isn’t sufficient. People from every religion claim to have personal experiences that bolster their beliefs, whether it’s the […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Summary: The compelling true story of the Renaissance humanists who rescued Greek and Roman philosophy from oblivion and wrenched the Western world out of the Dark Ages. After the collapse of the Roman empire, Europe descended into a centuries-long era of cultural and intellectual stagnation, a dark age of theocracy and feudalism. But how did […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes A little story about life’s priorities.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Via Dangerous Intersection, I saw this TED lecture by Daniel Kahnemann, based on his book Thinking Fast and Slow, about the conflict between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self”. His thesis is that we have countless moment-to-moment experiences, most of which quickly fade from memory and leave no trace, while a few significant ones […]
