Fun and Games with Minds and Brains
There have been a bunch of interesting comments already on my post on Mind/Brain division, so I’m pulling some out here to reply to in depth. dcb wrote I have to agree that this is a hard sell to me. I...
View ArticleInducing a Moral Jump Discontinuity (A thought experiment)
Tristyn of Eschatological Psychosis jumps the line by prefacing her comment on my review of Brook’s The Social Animal with ‘TRANHUMANIST QUESTION.’ I am powerless to resist. Here’s what she asked:...
View ArticlePrayer, Belief, and More Jump Discontinuities
The post last week on being prayed for sparked some interesting questions about free will and belief. I thought returning to that topic would be a nice complement to the discussion about choosing to...
View ArticleThe Trap of Numbness and Self-Satisfaction
I’ve still been thinking about some of the questions we’ve been picking over in the discussion of David Brook’s new book and attempts to alter personality/moral character through pharmacology. I’m...
View ArticleSimulated Ethics and Brainmodding
It’s a week of tough questions about transhumanism. After reading my post on moral hazard for uploaded humans, Gilbert asked: OK, so people value other people based on some kind of proximity function....
View ArticleFinding the Morality Pill Hard to Swallow
After a week of talking about transhumanism, brain-hacking, and the persistence of identity, I couldn’t pass up a chance to comment on Brian Appleyard’s slam on using science to improve people’s moral...
View ArticleLewis Trounces Freud
I’ve already blogged once about reading Freud’s Last Session, a two person play that is an extended argument between C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, but now I’ve gotten the chance to see it performed....
View Article“What’s Hard is Simple, What’s Natural Comes Hard”
This post is part of Patheos’s book club for T.M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. I recieved a review copy free of charge. In T.M....
View Article“Nobody human can stand all that everlasting affection!”
The quote is from Company, the subject is Passion, as the Sondheim Symposium goes on. This installment includes spoilers for 1984. At the climax of 1984, Winston is broken by the tortures in room 101....
View ArticleJavert and Valjean at Prayer
The two things I found most frustrating about the Les Mis movie were the camerawork and Russell Crowe’s performance as Javert. And they both came together to annoy me during “Stars.” Crowe is...
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