Reason and Meaning

In response to my recent post about political philosophy, Jack Lance replied as follows, Enlightened Self-Interest and Two Caveats The first idea I carried home from the Aspen Institute in 1988, and the one that gave me the most hope for our country, came from Walt Whitman, as presented in the Institute’s own materials. Whitman argued that the secret of democracy lies in the largeness and…

by Mixel Kiemen, Ph.D, Eindhoven University of Technology.* Around the world, people are worried about Artificial Intelligence. (more…)

Careful readers may have noticed that many years of political posts were removed in November 2025. I regret doing this, but there is no way to retrieve them. (more…)

I never expected when I began this blog in 2013 that I’d be using it to share some of my health information. But then projects often lead to unexpected results. Anyway, I have shared that I recently fainted and have been diagnosed with 4% Afib. Well, another case of extreme dizziness caused by a very low heart rate (35-40 bpm) landed me in urgent care again last weekend. Continue reading I Keep…

From Skeptic, June 3, 2026, by Hunter Trace When Robert Trivers died this year, I lost a friend and the world lost one of the few people who genuinely understood why we lie to ourselves.  Continue reading 7 Ideas That Should Make You Distrust Your Own Mind

Old Woman Dozing by Nicolaes Maes (1656). Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels As I’m sure most of my readers know, Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is a common, often chronic, arrhythmia where the heart’s upper chambers (atria) beat chaotically, causing an irregular and fast heart rate. While not usually directly life-threatening, it significantly increases the risk of stroke and heart failure,…

In response to my recent post, “Can We Make A Better Future?”, Lyle penned this wise and thoughtful reply. Knowledge. The foundation of everything. But we need to add bricks and mortar to the foundation to create a livable building. I envision the bricks and mortar as wisdom, as Paul and you allude to in the comments. Wisdom assembles the knowledge into something workable. Unfortunately, unlike…

I have frequently criticized religion on this blog. But I might add that religion is not the only anti-progressive force in the world—there are other enemies of the future. Some oppose progressive ideas even if they are advanced by the religious. Continue reading Can We Make A Better Future?

My Mother On this Mother’s Day, I remember my mother. The following is a letter I wrote to her over 25 years ago. April 29, 2000 A SPECIAL 81ST BIRTHDAY WISH FOR MY MOTHER This letter should arrive on your 81st birthday—a time of rejoicing for a life well-lived. Emerging from the stable background of loving parents, a young woman, a talented pianist, and a fluent reader of Latin was pursued by…

I fainted for the first time in my 71 years of life yesterday morning. Evidently, a combination of having low blood pressure and heart rate, getting out of bed too quickly, and dehydration caused that drop in blood flow to the brain. Went to the urgent care, where, after a CT Scan and other tests,  they determined I was most likely fine. It does give you pause to experience a sudden loss of…

I am not a nutritionist. What I am is a retired philosophy professor who is reasonably good at doing research and evaluating the preponderance of evidence for or against certain claims. Regarding scientific claims, the best we can do is follow Bertrand Russell’s advice, Continue reading What Foods Are Healthy?

My last post about the book, If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us, elicited some particularly thoughtful comments. I would like to draw my readers’ attention to them. Continue reading Will AI Kill Us All?

I just finished Yudkowsky‘s and Soares‘ If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All. As some of my readers know, I taught a class in the computer science department at UT-Austin for many years called “Philosophical Issues in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.” In fact, I used some of Yudkowsky’s material on Friendly AI in that class. Continue reading If Anyone Builds…

In my last three posts, I have reflected on how a specific conception of the self might help ameliorate our worries about death. The historian and philosopher Will Durant wondered whether there was something suggestive about the cycle of human life that sheds light on its meaning, while also easing our concerns about death. He explored these themes in his 1929 book The Mansions of Philosophy.…

In our last post, we highlighted how Taoism and Confucianism, along with Buddhism and David Hume, hold the view that the self is not a fixed, independent entity, but a constantly changing process. In addition, Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017), widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, shared a similar view. Continue reading…

In our previous post, we discussed how the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta (non-self) may help us overcome the fear of death. We also considered similarities between this Buddhist doctrine and David Hume’s bundle theory. Additionally, other “Eastern religions generally view the self not as a fixed, independent entity, but … a constantly changing process, or an interconnected part of a larger…

In Buddhism, the term anattā … is the doctrine of “non-self” – the idea that no unchanging, permanent self exists… While often interpreted as a doctrine denying the existence of a self, anatman is more accurately described as a strategy to attain non-attachment by recognizing everything as impermanent…1 Continue reading Does The Buddhist Doctrine of Anatta Help Us Overcome The Fear Of Death?