But nor are they other worldly

"Values are not objects like stomachs and legs; they are not in the world in the way that seasons or the tides are in the world. But nor are they other worldly ; rather , they are social-worldly , and we live and die by them. They reflect how we feel and think about certain kinds of social behavior . Morality is not in the world in the way that the seasons are in the world. But morality is certainly in your social world; it emerges from the positive feelings of humans toward courage or kindness and in the negative feelings toward brutality or child neglect ."

The facts do not modify themselves to conform to our beliefs

"The facts do not modify themselves to conform to our beliefs, our hopes, or our dogma. Earth does not make itself the center of the universe because such an idea is deeply appealing to some humans; the heart really is just a meat pump. My children are my children because of the way reproductive biology works, not because an occult force preselected just this egg and just that sperm to get together and produce just this child. You can love your children fully without importing that bit of silliness."

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth— more than ruin— more even than death. . . . Thought is subversive and revolutionary , destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit . Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

~ Bertrand Russell

Neuro-oddities

"This list of perceptual oddities reminds us that the brain may do surprising things, things that have no special significance regarding afterlife or past life or spiritual life. They are just neuro-oddities for which we do not—not yet , any how—have complete explanations. Fascinating, poorly explained, sometimes annoying or disturbing, they are what they are: oddities."

Believing something because you simply want it to be true

"Truth and living with truth is very important to getting on in life. Not truthiness, but truth . As Suze Orman says in her lectures on money , “Stand in the truth . Do the arithmetic, and stand in the truth . If you can not afford a vacation , tell that to your kids and stand by what you say . ” In the very short run , really believing something because you simply want it to be true can be comforting. In the long run , it is generally catastrophic. Of course, we live with uncertainty everyday , but some things are more certain than others."

Soul and the law of conservation of mass energy

"Descartes’s notion of the soul did not work out very well with physics either . The problem is this: if a non physical soul causes events to happen in a physical body , or vice versa, then the law of conservation of mass energy is violated. The trouble is, so far anyhow , that law seems very resilient against all comers. Well , maybe—just maybe—it does happen . But how? Even very roughly , how? How can energy be transferred from a completely non physical thing to a physical thing? Where does the soul get its oomph to have such an effect ? What kind of energy does a soul have? Is it measurable? If not , why not? Descartes, interestingly , was fully aware of that particular problem and despaired of ever solving it ."

Did splitting the brain split the soul?

"In split-brain subjects, each hemisphere may separately experience the stimuli delivered exclusively to it . If , for example, a key is placed in the left hand and a ring is placed in the right hand and the subject is asked to use his hands to point to a picture of what he felt , the left hand points to a picture of a key and right hand to a picture of a ring. A split-brain subject may even make opposing movements with the two hands—the left hand picking up the phone, the right hand putting it down . Or if a visual stimulus, for example, is presented to just one hemisphere, the other hemisphere knows nothing about it . This was a completely stunning result . Did splitting the brain split the soul? The soul was supposed to be indivisible, not divisible like a walnut . But there they were, the split-brain results, available for all to see: if the brain’s hemispheres are disconnected, mental states are disconnected. Those results were a powerful support for the hypothesis that mental states are in fact states of the physical brain itself , not states of a non physical soul ."

Identifying a non physical soul with only conscious activity is far-fetched

"If conscious and non conscious processing are interdependent , identifying a non physical soul with only conscious activity is far-fetched. It would be like identifying someone’s nose as the whole body."

Souls, special energies, occult forces, and other non physical things

"By the nineteenth century , a few scientists, but especially Hermann von Helmholtz , realized that souls, special energies, occult forces, and other non physical things were likely a dead end so far as explanations of mental functions such as perception , thinking, and feeling were concerned. With great insight , Helmholtz proposed that many brain operations happen without conscious awareness. He came to this hypothesis while pondering the fact that when you look around, you can see and size up a complex visual scene in less than half a second (500 milliseconds), all without any conscious thinking. Sizing up a scene is very complicated, since the only thing that stimulates your retina are patterns of light . Yet you see colors, shapes, motion , relative position in space, and you instantly recognize familiar faces and other objects. So how does the brain get from patterns of light to “Hey , that’s Queen Elizabeth!”?"

Rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling

"By supporting government and fostering war, he (Tolstoy) declared patriotism to be a 'rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and above all, immoral' since it influences man to see himself the 'son of his fatherland and the slave of his Government, and commit actions contrary to his reason and his conscience'."

Universal benevolence

"Godwin was highly critical of Rousseau and ,others who exhorted people to love their country and to 'sink the personal existence of individuals in the existence of the community' as if it were an abstract being. The love of our country is

'one of those specious illusions which are employed by impostors for the purpose of rendering the multitude the blind instruments of their crooked designs'.

It makes us consider whatever is gained for country as so much gained to 'our darling selves'. Patriotism moreover leads to

'a spirit of hatred and all uncharitableness towards the countries around us'.

In place of a narrow patriotism, Godwin taught universal benevolence: we should help the most needy and worthy, regardless of our personal connections. We should act as impartial spectators and not be swayed by the ties of family, tribe, country, or race . And since ideas of great empire and of legislative unity are plainly

'the barbarous remains of the days of military heroism',

Godwin looked to a decentralized society of federated parishes to replace the Nation-State."

Obedient cannon-fodder

"Patriotism, which makes the ruled identify with their rulers and become their obedient cannon-fodder."

Reality does not care

"Reality does not conform to what we want it to be. The facts are the facts. Reality does not care if we do not like the way it is put together . It goes right along being reality any how . Reality does not care if we prefer to disbelieve facts about the heart or the brain or the cause of AIDS. By working with reality , we can sometimes change it by finding a new vaccine or a new machine to harness electricity . Science—testing, being guided by the facts, revising, testing again —is the best deal we have for getting a bead on reality . And this is as true on the farm or in the forest as in the lab."

I hate the brain

"Still in “I hate the brain ” territory , an entirely different worry is expressed by a few philosophers. They are exasperated by developments in neuroscience and psychology because these fields encroach on what the philosophers think of as their turf . Many contemporary philosophers, both in America and in Europe, trained for their jobs expecting to address questions about the nature of consciousness and knowledge and decisions without having to learn any neuroscience. Or any science, for that matter . They want to garner insights from the great books or from their own reflections. That is the true “philosophical method, ” they complain . “Why bother with the brain ? Can we not just plumb the deep questions without having to think about the brain ?”

This response is largely based on fear of job loss. You can readily sympathize with that response without wanting to turn back the clock. When cities became wired for electricity , the lamplighters had to find work elsewhere; as horses were replaced by cars, the village smithies had to learn to repair internal combustion engines. There are many things for philosophers to do, including collaborating with scientists and keeping alive the wisdom in the great books. But if they want to address how the mind works, they need to know about the brain."

To teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact

“My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact , not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.”
~  T . H. Huxley

A balm to the gullible

"Uncertainty , a tonic to some, is toxic to others. Trumped-up certainty , a balm to the gullible, is anathema to the skeptical.”

Why the anxiety about Harvey’s discovery that the heart is a pump?

"Why the anxiety about Harvey’s discovery that the heart is a pump? Because it was not merely the discovery of a little fact about an organ in your chest . For those alive in the seventeenth century , it challenged a whole framework of thinking about spirits and life that had been taken for granted as true since about 150 CE. It threatened the tight connection between the religious framework of life as a matter of spirits and the scientific framework that explored the nature of those very spirits. After Harvey ,after Copernicus and Galileo, that connection ceased to be conveniently tight . Religion could either drop dogma and go with science, or religion and science would move apart ."

I hate the heart!

"Harvey’s colleagues were of course deeply steeped in the unquestioned “truth” of Galen’s account of animal spirits. Upon seeing Harvey’s data, they did in effect cry painfully , “I hate the heart , I hate the heart ! ” What was actually said was in a way worse. They said they would “rather err with Galen than proclaim the truth with Harvey . ” This is the familiar strategy of let’s pretend. Let’s believe what we prefer to believe. But like the rejection of the discovery that Earth revolves around the sun , the let’s pretend strategy regarding the heart could not endure very long."

Each of us thinks we know ourselves better than any one else can know us

"Each of us thinks we know ourselves better than any one else can know us. But if the unconscious brain is a major factor in what we think at this very moment and what we feel at this very moment , the ground under our feet may seem to be falling away ."

The life of man is not worth living

"the life of man is not worth living because it is full of misery; it follows from the very nature of the human will that man's life is one of pain and misery"
~ Arther Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

The cause of all struggle, sorrow and evil in the world

""the will to be, the will to live, is the cause of all struggle, sorrow and evil in the world"
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)"

Today, local economies are being destroyed

Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.

-- Wendell Berry

Vote for the man who promises least

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.

- Bernard Baruch