Tag Archives: Materialism
My Mind Is Not My Brain
My Mind Is Not My Brain How much hangs on that denial – or on its contradictory, that my mind is my brain! If our minds are our brains, as I once thought, and as our educated contemporaries mostly still … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, books, bureaucracy, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, hidden God, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, immortality, institutional power, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, masculinity, medieval, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, ontology, past and future, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged ambition, anguish, anxiety, attitudes toward death, brain and memory storage, brain death, brain death and consciousness, cardiac arrest and consciousness, cardiac care, computers and brains, conscious state and neural correlates, cruelty, cynicism, dealing with death, death and denial, death as escape, death as the end, despair, Does God make a difference?, EEG, God hypothesis, God question, identity theory, intellectual courage, life review, localizing conscious experience in the brain, manipulativeness, Materialism, mind/body problem, MRI, NDE, NDE research, NDE studies, near death experience, oblivion, paradigm shift, PET, Philosophical Materialism, physicalism, Pim Van Lommel, Pim Van Lommel's Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, placebo effect, prejudice, reductionism and culture, reincarnation, right pathway, search for purpose, success fixation, surviving brain death, surviving death, terminal lucidity, the absurd, verifiable afterlife reports, willful blindness
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The Coziness of Louisa May Alcott
The Coziness of Louisa May Alcott “Coziness” is not a word in the highest repute. In the 17th century, when the philosophers called “modern” were allowing the new physics to define reality, the features they deemed objectively-out-there were measurable: like … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Biblical God, books, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, erotic life, eternity, ethics, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, immortality, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, martyrdom, masculinity, memoir, memory, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, nineteenth-century, novels, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, scientism, secular, self-deception, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 17th Century Philosophers, Alcott as nurse, becoming a writer, catering to fashion, coming-of-age novels, cultural ideals of womanhood, death of Beth, farther shore., father-daughter relation, fatherly love, fictional simplifications, filial piety, Frederick Douglas, Greta Gerwig, guardian angels, happy endings, hard-edged modern views, hearth and home, Henry David Thoreau, home life, homelikeness, hope and faith, ideals of girlhood, important thinkers, Julia Ward Howe, literary catering, living one’s talent, Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott’s death, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Margaret Fuller, Marmee, Materialism, maternal protection, measurable reality, modern feeling, motherly love, Nathaniel Hawthorne, objectivity, parental guidance, personal fulfillment, physical reality, plain living and high thinking, processing influences, Ralph Waldo Emerson, relativism, repressing anger, sentimentality, size, subjectivity, the primary qualities, the secondary qualities, Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist family, unsentimentality, velocity, weight
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“Proof of Heaven”
“Proof of Heaven” We are in Riverside, California, having arrived from Phoenix, Arizona, where we had a five-minute TV appearance on Pat McMahon’s show, The Morning Scramble. Jerry had had his first radio interview with Pat, an hour-long substantive conversation … Continue reading
Posted in action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, beauty, Biblical God, cities, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, culture, desire, erotic life, eternity, faith, freedom, friendship, health, heroes, hidden God, identity, immortality, life and death struggle, love, memoir, memory, mortality, past and future, peace, philosophy, politics, power, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, self-deception, social conventions, sociobiology, spiritual not religious, spirituality, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theism, theology, time, twenty-first century, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged afterlife, alimentary canal, Arizona, bacterial meningitis, bodily wisdom, body’s viewpoint, brain death, California, cognitive function, cognitive recovery, cognitive survival, coma, cultural change, cultural influence, Dante, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante’s Paradise, deathbed communications, Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven, empirical evidence, evidence, father-daughter relations, father-son relations, filial piety, heaven and hell, identity theory, liars, life as story, love as force, Materialism, materialist worldview, media visibility, medical team, medical worldview, mind and body, mortality, narrative view, natural law, near-death experiences, neurosurgeons, out of body experiences, paradigm shift, Pat McMahon, peer pressure, performers, personal identity, personal responsibility, philosophers, philosophic influence, philosophic wisdom, philosophical materialists, Phoenix, professional courage, professional duty, professional responsibility, Q & A, radio interviews, Riverside, scientism, talk shows, the Big Questions, The God Show, The Morning Scramble, the paranormal, trip to heaven, truth, truthfulness, TV interviews, untruthfulness
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“Knowing Thyself”
“Knowing Thyself” My right foot has a walking difficulty. I have been trying unsuccessfully to cure it for as long as I’ve had it. That’s about twenty years. No one in the medical field has been able to diagnose it. … Continue reading
Posted in action, cool, desire, dialectic, erotic life, faith, femininity, philosophy, poetry, psychology, relationships, roles, social conventions, spirituality, the examined life, the problematic of woman
Tagged acupuncture, Aristotle, Authenticity, body rhythm, brain, contradiction, diagnosis, disability, dualism, eliptical, energy, exercise, handicap, hope, hypothesis, identity theory, Materialism, medication, medicine, mental causation, MRI, neurology, physical causation, placebo effect, psychic healing, psychosomatic, psychotherapy, riding, sincerity, strolling, symptoms, The Mind-Body Problem, the will, therapeutic riding, Total Gym, walking, yoga
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“Grief”
“Grief” Of late, it’s been one friend down after another. They’re falling over like soldiers raked with machine gun fire, each one opening another gap in the serried ranks. With every loss, one feels a whole dimension of one’s self … Continue reading
Posted in academe, culture, friendship, philosophy, relationships
Tagged Aging, brain, death of a friend, elegy, fallen comrades, grief, grief support, identity, identity theory, Kaddish, life story, lifetime, loss of a friend, Materialism, meditation, mourning, mourning a death, mourning a loss, Nevermore, philosophy, soldiers, The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, the self, witness
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“What Kind of a God?”
“What Kind of a God?” I have been following, with a mixture of emotions — including curiosity and claustrophobia — C. S. Lewis’s account, in Surprised by Joy, of his conversion to theism (belief in a personal God) from his … Continue reading
Posted in academe, art, culture, desire, faith, gender balance, history of ideas, life and death struggle, literature, masculinity, nineteenth-century, philosophy, political, psychology, social conventions, the examined life
Tagged Absolute, anthroposophy, élan vital, Britain, C.S. Lewis, conversion, divine, England, Henri Bergson, holistic healing, honor, human desire, Materialism, New Age, occult, Occultism, Oscar Wilde, Oxford University, philosophy, prayer, prophetic, reality, sex, Spinoza, SUNY, Surprised By Joy, theism, theosophy, World War I, yoga
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“Materialism”
“Materialism” Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly out of sorts, I imagine how my day or week would look to me if I were a materialist. That makes me feel better, because I remember that I’m not one. By “materialist” … Continue reading
Posted in academe, culture, desire, erotic life, history of ideas, literature, philosophy, political, psychology, relationships, sexuality, social conventions, the examined life
Tagged 13th century physics, Aristotle, Beatrice, Beatrice Portinari, cognitive science, Dante, Dante Alighieri, death of a parent, Divine Comedy, erotic quick fix, false consciousness, father's death, Florence, George Gilder, heaven, heliocentrism, hell, hook-up culture, identity theory, love, Materialism, May-Day, paradox, physical brain, Ptolemy, purgatory, reductionism, sociology, soul's journey, the soul, Thomas Nagel, Thomas Wolfe
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