I have recently been made aware of a new book, The Weirdness of the World, by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. Here’s a brief description from Princeton University Press: Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of ..read more

I had a recent conversation with someone who is reading my book Short Essays on Life, Death, Meaning, and the Far Future. He told me that he was now enthusiastic about reading more philosophy. But this got me thinking. How much should you philosophize? Is philosophy dangerous? Does philosophizing make your life go better? If I had to do it all over would I have spent so much of my life thinking about life? I have previously written an essay “The Relevance of Philosophy” and shared the views of two of my intellectual heroes on the topic: “Will Durant: The Value of Philosophy” and “Bertrand Rus ..read more

I’ve read extensively about the relationship between diet and ASD. (I have a grandchild with mild autism.) The bottom line is that a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains is beneficial for autistic children (as it is for all of us). The most important foods are cruciferous vegetables with sulforaphane (broccoli, cabbage, collard green, kale, and cauliflower) with broccoli sprouts probably the single best food for children with autism. Here is a brief video that summarizes the research. Another key idea I’ve found is that the evidence strongly suggests that kids on with ASD who ha ..read more

In the fall of 1987 I taught my first college classes—two sections of ethics at a major midwestern university. I admit to being scared of speaking in front of 40 students who weren’t much younger than me. What would I talk about for an hour three times a week? What was I going to say for 16 weeks? Could I really do what so many professors I idealize seem to do with such ease? Well, I found out quickly that I could talk for an hour easily:) In fact, I enjoyed it thourougly. It took time to become comfortable; not until my second year did it seem natural. Still, even after many years of teachin ..read more

Responding to a recent post, Chris Crawford offered a beautiful image of how our lives might be meaningful despite our deaths. He writes, … the meaning of one’s life resides in the story that one creates by living. When we die, those who knew us tell others the story we forged by coping with the vicissitudes of life. That story is condensed down to its essence and becomes part of the culture. Think of our culture as a massive crowd of the ghosts of our ancestors and their lives. Then de-anthropormorphize that crowd, leaving just the stories behind. Our contribution to that crowd is the m ..read more

by Marie Snyder (Reprinted with author’s permission.) My dad passed away this week. He was older than the hills: 93 and a half years old. I’m not sad about his passing; he lived a long and fulfilling life. But I am troubled by how he went, and our expectations around grief. At his 90th birthday party, he was jovially talking with old friends and extended family. He lived a quiet life with his wife in a beautiful care facility. I once likened him to a cat, sleeping much of the day, and happy just to watch the world out his window. We don’t need to be doing things to be content. But the past fe ..read more

I have just been made aware of a new book, Should I Choose To Live Forever? A Debate The book is a debate between the philosophers Stephen Case–who answers the question in the negative, and John Martin Fischer—who answers in the affirmative. The book also includes a Foreword by Lord Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. While I have only read excerpts from the book I am familiar with the writing on this topic by both of these philosophers. And, as my readers might also know, I am firmly on the side of those who argue for having the choice to live forever—as I wrote ..read more

by John Danaher Most people think death is bad. They approach it with a degree of trepidation, possibly even denial. The prospect is particularly acute for someone who does not believe in an afterlife. Could such a person ever view death as a gift, something for which they should be grateful? That’s the intriguing question asked by Mikel Burley in his article “Atheism and the Gift of Death”. I want to take a look at his answer in this post.I’ll start by dismissing a relatively trivial sense in which a non-believer can view death as a gift. They can view it as a gift when the life they are l ..read more

I recently finished reading Emile Torres‘ essay in Aeon magazine, “The ethics of human extinction,” a topic I have thought and written about much over the years. Torres doesn’t come to a definitive conclusion noting “that human extinction would be a mixed bag.” Nonetheless, Torres argues that “the horrors of Going Extinct in a global catastrophe are so enormous that we… should do everything in our power to reduce the likelihood of this happening.” Yet this results in the predicament that those who agree … are left anticipatorily mourning all the suffering and sorrow, terrors and torments that ..read more

By Anton Alterman [Note. This is a follow-up essay to my many recent posts about human progress.] Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times publishes a column at the end of every year with the same idea as Pinker’s book … and a lot of the same data points.  It always seems spurious to me. I appreciate having someone take a crack at saying just what’s wrong with it, but there is much more to be said. For example, progress in income levels and education in China and India alone may account for a good deal of the perceived progress, and though they really do constitute progress, it may obscure other ..read more