On Dying, Grieving, and Judgment
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
3d ago
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
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Should I Choose To Live Forever? A Debate
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1w ago
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
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Should we be grateful for death?
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
2w ago
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
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The ethics of human extinction
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
3w ago
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
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More On “Is The World Better Than Ever?”
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
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
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A Final Note On The Existence of Free Will
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
Over the past few weeks, I’ve read quite a bit about free will in the hope of expanding on the position I elucidated in a previous post. What I’ve discovered along the way is a stronger commitment to compatibilism. In the first place, compatibilism is the view of a large majority of philosophers (60% compatibilism; 19% libertarianism; 11% no free will.)[224]  Furthermore among evolutionary biologists, 80% said that they believe in free will while only 14 percent chose no free will, and 7 percent did not answer the question.[225] (Obviously this depends on the definition free will offered ..read more
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Existential Physics: A Scientists Guide To Life’s Biggest Questions
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
I just finished Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book, Existential Physics: A Scientists Guide To Life’s Biggest Questions. I intended to do a full review but alas don’t have the time. Still, I wanted to share a few notes I made on key points she made in each chapter. So here goes: Chap 1 – Does The Past Still Exist? When our grandparents die info about them becomes irretrievable. We can’t communicate with them. “Nevertheless, if you trust the mathematics, the information is still there, somewhere, somehow,  spread out over the entire universe, but preserved forever. It might sound crazy but it ..read more
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Short Philosophy Jokes
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
Q: How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Depends on how you define “change”     Descartes is sitting in a bar, having a drink. The bartender asks him if he would like another. “I think not,” he says … and disappears.   Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”   Dean, to the physics department: “Why do I always have to give you gu ..read more
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Society May Be Better But Is It Also More Fragile?
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
By Ed Gibney For the last five posts, we have been discussing the question of whether the world is getting better or not. I’d like to give Ed Gibney the last words (for now?) on the topic: Thanks for gathering these comments together (including mine) and briefly replying to them. They elicited another idea from me as I was reading this. During my MBA studies, we essentially were trained to *optimize* the operations of organizations. Remove all the fat, redundancies, waste, and poor processes. All this rationalization makes things run better. And this is certainly what we have done to human cu ..read more
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Summary of Lent’s Arguments Against Pinker
The Meaning of Life By John G. Messerly
by John Messerly
1M ago
Steven Pinker Yesterday’s post was of Jeremy Lent’s critique of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. The essay was long so here is a summary of Lent’s positions. (Note. I don’t necessarily endorse Lent’s views and will comment on them in my next post. This summary was forwarded to me by a collegue.) Steven Pinker’s work is stocked with charts that provide indeed incontrovertible evidence for centuries of progress on many fronts. But, it’s precisely because of the validity of much of his narrative that the flaws in his argument are so dangero ..read more
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