My third ever entry on this blog had to do (in part) with René Descartes and his famous Cogito, ergo sum.[1] I have referred back to that entry many times in discussions here about epistemology, how my belief in my own existence is (after believing in logic) the second most secure of all my beliefs.[2]While I highly respect Descartes - he's the ( Read more... )

I don't usually like to just post large quotes from other sources here in place of blogging, but I'll make an exception here, since the writer's reference to bodiless "brains" connects with my previous entry, and emotions are, in part, at one level, a physiological production, almost a type of sense.
A teenage boy's first philosophizing about ( Read more... )

Some of my readers have asked for clarification about my leanings toward thinking that souls cannot exist without bodies.

I've used before the software/hardware analogy:[The soul] is like software, whereas the body is like hardware. Software can "exist" in the mind of a programmer or stored in written form on paper, but without hardware, software ( Read more... )

...At the Veritas forum[1], the speaker also stated the following: "A substance retains its identity even when it loses its properties ( Read more... )

I make the following observations as just that, observations, without any stated judgment ( Read more... )

One of the biggest issues I had with the Veritas speaker here at Hopkins a month or so ago[1] was that one of his arguments for substantive dualism was that there is a vast pile of accounts of people who have had out-of-body experiences, particularly near the time of death or before being resuscitated ( Read more... )

The most famous example of a self-refuting statement that I know is: "Nothing is absolutely true." Of course, the statement itself cannot then be true ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I tried something new and attended a lecture series from the humanities department. The guest speaker was a Jean-Luc Marion, Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris in Sorbonne and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology and member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School, who ( Read more... )

Last time around, I listed common statements made about the "soul" and my responses to them. This time around, I think I shall be brief and just make short statements of my current thoughts on the "soul", organized and cross-linked for your reading pleasure.

• Anything with higher brain function has a "soul".[0] This higher brain function includes ( Read more... )

Recently, a pair of conjoined twins were surgically separated. Every time I read of this, I am filled with sadness that such problems occasionally occur in nature that causes such difficulty to the poor children suffering this way, and I rejoice that they have succeeded in the separations. Obviously, the children have a lifetime of recovery to deal ( Read more... )