A New Law of Biology I believe I have discovered a new law of biology. I call it “the law of differential adaptation”. It is fairly easily derivable from established principles, but I have not seen it enunciated before. It strikes me as illuminating. We begin by making a distinction: between the animate environment and […]
Real Americans Several years ago, I was driving down I95 with my wife, Cathy. At some point I found it necessary to change lanes and moved into the outermost lane. This caused an incoming car to slow down a bit—it was moving pretty fast. I then went back to my original lane. Nothing very remarkable—happens […]
Freud Generalized Freud’s psychoanalytic system was built around the idea of sexual repression. Sexual taboos expressed as societal pressures lead to the repression of the sexual instinct, resulting in distinctive psychological consequences. These include: neurosis, sexually charged dreams, dirty jokes, the artistic drive, and a general feeling of malaise. The basic mechanism is the repressive […]
Perceptual Intuition Perception and intuition are usually opposed to each other: what is perceived is not intuited and what is intuited is not perceived. The senses perceive and reason (intellect) intuits. We know material objects by perception and abstract objects by intuition. Empiricism declares perception to be the basis of knowledge (and the criterion of […]
Embarrassed Empiricism Let empiricism be the doctrine that all reality is observable, in principle if not in practice (that last qualification covers a multitude of sins). There is no reality but observable reality, i.e., what is perceivable by the five human senses, particularly vision. This is surely the main dogma of empiricism. The doctrine can […]
George Soros and Me George Soros is now 92 years old. I first met him at his home in Bedford, New York, in 2007, when he was one year older than I am now, at his invitation. It came about as follows. Robert Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books, had asked […]
De Re Necessity Reconsidered The necessity of origin is a beguiling thesis, instantly plausible. It sounds right. Queen Elizabeth II was necessarily born to her actual parents; in no possible world does she have different parents. If she exists in a world, so do her parents, dutifully giving rise to her. If she exists, those […]
Skateboarding I already had a skateboard, but it hadn’t ventured much beyond my living room. It seemed like asking for trouble (too small, too unstable). Then I saw someone using a longer type of skateboard at my local park (I was throwing discus and frisbee left-handed at the time). I went on Amazon and found […]
Morality of Life and Death Morality is often presented as a list of commandments, imperatives, duties, requirements, rules. Among these we have the commandment not to kill—along with commandments not to steal, lie, betray, break promises, be ungrateful, etc. These are treated as much on a par; together they form a moral whole—a code, a […]
Pain, Consciousness, and Morality Consciousness (sentience) evolved at a certain time on planet Earth, many millions of years ago. It didn’t emerge all at once but piecemeal: a certain type of consciousness evolved first, with additions later. What was this type? We don’t know; we can only guess. What we do know is that, whatever […]