An exposition of Spinoza's views of the cause and cure of death. He holds death to be disruption of mind/body which need not involve becoming a corpse; amnesia counts. It follows that his criterion of personal identity includes memory, so Spinozistic immortality is impersonal. The cause of death is always something external, for nothing can destroy itself. (This principle, however, is not universally true; Spinoza was led to it by mistaken physics.) Suicide is irrational. Fear of death is to be (...) overcome by realization that since adequate ideas are eternal, to the extent that they consitute our minds we are eternal also. (But if so, isn't suicide rational after all? And since language depends on memory, the eternal understanding of adequate ideas is non-linguistic and non-symbolic; what then can it be?). (shrink)

1 Strange words to come from the father of materialism, a philosophy that might be self-evidently true if only there were no people. ..

Spinoza has told us that knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature is the true and highest good. That union consists in the body’s being the object of the idea constituting the mind; or as stated slightly differently, the mind’s being the idea itself or the knowledge of the human body. If to interpret this cryptic pronouncement we appeal to the definition of idea as “a conception of the mind which the mind forms because (...) it is a thinking thing,” then mind turns out to be a conception which the mind forms of the body. This looks deplorably circular. Let us go at it more obliquely. (shrink)

Ethics and lexicography would seem, prima facie, to have little to do with each other. Yet Aristotle testifies that Socrates pursued both:Socrates was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions. Socrates occupied himself with the excellences of character, and in connection with them became the first to raise the problem of universal definitions.

Ethics and lexicography would seem, prima facie, to have little to do with each other. Yet Aristotle testifies that Socrates pursued both:Socrates was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions. Socrates occupied himself with the excellences of character, and in connection with them became the first to raise the problem of universal definitions.

Spinoza has told us that knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature is the true and highest good. That union consists in the body’s being the object of the idea constituting the mind; or as stated slightly differently, the mind’s being the idea itself or the knowledge of the human body. If to interpret this cryptic pronouncement we appeal to the definition of idea as “a conception of the mind which the mind forms because (...) it is a thinking thing,” then mind turns out to be a conception which the mind forms of the body. This looks deplorably circular. Let us go at it more obliquely. (shrink)

Accessibly written, this is a book for all who are interested in the foundations of 21st century thought and who wonder where the cracks might be.

Part 1: Is -- part 2: Ought -- part 3: Some Greeks -- part 4: Spinoza -- part 5: Academica.

Like Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, David Chalmers’ now celebrated book makes for a good read as it leads us down the garden path. It is written with a like enthusiasm, and for the most part in a clear and forthright style. The author is not afraid of candidly drawing the consequences of his contentions. He takes consciousness seriously, according to his lights. And one must admire his insouciance in printing the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip that pulls the rug out from (...) under him. (shrink)

Hegesias (3d c.BC), as hedonist, held that the sage will kill himself. For: One should pursue pleasure and avoid pain. But life is virtually certain to contain more pain than pleasure. Therefore death, which is neither pleasurable nor painful, is better than life. The flaw in the argument lies in the underlying game-theoretical model of life as a game in which play and payoff are distinct. Hegesias's conclusion, that life is not ‘worth living,’ is inescapable by any philosophy so based, (...) including John Rawls's. Why shouldn't his rational persons behind the veil of ignorance opt for prenatal suicide? (shrink)

Like Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, David Chalmers’ now celebrated book makes for a good read as it leads us down the garden path. It is written with a like enthusiasm, and for the most part in a clear and forthright style. The author is not afraid of candidly drawing the consequences of his contentions. He takes consciousness seriously, according to his lights. And one must admire his insouciance in printing the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip that pulls the rug out from (...) under him. (shrink)

Has Alexander Pope's prediction, made a quarter of a millennium ago , come true in our own day? No one who has lived through the last thirty years is unaware of the spectacular alterations of behavior norms that have occurred in most Western societies. It is not merely that everywhere incivility and crime are on the increase, that there are more and more violations of moral standards which nevertheless continue to be acknowledged. Rather, we witness the relaxation or disappearance of (...) the standards themselves. What was bad becomes permissible or even a positive good. (shrink)

1. THRENODY Is it any longer possible to talk seriously about justice and rights? Are these words corrupted and debased beyond redemption? There is no need to multiply examples of how anything that any pressure group has the chutzpah to lay claim to forthwith becomes a right, nemine contradicente. Nor is this Newspeak restricted to the vulgar. The President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association has granted permission to misuse words like rights and justice if you do (...) so in the service of desirable political ends. Our most universally acclaimed theoretician of justice has shown at length that justice is a will perpetual and constant to forcibly take goods from those who have earned them and give them to those who have not; and the leading light of Anglo-American jurisprudence has constructed a “straightforward” argument proving that a citizen's right to equal protection of the laws is fully satisfied if only the bureaucrat denying him or her a public benefit on racial grounds shows “respect and concern” while processing the forms. (shrink)