I’ve spent a great deal of the last year or so researching theories on the ultimate ontology of consciousness. The following is a summary of approximately what I have learnt in that period; it will appeal to anyone interested in the aforementioned, and touches on some rather eccentric conjectures such as quantum mind. In the […]
When all is said and done, environmentalists are guaranteed to be disappointed. Nature is fucked. Your recent ancestors who lived in the earlier half of the 20th century may have farmed land that nature has now reclaimed. What happened? Labour was cheap then. People were willing to work for whatever money they could get. Since […]
The words “attractiveness” and “attraction” are routinely applied to an array of pleasurable stimuli with different properties, of which there are at least three obvious types: the erotic, the romantic, and the aesthetic. The erotic is the oldest of these, since erotic attraction facilitates gene replication in sexually reproducing species, reproduction being perhaps the only […]
All experiences whether good or ill, in their essence, can be equated to the inter-relations between external stimuli and the internal states of consciousness created by our brains and, in an ultimate sense, by our genes. Most people will concede that no amount of overpowering stimuli, no amount of pretty sunsets, will bring a smile […]
Ed Hagen recently wrote a paper outlining his objections to the classification of major depression as a “brain disorder,” on the grounds that, in sum: the diagnosis is made to distinguish it from other conditions and not from “normal” persons, symptoms of what is called depression tend to remit within weeks or months, and occur at points […]