essay
We should have seen it coming. The human race is developing and spreading weapons of mass destruction far ahead of its capacity to defend against or control them. There’s a growing defense gap. We could have seen this coming too: The world supply of crazy leaders doesn’t seem to be in decline. We haven’t found…
Look, I consider you one of my absolutely closest friends. Maybe you can help me with this. I need your honest but polite opinion. Pull no punches, but please be gentle. I need your advice about taking advice. See, I want two things from my friends. I want enthusiastic support and I want honest feedback….
Many science-religion dialogues become controversial when participants ascribe different meanings to the terms science and religion . When scientists reject certain claims of religionists, it is often because their view of science is not the same as that of an opposing commentator, and vice versa. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a non-practitioner…
Practically every human culture has evolved some kind of religion or other, invoking supernatural powers, beings, and principles. God may be regarded as the personified essence of these. The rise of scientific and naturalistic explanations of the world has had the effect of transforming, even diluting, some of the traditional views of God, but they…
There’s an old debate in philosophy about what regular nouns represent. Proper nouns are easy by comparison, since they’re labels for particular things. Look for Jeremy Sherman in the real world and you can always point to me. But what about a regular noun like horse. Try to point to horse, and all you can…
We live in an age which is rich in its knowledge of the world around us. We have come to know a good deal more about mute matter, throbbing life, measuring mind, and the expansive universe than ever before in human history. But even as we probe deeper into the mysteries of the universe, our…
My editor has been out this week so I’ll take a break here with some more of my old limericks excerpted from my Insightlopedia of Human Nature. These are for the letters C and D. They cover an array of topics from the evolutionary to the everyday. Cantibration Calibrating your standard of effort…
1) THE FINAL FRONTIER The issue of free will continues to attract attention in philosophical circles despite the fact that its relationship to its original sparring partner no longer inspires much more than a mere scholarly curiosity. What began as a problem pitting the foreknowledge of God against the existence of a volitional faculty now…
The underlying and overarching contention of radical embodiment is that all human reason, meaning, and consciousness arise from our sensorimotor capabilities and the feeling and orientational states of our bodies.
I love my local grocery store. See, I love to eat. When I don’t eat, I feel like I’m missing something. The grocery store is full of things I can eat. Mine is open 24 hours a day. It’s about ten blocks away and I can drive to it in my reliable car, which I…