The lead paragraph of this article, Genomic Changes Found In Brains Of People Who Commit Suicide, asks questions which I’ve been handling in my first book and my blogs for the past two years: Are genes destiny? Alternatively, are we simply the products of our environment? There is a growing sense that neither of these … [Read more…]
This is a summary of my thoughts on dealing with natural law from my viewpoint of updated Thomistic existentialism. There may be some new thoughts in this entry but mostly I’m aiming at two goals: Improving my presentation of my views of a truer natural law, that is, one that corresponds to modern improvements in … [Read more…]
Nearly ten years ago, I wrote the first version of a dark comedy (sample chapters can be downloaded from A Man for Every Purpose) in which the protagonist, a formerly respectable professor of philosophy, seems to be in a rather confused state of mind. I’ll ruin part of the surprise, assuming it’s ever published in … [Read more…]
In a recent post New Forms of Human Mind and New Forms of Human Civilization, I discussed the Thomistic teaching that the human mind shapes itself in active responses to its environments in the context of cultural transitions. Recently, I was reading Political Theory & Modernity by William E. Connolly and his discussion of Nietzsche … [Read more…]
In this summary article, Psychologists Show Experience May Be The Best Teacher For Infants, we read: Researchers have found that infants who had an opportunity to use a plastic cane to get an out-of-reach toy were better able to understand the goal of another person’s use of a similar tool than were infants who had … [Read more…]
Recently, I had reason to refer to Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, a book which had a good deal of influence upon my thoughts, upon my views of how human beings are embodied creatures and not body-soul chimeras and also upon my views of the way that human beings are embedded in … [Read more…]
There was once a strange tint to the philosophizing of some modern biologists and philosophers working in that field. They set up unidirectional structures of control from DNA to soma and from brain to physical limbs while also setting up one way flows of perception, including that of pain, from physical limbs to brain. The … [Read more…]