Philosophy Miscellany

I have found an excellent way to fall asleep. The default is that at 9:00 p.m. I stop whatever I’ve been doing, usually working at the computer, and perform my evening ablutions. (It’s later if I’ve been out late.) Then I dim the lights and read a novel in the comfy chair by the bed until I can no longer keep my eyes open. At that point it’s all I can do to move to the bed. Sleep follows.  If instead I had stayed at the computer or got involved in some other activity with the lights on (not to mention, eaten a meal or drunk some coffee just before bedtime, etc.), sleep would have been indefinitely elusive, even if I were fatigued. But I’m an early to bed person because I like to get up early and well rested, so I have developed this method for inducing sleep.  But what I cannot do is will myself to sleep. I am sure you have had the common experience of needing to be up early the next morning and trying to get to sleep, to no avail. The method is actually counterproducti...

A philosopher (like a scientist) can never prove anything but only at best provide evidence or reasons for (or against) believing something. Nevertheless a philosopher, like anyone, can still believe things, and we philosophers in particular fancy that our beliefs are at least rational if not proven. To me this means simply that whatever we believe, we do so in light of careful reflection on the evidence and arguments adduced pro and con.  That is all preamble to my stating that I am a materialist, that   is, I believe that human beings are wholly physical animals; and so even our consciousness, which seems “nonphysical” and for which, frankly, there is still no adequate explanation, is either nothing but the firing of synapses in the brain or does not even exist in its own terms but is illusory. [1]   But how could I possibly believe such a thing, when the counterevidence seems to stare us in the face (almost literally)? Indeed, I know the pull of this (what I n...