Meaning of life
Questions Questions about the meaning of life have been expressed in a broad variety of ways, including the following: What is the meaning of life? What's it all about? Who are we?
Aristotle on the Unity of Psychology, or: How to Divide the Soul
One of Aristotle’s guiding concerns in the De anima is with the unity of psychology, the “study of the soul” (tên tês psukhês historian, 1.1, 402a3–4), and accordingly with the unity of its object. The fact that soul is not a real genus — because life is spoken of in many ways and so is homonymous (2.2, 413a22–5; Top. 6.10, 148a28–31) — poses a genuine methodological problem for psychology and for its integrity as a science. That is why by the end of De anima 2.1, we have arrived only at the “most general sort of account” of the soul (koinotatos logos autês, 412a5–6), something that has been merely sketched in its outline (tupôi … hupogegraphthô, 413a9–10), and not a scientific definition (2.2, 413a11–15). Aristotle’s appeal to parts of the soul is meant to be his solution to this problem.
From the classroom to the frontline – schools must be careful what they teach kids about the army
By Jonathan Parry *reposted from Dinner time at Harrogate’s army foundation college. Harrogate Army Foundation College Facebook
Dream States: A Peek into Consciousness
IF YOU HAVE SEEN the recent Hollywood blockbuster Inception, a movie that does to dreaming what The Matrix did for virtual reality, you may have been holding your breath as Ariadne, an architecture student, folded the streets of Paris over herself like a blanket. This stunning sequence, an homage to M. C. Escher, is testimony to the bizarre nature of dreams. Watching it made the neuroscientist in me reflect on what dreams are and how they relate to the brain. The first question is easy to answer.
The Trick To Thinking Clearer and Better – Personal Growth
The late historians Will and Ariel Durant spent four decades of their life studying, compiling, and writing the history of Western civilization. The product of their efforts, The Story of Civilization, went on to fill four million words, across 10,000 pages, divided into 11 separate books. After finishing the last one, they then took on an arguably more daunting task: to summarize all they had learned into a 100 pages in The Lessons of History. It’s an incomplete and generalizing attempt, no doubt, but it is also one of the most densely-packed sources of modern wisdom available to us. There are many trends and patterns to be found in the past, and the Durants do a commendable job of highlighting them. The essence of their view, however, can be summarized by the following sentence from their short book:
Scientists Are Finally Figuring Out Why We Dream—and the Brain Processes Responsible
The brain’s dream factory has been identified, with scientists finding a so-called "hot zone" that can be used to predict if a person is dreaming and what they are dreaming about. The findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, challenge our understanding of conscious experiences during sleep, and could shed light on more fundamental questions, like why we dream at all. Dreams—why we have them, what they are for—are not well understood. Many scientists believe they are related to information processing, potentially helping filter what we have been exposed to during waking hours and helping memories to form. Another idea is that they are randomly fired neurons that our brain tries to make sense of as we rest. Sleep comes in four stages, with rapid eye movement, or REM, being the one scientists currently associate with dreaming.
How to improve your Critical Thinking skills: Interview with Dr. Gerald Nosich – Life Lessons
In this article I interview an expert on Critical Thinking, Dr. Gerald Nosich from the Foundation for Critical Thinking, who has been teaching Critical Thinking since 1977 to find out how we can improve our Critical Thinking skills. In this article you will learn: Let’s start at the beginning… Michael: What is Critical thinking? Dr.
The ability to control dreams may help us unravel the mystery of consciousness
We spend around six years of our lives dreaming – that’s 2,190 days or 52,560 hours. Although we can be aware of the perceptions and emotions we experience in our dreams, we are not conscious in the same way as when we’re awake. This explains why we can’t recognise that we’re in a dream and often mistake these bizarre narratives for reality.
10 Predictions About The Future That Should Scare The Hell Out Of You
Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road The future looks bright, except when it doesn't. Here are 10 exceptionally regrettable developments we can expect in the coming decades. Listed in no particular order.
Taoist Healing Imagery
Seven advanced visualizations utilize ancient Taoist imagery to build self-awareness, unity of mind and body, and ultimately: enlightenment. Although healing with imagery is relatively new to the West, its use in China dates back to Taoist texts from the third century BCE. We learn that these healing techniques induce what modern brain researchers call an alpha-theta state, where the unconscious comes to consciousness, and the mind reaches a blissful clarity.
Corrupt the Youth: a philosophy outreach program
By Briana Toole As has been aptly noted by many working in our profession, philosophy has a pipeline problem. While minorities (women, people of color, and those from low-income backgrounds) may be well represented in undergraduate philosophy classrooms, their numbers drop substantially in graduate school, and they are even less well represented in tenure-track appointments.
Making Sense of Big Data With Virtual Reality And The Unconscious Mind
3,789 views|Aug 16, 2014,10:18 am A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic, is a well-known quote – often mistakingly attributed to Stalin. Regardless of the author, the sentence is interesting because it can be read in at least two ways: in one, it relates with compassion fatigue, our inability to feel outrage when the horror surpasses a certain threshold. But it might also be seen as pointing to our inability to visualize and grasp the meaning of huge data amounts. When numbers are too high, the mind struggles to make sense of them.
Why Plato Said Not To Slouch
The very notion of what in the ancient world defines the human being in contrast to all other living things is simple: upright posture. Best known of the ancient commentators is Plato, who, according to legend, is claimed to have seen the human as bipedal and featherless. To describe humans as “featherless” sounds odder to modern ears than does the functional association of bipedalism and intelligence, but Plato sees the absence of bodily covering as a move away from the base toward the human, for he is quite aware that the other bipedal animal is the bird. Greek thought gives the bird a middle role between the human and the gods, since birds are connected to the gods through their use in divination.
Book of Enoch
Hebrew religious text, ascribed to Enoch The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) of the text are estimated to date from about 300–200 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably to 100 BC.[3] It is not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). While the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church consider the Book of Enoch as canonical, other Christian groups regard it as non-canonical or non-inspired, but may accept it as having some historical or theological interest. It is today wholly extant only in the Ethiopian Ge'ez language, with earlier Aramaic fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few Greek and Latin fragments.
