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Review of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s, “7 1/2 Lessons about the Brain”

December 24, 2020 by Norm Bearrentine

  I love this book, and the down-to-earth clarity with which Lisa describes the workings of the brain. Her sense of humor makes it a fun romp. She fleshes out my own intuitions about the brain and adds a whole raft of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2020

Response to Sam Harris’ Podcast with Robert Sapolsky

August 16, 2017 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

There are black people who hate white people, there are white people who hate black people, and both got their hatred through the same mechanisms: biology and culture—no one has free will. No one is ultimately to blame for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2017 Tagged With: emotions, free will, happiness, hatred, meditation, rationality, Robert Sapolsky, Sam Harris

Review of Daniel Dennett’s, From Bacteria to Bach and Back

May 25, 2017 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Dennett has ideas about what human beings are and what they are capable of that he wants desperately to maintain against all science and logic. He wants to believe—and wants to convince us—that we are capable of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2017 Tagged With: Bayes, brain, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, free will, Mind

Review of Daniel Dennett’s Elbow Room

May 23, 2017 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

(I wrote this review in 2010, but never got around to posting it here. He published a more recent edition in 2015 that I may review at some point; there were many issues I didn't get to in this one.) This book reminds me … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008, 2017 Tagged With: Daniel Dennett, determinism, free will

Review of Antonio Damasio’s, The Feeling Of What Happens

May 14, 2017 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

In his introduction Damasio states: “The . . . fact is that consciousness is not a monolith, at least not in humans: it can be separated into simple and complex kinds, and the neurological evidence makes the separation … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2017 Tagged With: Antonio Damasio, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, Julian Jaynes, Michael Gazzaniga, The Feeling of What Happens, William Calvin

Chuang Tsu and Toenail Fungus

December 29, 2015 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

I was applying an over-the-counter remedy to the toenail fungus on my left foot—my right foot is asymmetrically fungus-free—when I found myself feeling disappointed that it doesn’t seem to be working. At that point a slightly … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2016 Tagged With: Chuang Tsu

Depression and Me

July 9, 2015 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

When I’m depressed, there’s no point in trying to figure out the reason for it, because when I’m depressed, everything I think of seems like a good reason: Is the sun shining? All that light is oppressive—no wonder I’m … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2015 Tagged With: depression, Jean Klein, smile therapy, Sue Barry

Review of Sam Harris’s Waking Up

September 12, 2014 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Sam did a great job of dealing with the complexities of free will in his book by that name, but in Waking Up he is writing about consciousness and the self, which are altogether more difficult subjects, and he flounders. Like … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2014 Tagged With: brain, Buddhism, consciousness, Eckhart Tolle, free will, Jean Klein, Sam Harris, self, the present moment

Review of Sam Harris’s “Waking Up,” Chapter 1

August 25, 2014 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

To put Sam’s intentions in my terms, he wants people to learn to access experiences most people’s brains are capable of, but that aren’t widely promoted in western culture. He thinks this will be good for them, and for anyone … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2014 Tagged With: consciousness, Dogen, Lao Tsu, LSD, MDMA, meditation, mystical, religion, Sam Harris, spiritual, Zen

Ignorance, Stupidity, Racism, and Morality

June 17, 2014 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

I was raised in the rural South, and while I never cared for fried fish that much, hushpuppies were a different story. I would love to gorge myself on them right now if I hadn’t learned in adulthood that there were healthier … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2014 Tagged With: ignorance, morality, racism, stupidity, Will Rogers

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What This Site Is About

When I realized that the idea of god was a joke, I thought that was the end of the story. Later I found that Christianity had shaped my values, and while some were worth keeping, many had lost their foundation—the meaning of life, for example. Something similar happened when I realized that the idea of free will was a joke, and I’ve spent the decades since both those realizations discovering and editing what Julia Galef calls the “orphan beliefs” they left behind. It’s a tricky business, and this blog has been a chronicle of my efforts to puzzle it all out, including reviews of related books. I hope you find it helpful.

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