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Love, Life, Meaning, Zen, and Science, by Norm Bearrentine

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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 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

Buddha: “Resting in the Peace of Immortality”

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 08-30-07: The title above is a quote from the Buddha, and I read it this morning in Marvin Minsky's latest book, The Emotion Machine. If you're at all interested in how your brain works, what makes your … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain, Buddha, consciousness, evolution, Marvin Minsky, reality, The Emotion Machine, universe

Who’s in Charge, Redux: Our Lack Of Free Will

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 07-31-07: There's a fabulous article in the New York Times today, called "Who's Minding the Mind." Many people, including me, have been saying this for years, and the science has been accumulating: the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: awareness, brain, conscious control, free will, illusion, Mind

Science, Anger, and Forgiveness

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 07-19-07: About 6 years into my AA experience, I got very angry at my parents. I had read a couple of books by John Bradshaw, popular in certain segments of AA at the time, and I got so angry I called my … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: agent, anger, brain, forgiveness, habit, John Bradshaw, natural forces, neuroscientist, resentment, science, self

Your Brain Is Like Your Liver: No Conscious Control

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 07-10-07: I've been busy—doing what is a long story—and the reason I haven't been posting is that, once again, it had become a process that took at least two hours out of the day—hardly the short … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain, control, false assumptions, mistakes, thinking, wrong conclusions

What Level Of Explanation is This?

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 06-10-07: Your car stopped running so you have it towed in. The garage calls you back in a few days and says it's ready, and when you go to pick it up, the mechanic says, "It was broken and I fixed it. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain, depression, Douglas Hofstadter, human behavior, I Am a Strange Loop, level of explanation

Time and Time Again; To Hurry Or Not To Hurry

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 06-08-07: So yesterday I was standing in front of my bedroom window, savoring time and the visual world like a warm bath, and later that same day I was thinking about Uncle Charlie, my dad's brother. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain, eating, history, hurry, mindful, Time, Vipassana, visual world

Timeless: Conceptual Thinking and Perception of Time

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 06-07-07: After I got dressed this morning, which comes after peeing, washing face, stretching, and Tai Chi, I put on my glasses and stood for a while, gazing out my bedroom window.  An article I read … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: attention, awareness, brain, clocks, conceptual thinking, Discover magazine, James Joyce, perception, Planck scale, sensory, Time, verbal processing

The Final Chapter? No Free Will: The End of Guilt and Pride

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-29-07: I finally finished nibbling away at Po Bronson's book, What Should I Do With My Life? and I think this post may finish my comments on it. There is a story near the end about a guy whose … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: AA, apology, brain, free will, guilt, Po Bronson, responsibility, suicide, twelve steps

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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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