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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

Who is the Magician? Tricks of the Brain

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 08-21-07: An excellent article in the New York Times today, "Sleights of Mind," by George Johnson. It covered several topics of great interest in understanding human experience: "...the cognitive … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: awe, cognitive principles, free will, human experience, illusion, Michael Gazzaniga, narrowness of perception, reality, sensory, truth

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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