This link has been bookmarked by 8 people . It was first bookmarked on 08 Mar 2007, by Robert A Gagnon.
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29 Mar 09
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01 May 07
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Do the Impossible: Know Thyself
by Theodore Dalrymple (March 2007)
I attended a fascinating conference on neuropsychiatry recently. Neuroscience, it seems to me, is the current most hopeful candidate for the role of putative but delusory answer to all Mankind's deepest questions: what is Man's place in Nature, and how should he live. What is the good life, at least in the western world? -
Do the Impossible: Know Thyself
by Theodore Dalrymple (March 2007)
I attended a fascinating conference on neuropsychiatry recently. Neuroscience, it seems to me, is the current most hopeful candidate for the role of putative but delusory answer to all Mankind's deepest questions: what is Man's place in Nature, and how should he live. What is the good life, at least in the western world?
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27 Apr 07
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15 Mar 07
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Nothing is important or significant but conscious thinking makes it so: the type of thinking, moreover, that employs moral categories that are inherently non-natural.
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How does one develop a universal law that explains an infinite number of unique events that are infused with meaning and intentionality?
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difficult even to conceive of what a scientific self-understanding would actually be like
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Two main questions arose in my mind during the neuropsychiatric conference. The first was whether any scientific self-understanding was possible. The second was whether, if possible, it was desirable. My answer to both questions was, and is, no.
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already been answered
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The fact is that, however many factors you examine, you cannot fully explain behaviour, not even relatively simple behaviour.
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10 Mar 07
Alberto FernandezI attended a fascinating conference on neuropsychiatry recently. Neuroscience, it seems to me, is the current most hopeful candidate for the role of putative but delusory answer to all Mankind's deepest questions: what is Man's place in Nature, and how sh
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09 Mar 07
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08 Mar 07
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In my opinion, the great philosopher David Hume understood why human self-understanding was forever beyond our reach. It is not a coincidence that he always expressed himself with irony, for the deepest irony possible is that of the existence of a creature, Man, who forever seeks something that is beyond his understanding.
Hume was simultaneously a figure of the enlightenment and the anti-enlightenment. He saw that reason and consideration of the evidence are all that a rational man can rely upon, yet they are eternally insufficient for Man as he is situated. In short, there cannot be such a thing as the wholly rational man. Reason, he said, is the slave of the passions; and in addition, no statement of value follows logically from any statement of fact. But we cannot live without evaluations.
Ergo, self-understanding is not around the corner and never will be. We shall never be able seamlessly to join knowledge and action. To which I add, not in any religious sense: thank God.
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