There Is No Such Thing As Philosophy-free

The Task Of The Mind Is To Produce Future, As The Poet Paul Valery Once Put It. A Mind Is Fundamentally An Anticipator, An Expectation-generator. It Mines The Present For Clues, Which It Refines With The Help Of The Materials It Has Saved From The Past, Turning Them Into Anticipations Of The Future. And Then It Acts, Rationally, On The Basis Of Those Hard-won Anticipations.

Try To Acquire The Weird Practice Of Savoring Your Mistakes, Delighting In Uncovering The Strange Quirks That Led You Astray. Then, When You Have Sucked Out All The Goodness To Be Gained From Having Made Them, You Can Cheerfully Forget Them And Go On To The Next Big Opportunity.

I Don't Think The 9/11 Attacks Taught Us Anything We Didn't Already Know About Religion. It Has Long Been Obvious - Even To The Deeply Religious - That Religious Fanaticism Is An Extremely Dangerous Deranger Of Otherwise Sane And Goodhearted People.

Churches Have Given Us Great Treasures Such As Music And Architecture. Whether That Pays For The Harm They Have Done Is Another Matter.

If The Concept Of Consciousness Were To Fall To Science, What Would Happen To Our Sense Of Moral Agency And Free Will? If Conscious Experience Were Reduced Somehow To Mere Matter In Motion, What Would Happen To Our Appreciation Of Love And Pain And Dreams And Joy? If Conscious Human Beings Were Just Animated Material Objects, How Could Anything We Do To Them Be Right Or Wrong?