Of all the illusions to which human consciousness is prey, death may be the most beguiling. And the most asinine. To conceive of experiencing one's own death presumes a division of body and mind which, you see, was merely the superstition of a darker age. More accurately conceived, death is ...

Hamlet's famous question was thus, from a more modern perspective, ill posed. Because human consciousness is fundamentally and at every level a complex of normal chemical and mechanical processes, we cannot seriously entertain the fantasy of not knowing ourselves. And without an assurance that ...

The unique experience of human consciousness comes of a brain that maps the body of which it is a part with sufficient complexity and nuance. The circumstances that produce such a brain are complicated and a little improbable, but ultimately finite and scientifically ordinary. As consciousness ...

Poetic suicide : a gross underestimation of one's immortality.

A successful liar deceives you with a falsehood. A truly accomplished one deceives you with the truth.

It might seem more civil on the surface to direct corrective action at the exact sources of transgression. Rather than lay waste to the whole garden, pull up by the roots only those noxious weeds that have invaded it. But this is a solution that does not cohere easily with our ingrained notions ...

Children are more animal than human. Prematurely civilize your children and they will be the prey.