Category: meditation

• January 25, 2014

  Our minds aren’t in our heads

  Yesterday, I finished reading Alva Noë’s Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. The book is mainly a critique of research programs in the scientific study of consciousness and perception, and in this respect it does not intend to set out a full-blooded account…
• January 24, 2014

  ‘I look at the desert and I am besotted…’

  I look at the desert and I am besotted. Only, a dove atop a Joshua tree below copper-sage boulders. Near dusk, my fingers as singular as hers.
• January 21, 2014

  The eager volunteer

  Think back to a time early in your schooling. Recall the moment (maybe it was in third grade or sixth) when your teacher asked for a volunteer. One boy’s hand shoots up into the air–that boy, you think–and the teacher, looking at him, quips, ‘But I haven’t even told you yet what you’re volunteering for?’…
• January 20, 2014

  A non-solopsistic account of grieving

  In order to understand one’s reasons for grieving, let us return to this scene: We are speaking of our deaths. ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’ Aleksandra is speaking. ‘Yes,’ I reply. For a while, I say nothing. Then I go on: ‘I would have to figure out why I was still living.’…
• January 19, 2014

  Preparation for having a philosophical conversation

  The following post is addressed to new conversation partners as well as to philosophical friends. This worksheet (if that is what it is) is the result of a few years of conversing with conversation partners and philosophical friends over Skype. It should be considered a work in progress. That is, it is open to adjustments, reconsiderations, and…