Stepping out on the back porch this morning, I was greeted by brilliant sunlight and a most welcome change to a milder air temperature, and the experience of the moment prompted me to open the window in my office for the first time since the air turned chilly last autumn. The trees outside the window … Continue reading Making Sense of Experience
During a spoken tribute that I delivered at a recent family gathering to celebrate my brother's birthday, I expressed the following sentiment: There are many changes that take place in a lifetime, some are fleeting and some lasting, which can alter us in ways we did not expect or want, but which, nonetheless, result in … Continue reading Changes Through Time
It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn … Continue reading Echoes of Humanity
Twenty-five years ago, on January 28, 1986, the world lost seven of its best and brightest citizens when the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed as it launched into space. Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory Jarvis were lost when their spacecraft exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on … Continue reading The Human Spirit
One of the central issues in science today is the search for a comprehensive explanation for the subjective experience of consciousness, and what role “non-physical components” might play in coming to terms with the precise nature of consciousness. A good place to begin is with our own very human emotions. In spite of having a … Continue reading Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence
According to most specialists in cognitive studies, there is a stream of consciousness within each of us that never ceases, regardless of whether we are awake or asleep. Exactly what is responsible for our experience of consciousness and a comprehensive explanation of its functioning are still subjects of considerable speculation and study. Assuming that we … Continue reading Welcome!
“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson Although Woolf knew that experience is made out of a "shower of innumerable atoms," she believed that the elusive self bound those atoms into a whole. It took the "shivering fragments" of sensation … Continue reading Experience and The Self
John's Consciousness 