Capital-Q
Long about March of 2001, I struck up an informal philosophical roundtable, via
e-mail, with a couple of very smart friends. Our jumping off point was the
book The Moral Animal—a dandy introduction to evolutionary
psychology—by Robert Wright. Shortly, three things happened: 1) I
started roping in additional blindingly smart people (mostly against their
wills); 2) the discussion began ranging out across very many of the
"Capital-Q" Questions of philosophy, science, and religion; and 3) highly
unexpectedly, we found ourselves making genuine progress on many
of these (long considered intractable) issues. And it went a little something like this:
|
| Scott: | For Starters, What's Life All About? |
| Fuchs: | We Have Mental Bootstraps (Dammit!) |
| Jeremy: | Genetic Imperatives Are Beautiful; Morality is Negotiated |
| Scott: | Genetics as Destiny, Satori, Memetics, and the Morality of Exclusion |
| Fuchs: | Location of the Soul, Genetics as Enemy, Strict Determinism, the Circle of Compassion |
| Fuchs: | Moral Relativism, the Happiness Treadmill, the Possibility of Inclusion |
| Fuchs: | Camus / No More Death |
| Snitch: | Immortality Is No Way To Live |
| Ryan: | rooting for the determinism underdog... |
| Fuchs: | The Illusory Self, Tao=Evolution? |
| Scott: | Eastern v. Western Traditions, Ethical Planes, Things are Messy |
| Ryan: | Post-Human Intelligence—Beyond our Imagining, and Bringing New Questions |
| Cal: | Immortality? No. Porting your Mind to a Chip? No. Sentient Software? Count on it. |
| Fuchs: | Camus on Suicide, Dark Ages of Medicine, Insoluable Philosophical Problems? |
| Fuchs: | We've got your Solutions RIGHT Here |
