What we appear to lose when our brains are damaged seems to have to do mainly with memory -- retrieving and storing them.  The personality seems to remain but of course cannot function well without the ability to remember things, or confusion and partial memories.  Eventually, when even short-term memory is lost,. even the personality seems to go, but it is hard to really make that assertion, and even then the elements of sentient existence -- experience of "qualia" -- the ability, for instance, to discern faces and colors and other sensations, to feel pain and hunger, and all the rest -- seems to remain.

This fits but of course does not imply the South Central Asian (Indian subcontinent) cultural idea of rebirth -- at death memories are lost but the personality goes on, not as a tangible thing but as a process.  The cultures of this area had no problem assigning sentience to animals, but not souls, which to the cultures involved was alien (the ideas are sometimes translated "souls," or "self," but this is a distortion.

Obama is exercising "executive power" much as the Jacobite kings exercised "royal prerogative."  Goes to show that it is impossible to clearly separate executive from legislative power, and as I see the dispute in the States on this issue, it might be that Congress is the one interfering with the president's power make executive decisions.  If the Supreme Court were not today such a political institution we might hope for a clear line that all would accept: I don't think now that is possible.  In the end this is just one more example of the developing constitutional crisis in the States resulting from its having such an obsolete basis of government.

I would add that traditionally amnesties have always been an executive prerogative.

Israel is a legally constituted sovereign nation under constant attack by those who openly declare their intention to eliminate it and if necessary to annihilate the population.  That Israel takes harsh and often preemptive measures against these things is understandable and perfectly moral and legal.  While sometimes its measures may in even my opinion be counterproductive and regrettable, they should not be second-guessed by arm-chair types sitting comfortably at home and not under regular bombardment and terrorist attack.   The propaganda that distorts this ongoing reality should be simply dismissed.  The Palestinians have had many chances for peace and will not accept them.  That is their decision and they have to live with the world they have created.

Sentience and qualia

An objective (scientific) look at the biological world tells us some animals are sentient, others less so to the extent that many animals function entirely by programmed response (reflex).

What is sentience?  Well it is an intervention between an incoming sense experience and its being acted upon via the animal "experiencing" the sensation via a "qualia" and emotional associations.  A phototropic organism moves toward a light source but does not "experience" light -- it just responds that way automatically.  A sentient organism experiences the light and, if it likes it, moves toward it ("likes" -- an emotion).

This is "the great mystery" of neurology -- whence the qualia of experience and the associated emotional qualia?  It is a far better arrangement for reactions than evolved reflexes, which tend to be automatic and hence take a long time to change and are basically inflexible (an ant given a certain pheromone does a certain thing, and other organisms can take advantage and for a while fool the ants).  An emotional reaction is more flexible and permits learning without genetic evolution.

Some work has identified the evolution of certain neurochemicals and their pathways (those associated with emotions such as pleasure for reinforcing a behavior and displeasure for discouraging it) as marking the appearance of sentience in the animal world -- something which, if true, would imply that the dinosaurs, mammals and birds (and probably the "mammal like reptiles" that preceded these) were sentient but that other reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates are not, although similar pathways evolved independently have been identified in some cephalopods.

In the end we are animals, and among many things that means we inherit a bundle of instincts evolved over the ages to enhance survival of our genes into the next generation.  This is not a moral force, nor is it immoral.  It just is what it is, and sometimes it leads to great deeds and sometimes not so great.

For the most part we are not conscious of this.  The instincts work mainly through our emotions -- desires and revulsions, likes and dislikes, wishes and fears, and so on.  Learning to identify them and then step outside them is I think a modern interpretation of the Buddha's insight.

What I don't get is why Satan, supposedly no slouch in the brains department, doesn't realize his goose is cooked and ask for forgiveness.  I wonder what God would do then.  It would kinda make a mess of His plans.

The only really negative thing I have to say about my cats is that they are blood thirsty vicious little things eager to tear to shreds anything smaller than they are.  Otherwise they are charming and affectionate and clean.

To my mind an infinity of "universes" is pretty much a foregone conclusion, based on the idea that if it happened once for us given the laws of probability it has happened over and over and over and over.

The anthropic principle is not to my mind as persuasive -- inference rather than deduction -- and of course any collision between our universe and another strikes me as mis-definition -- another universe would be in its own dimensions and have no way to influence us -- in other words we are better off to define anything we might react to or collide with as part of our universe.

Mockery comes, I think, from hate.  I've been thinking about this business of "hating" Christians or "hating" Islam or whatever.  It is really an absurd idea: one does not hate if one is at all wise since hate only harms the hater and needs therefore to be eliminated if one is to be full and happy.  Therefore no matter how absurd or even harmful a teaching may be, one does not mock.

Still, when you look objectively at the things religions have done and still do to people, it is an emotion one can understand, especially in those who have had to deal with religious belief in family members and so on, or who have discovered the indoctrination that happened to them that they have to live with the rest of their lives.

I am a great one for there being many ways to truth or salvation or happiness or enlightenment or whatever one is seeking -- however, the fact that there may be a great many ways to get there does not mean that all ways get there. 

Constantine's pagan Arian orthodox Christianity

This business of people in history were some particular religion -- in this case Christians -- mainly for political reasons rather than out of deep conviction -- brings to my mind the Emperor Constantine, who as we know "converted" to Christianity and enabled Christianity to later become the state religion.  It so happens I just finished watching a series of lectures on the subject, so my mind is fresh with it and a lot I learned is new to me.

Constantine seems, all his life, both before and after becoming a Christian, to have been a fairly typical Roman "pagan," in that he was mainly superstitious and wanted the favor of any deity who happened to be around, including Jesus.  The Romans had never really denied Jesus as a god of some sort -- they just didn't like the sectarianism (we have the truth and you are going to Hell) attitude of the Christian churches.

There was a small political gain in giving tolerance to Christians and even favoring them in certain ways, but not a huge gain as at the time maybe ten percent were Christians.  However, one of these was his mother, so he no doubt had been influenced by her to some extent.  So the gain may have been more familial than political.  Of course once the lay of the land became clear, ambitious people all over began becoming Christians -- not necessarily hypocritically -- people are great in finding truth in whatever to them is convenient.  I think Augustine was an example of this.

Once he had stopped the anti-Christian laws, he may have regretted it.  He seems never to have understood the niceties of detail the Christians fought and killed each other over, and seems to have favored Arianism (when he finally was baptized it was by an Arian priest in Arian ritual) as more logical, but of course he was not a priest and Christianity did not allow him much of a say except to use his power to force settlements they agreed to.  Standard pagans never had riots over the proper form of some belief statement or the exact nature of some demi-urge's being.  This sort of thing was rather alien to them, and no doubt the cartoon buffoonery of the Alexandrian theatre attacking the hoomousia vs. houmisia (or whatever) really burned the local bishop.

We all have an "absurdity" checker in our minds (well, most of us do), but many have found clever ways to get around it and hence come to believe such absurdities as original sin and a divine/human sacrifice to magically offset a divine curse on all mankind because the supposed first man and woman committed a minor act of disobedience.  The whole thing, no matter how metaphorically one chooses to take it, is patently absurd and worthy or not just rebuke but mocking.  That we refrain is just being polite.

What do I see here?  I see an effort to put absurdities such as I have just mentioned on a level equal to that of reason and objectivity.  Down that road lies superstition and the destruction, in the end, of education and civilization and learning.  Of course we are not in such danger today, I think mainly because the major elites of learning see the reality, but we don't know what may happen in the future and it behooves those who support reason over superstition and faith claims to do whatever reasonably possible to control it.

I have to say I tire of all this, and really can't see how people can be so stupid or blind or whatever one is to call it.  Reason and critical thinking are superior and myth and spiritual superstition and basing beliefs on faith or tradition or authority are clearly not only inferior but worthless.

One's philosophy can be a variety of things, and perhaps before one decides to write it all down one should have an idea of which kind one intends, or of course maybe all of them, a bit of a challenge.

There is the problem of how to be happy.  Then there is the problem of what it means to be and how to be good.  These aren't necessarily the same.  I dare say there exist rather happy but either evil or at least amoral people.

Then there are philosophies of work, of beauty (music, art, literature, poetry, love, food, and whatever we do), as well as the theory or philosophy behind politics and economics and history and law and so on, often tempered by ideas about justice and progress and alleviation of suffering.

Then there are more "analysis" things, such as what is it to know something, how to know something, how to understand something, on what grounds if any to believe, what is science and how to do it, what is sentience and emotion and experience and living, and of course why we die and what happens then if anything.

Finally, it is always useful when one thinks one has a great new insight into some issue to check the literature (mainly the great philosophers of history) to be sure it hasn't already been thought of and either refuted or at least debated.  There is no point going to great mental effort re-inventing the wheel.  I find reading philosophy (mostly commentary or description of the great ones, who tend to be hard to follow and at a minimum need annotation) a considerable joy, as so often I am either forced to abandon some notion or at least modify it, or realize that it is nowhere near the final answer I had thought.

I haven't mentioned God or deities, frankly because they are not relevant and just confuse matters.

I'm not sure what to make of NDE's.  They don't seem to happen in Asia, which tells me it is culturally influenced -- people who report them already know "what" to report.  It might be a trick of the brain and no doubt much of the time it is a fabrication (various motives -- pious fraud, attention, mental disorder, implanted memory (by the questions of others), whatever).

For the reason that there is so much wishful thinking surrounding the subject, I think it is impossible to draw any sort of affirmative conclusion and certainly is not valid evidence of any sort of afterlife (besides, for all we know that tunnel leads to oblivion).  It strikes me that people who latch onto such reports are similar to those who "remember" past lives -- except with different cultural expectations.

The end of the classical period was a tragedy.  It had its pantheon of harmless gods and goddesses for the superstitious and some profound philosophical traditions for the informed and aware.  It was ultimately suppressed by a brutal and arbitrary set of myth based and primitive sectarian dogmatisms, Christianity in its two autocratic forms and later Islam.  I am glad Asia had no similar experience and very much hope the Western infection can be kept at bay.

I'm aware a lot of Westerners don't like being told what their tradition really represents, so maybe I can soften it a little by pointing out that the West produced science, much to the dismay of its clerical class, something that would have happened in China except for the fact that it became insular and devoid of stimulus -- nothing external but barbarians and nothing internal in the end but a stifling bureaucracy, although for awhile there was progress, human fear of change eventually stifled it.

I don't know that we are all entitled to have an opinion about everything; I refrain from forming them about things where I'm ignorant and I think that is the wisest way to go -- at least I try to not form them and certainly don't say them out loud.  Often of course I just follow the experts -- they are useful that way so long as one is aware of possible vested interests.

As far as to whether aliens exist or not and if they do what they might be like, I think we are all ignorant and are therefore better off keeping out mouths shut.  However, since we are all on fairly the same level, I suppose wild-ass guesses don't hurt so long as we don't get too committed to them.

My guess is that they don't exist, at least in any form and distance we are ever likely to understand and actually encounter.  Otherwise they would long since have been here, and they aren't.  There are in addition to that rational difficulties that have been pointed out in the evolution of such beings that would seem to imply they are going to be incredibly rare.  My guess since of course the probability factors are at this point pretty wild-ass and may kick us hard some day.

In a few centuries I trust we will have a much better handle on things.  What if it turns out we really are alone?  What conclusion would it be appropriate for us to draw from such a conclusion?  The conclusion might be, "Oh, wow, we have a deep responsibility here to preserve life and spread it to the rest of the universe."  Nonsense.

The story is told of the blindfolded men who feel parts of the elephant and report back different beasts.  The problem is, all they have to do is (1) either be more methodical in their exploration and not stop until they have felt the entire beast or (2) take off the damn blindfolds.  Christians refuse to do either.  They keep themselves blindfolded and they won't study anything that might conflict with their beliefs -- their knowledge of Buddhism, for example, is limited to what their preachers tell them about it.