Kudo’s to the writer who wrote this very readable post. She made complex concepts much easier to begin to try to understand. I always try to applaude those who have this ability. It makes reading so much more enjoyable.
“Accept your fate Homo sapiens; you’re a stranger at wisdom’s gate and you don’t know why - and you’ll never know, no matter how hard you try” from my poem Coincidences. This article evoked this verse.
As a Persian we have a great poet named Hafez , who has said " from every direction that I've gone , it just increased my fears and nothing more ". So after reading this beautiful text , still don't know whether the people like me who are desperately looking for meaning and still haven't found it , have something going wrong in their brains or not ? I mean is it a sympotem of depression which cab be cured or reduced with help of some medicine or is it a virtue that like a wild horse needs to be tamed into a joyful ride ?
Fantastic article, Rachel. Really appreciate finding you and your work recently. I know you said you worked really hard on this and it shows! It also scratches an itch that's been growing in my mind for a few years now regarding meaning and the self. This has added some great food for thought.
I have even re-read the link you posted and again, unless I'm way off base, Sartre said: "Existence preceded essence." I, to this day, believe he was incorrect. Barry Kibrick
Yes, you’re exactly right. But I reversed the proposition because existence precedes essence for us lot, but essence comes first for a paper knife (still haven’t quite figured out what a paper knife is, exactly…)
Rachel, great to hear back from you and I finally did figure it out. Personally, I don't agree with Sartre and in my new book I state that essence precedes existence. At the same time, I believe in certain existential philosophical reasoning but never that it precedes essence.
Three fundamental problems, three good reviews. Often, in the face of certain technical paradoxes, a postulated "invisible element" can resolve matters. Later, that postulated element might be discovered or the paradox otherwise resolved. Certain concepts of Deity resolve your 3 paradoxes. Real or not?
Thanks for this super insightful piece elaborating on the “after-the-fact” emergence of consciousness and perception of being “someone” from nervous system components evolved first to regulate the living system. Consciousness as exaptation. Very cool.
I read this several times and I kept thinking about the fascinating idea of bringing neuroscience and philosophy together—two of my favourite fields of interest. Thank you for this wonderful piece of writing.
What this piece makes clear is that neuroscience is relocating philosophy’s hardest questions into system dynamics rather than abstractions. Agency, meaning, and selfhood start to look less like metaphysical givens and more like fragile achievements of embodied, predictive systems under constraint. The debate shifts from whether these things exist to what conditions allow them to reliably form, persist, or collapse.
Great piece of content! Thank you for it Rachel! Btw. for the self examination I always recommend to imagine how the teleporation could work - so you need to be erased at one end, and recreated at your destination. Do you trust if the same you will be recreated at the destination?
Kudo’s to the writer who wrote this very readable post. She made complex concepts much easier to begin to try to understand. I always try to applaude those who have this ability. It makes reading so much more enjoyable.
Thank you! (I am she) Really glad you enjoyed it 🧠
“Accept your fate Homo sapiens; you’re a stranger at wisdom’s gate and you don’t know why - and you’ll never know, no matter how hard you try” from my poem Coincidences. This article evoked this verse.
Fantastic, eye-opening, balanced articles. Kudos, Rachel! Well done and much appreciated.
As a Persian we have a great poet named Hafez , who has said " from every direction that I've gone , it just increased my fears and nothing more ". So after reading this beautiful text , still don't know whether the people like me who are desperately looking for meaning and still haven't found it , have something going wrong in their brains or not ? I mean is it a sympotem of depression which cab be cured or reduced with help of some medicine or is it a virtue that like a wild horse needs to be tamed into a joyful ride ?
Fantastic article, Rachel. Really appreciate finding you and your work recently. I know you said you worked really hard on this and it shows! It also scratches an itch that's been growing in my mind for a few years now regarding meaning and the self. This has added some great food for thought.
I have even re-read the link you posted and again, unless I'm way off base, Sartre said: "Existence preceded essence." I, to this day, believe he was incorrect. Barry Kibrick
Sartre said that *for humans*, existence precedes essence. But for a paper-knife, the other way around.
Thank you Bill for clearing this up. Barry
Dear Rachel: I always thought that Sartre believe that existence preceded essence. I will re-read again. Thank you, Barry Kibrick
Yes, you’re exactly right. But I reversed the proposition because existence precedes essence for us lot, but essence comes first for a paper knife (still haven’t quite figured out what a paper knife is, exactly…)
Rachel, great to hear back from you and I finally did figure it out. Personally, I don't agree with Sartre and in my new book I state that essence precedes existence. At the same time, I believe in certain existential philosophical reasoning but never that it precedes essence.
Think "letter-opener."
I believe there will never be a unique "raison d'etre" for all of mankind. Each person should/ must seek that which fulfills his/her reason to be.
Three fundamental problems, three good reviews. Often, in the face of certain technical paradoxes, a postulated "invisible element" can resolve matters. Later, that postulated element might be discovered or the paradox otherwise resolved. Certain concepts of Deity resolve your 3 paradoxes. Real or not?
Thanks for this super insightful piece elaborating on the “after-the-fact” emergence of consciousness and perception of being “someone” from nervous system components evolved first to regulate the living system. Consciousness as exaptation. Very cool.
I read this several times and I kept thinking about the fascinating idea of bringing neuroscience and philosophy together—two of my favourite fields of interest. Thank you for this wonderful piece of writing.
What this piece makes clear is that neuroscience is relocating philosophy’s hardest questions into system dynamics rather than abstractions. Agency, meaning, and selfhood start to look less like metaphysical givens and more like fragile achievements of embodied, predictive systems under constraint. The debate shifts from whether these things exist to what conditions allow them to reliably form, persist, or collapse.
Great piece of content! Thank you for it Rachel! Btw. for the self examination I always recommend to imagine how the teleporation could work - so you need to be erased at one end, and recreated at your destination. Do you trust if the same you will be recreated at the destination?
LOVE this podcast! Just the best!
This was wonderful -- the information and the writing. Kudos!
Nicely written; a comprehensive and comprehensible take on a question that has given the best minds fits.