Free The Animal

I alluded to this back when I announced the new name of this blog. You’re welcome to review that, but here’s the gist of the particular reference, from two sources: Wikipedia and Objectivism Wiki. The most concise way I can describe it is the notion of either “body and mind,” for the more secular among us, or “body and soul” for the most religious / spiritual. In essence, the idea seems to either call for “balance,” such as in eastern mysticisms, to a more mind-centric philosophy at the expense of bodily urges, to a near complete rejection of the body (“pleasures of the flesh”) in some religious philosophies. Why is this important? First, I reject them all on the basis of evolutionary biology. My approach is materialist (every thing is composed of matter or “material”), with a caveat: we either have free will, or our belief in our own free will is sufficient to be tantamount to free will (i.e., the determinism of our own biology is so complex that we can’t as yet begin to comprehend or unravel it, so it is, to us, free will). Another way to think of it is that values seem to transcend the…

[Read more →]