476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?

The universe is not a thing that is, it is not a thing at all. It is the very action of its going. It is, in fact, its own dissolves and our lives – the entire span of human existence going back and back and, if we are lucky, forward and forward – the entire span is spent within this dissolve. So look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes, and feel how the earth beneath you gives. It is all a temporary manifestation of particles, and it is all unraveling back to particulate silence. The bustle of the human day will come and will go. And then there will be night. But how beautiful these moments within the dissolve! What a temporary perfection we can find within this passing world! Everything good ever done! Everything good that was done today, and all the good people doing it, and back and back and forward and forward, all of that beauty within a universe unraveling. Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, and yet it is. How unlikely! How fantastic! And stupid. And excellent

From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization and in our historical experience. The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions -- each branch of our knowledge -- passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing, the character of which is essentially different, and even radically opposed: namely, the theological method, the metaphysical, and the positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding, and the third is its fixed and definitive state. The second is merely a state of transition.

Gods do not decide who goes to Heaven or who goes to Hell. That is for the Cosmic Forces to decide. You are as close to being like a God than you ever will be. Gods are the creators and if they are proud of their work they will remain as silent watchers. This isn’t like the ancient times when Gods would interfere in the affairs of man, or whatever creatures they created. They became arrogant and selfish in their deeds, only concerned with their own private agendas and using their creations as tools of blackmail and spite. It got so they were completely shaping the destinies of worlds just to seduce a sibling into practicing explicit acts of intercourse. They were incestuous monstrosities who were given far too many liberties, and they abused the power bestowed upon them. Eventually the Cosmic Forces intervened and limited the powers of the Gods. These days Gods are not born and they do not perform sex. The few that are left are merely prisoners of the Cosmic Forces, free to roam across the Multiverse and create, but unable to indulge in their own egotistical fantasies. They have become tortured souls, much like their creations.

When in 1863 Thomas Huxley coined the phrase 'Man's Place in Nature,' it was to name a short collection of his essays applying to man Darwin's theory of evolution. The Origin of Species had been published only four years before, and the thesis that man was literally a part of nature, rather than an earthy vessel charged with some sublimer stuff, was so novel and so offensive to current metaphysics that it needed the most vigorous defense. Half the civilized world was rudely shocked, the other half skeptically amused.Nearly a century has passed since the Origin shattered the complacency of the Victorian world and initiated what may be called the Darwinian revolution, an upheaval of man's ideas comparable to and probably exceeding in significance the revolution that issued from Copernicus's demonstration that the earth moves around the sun. The theory of evolution was but one of many factors contributing to the destruction of the ancient beliefs; it only toppled over what had already been weakened by centuries of decay, rendered suspect by the assaults of many intellectual disciplines; but it marked the beginning of the end of the era of faith.

الترويض و التحكم كمثل تجربة عبور الطريق، يجب عليك المشي قليلاً لمنطقة الاختناق حتى تستطيع العبور سريعاً و سالماً؛ فالاختناق يولّد التباطؤ، و التباطؤ يولّد رؤية أوضح و حلول أكثر، و اختيارات أدق و أبرح..

...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events.Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event.By the process of elimination, events that are “willed freely” are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are “willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.

В действительности, конечно, воль в мире существовало невообразимое число, и были они всех возможных направлений и видов. И каждая из них знать ничего не хотела об остальных. Но вместе они складывались в два рас- шибающихся друг о друга потока.Один из них хотел быть. Другой – не хотел быть. Или, может быть, правильнее – хотел не быть. Они вступали друг с другом в смертный бой, смешивались, сжигали и выморажи- вали друг друга – и снова возникали друг из дружки, стоило лишь одной из этих сил доста- точно сгуститься.

. . . waves of desert heat . . . I must’ve passed out, because when I woke up I was shivering and stars wheeled above a purple horizon. . . . Then the sun came up, casting long shadows. . . . I heard a vehicle coming. Something coming from far away, gradually growing louder. There was the sound of an engine, rocks under tires. . . . Finally it reached me, the door opened, and Dirk Bickle stepped out. . . .But anyway so Bickle said, “Miracles, Luke. Miracles were once the means to convince people to abandon reason for faith. But the miracles stopped during the rise of the neocortex and its industrial revolution. Tell me, if I could show you one miracle, would you come with me and join Mr. Kirkpatrick?”I passed out again, and came to. He was still crouching beside me. He stood up, walked over to the battered refrigerator, and opened the door. Vapor poured out and I saw it was stocked with food. Bickle hunted around a bit, found something wrapped in paper, and took a bottle of beer from the door. Then he closed the fridge, sat down on the old tire, and unwrapped what looked like a turkey sandwich.He said, “You could explain the fridge a few ways. One, there’s some hidden outlet, probably buried in the sand, that leads to a power source far away. I figure there’d have to be at least twenty miles of cable involved before it connected to the grid. That’s a lot of extension cord. Or, this fridge has some kind of secret battery system. If the empirical details didn’t bear this out, if you thoroughly studied the refrigerator and found neither a connection to a distant power source nor a battery, you might still argue that the fridge had some super-insulation capabilities and that the food inside had been able to stay cold since it was dragged out here. But say this explanation didn’t pan out either, and you observed the fridge staying the same temperature week after week while you opened and closed it. Then you’d start to wonder if it was powered by some technology beyond your comprehension. But pretty soon you’d notice something else about this refrigerator. The fact that it never runs out of food. Then you’d start to wonder if somehow it didn’t get restocked while you slept. But you’d realize that it replenished itself all the time, not just while you were sleeping. All this time, you’d keep eating from it. It would keep you alive out here in the middle of nowhere. And because of its mystery you’d begin to hate and fear it, and yet still it would feed you. Even though you couldn’t explain it, you’d still need it. And you’d assume that you simply didn’t understand the technology, rather than ascribe to it some kind of metaphysical power. You wouldn’t place your faith in the hands of some unknowable god. You’d place it in the technology itself. Finally, in frustration, you’d come to realize you’d exhausted your rationality and the only sensible thing to do would be to praise the mystery. You’d worship its bottles of Corona and jars of pickled beets. You’d make up prayers to the meats drawer and sing about its light bulb. And you’d start to accept the mystery as the one undeniable thing about it. That, or you’d grow so frustrated you’d push it off this cliff.”“Is Mr. Kirkpatrick real?” I asked.After a long gulp of beer, Bickle said, “That’s the neocortex talking again.

Ο Μπρόιερ προσπάθησε να αποτινάξει το θάνατο απ' το μυαλό του. Μουρμούρισε το αγαπημένο του ξόρκι, τη φράση του Λουκρητίου: «Όπου είναι ο θάνατος, εγώ δεν είμαι. Όπου είμαι εγώ, ο θάνατος δεν είναι. Γιατί ν' ανησυχώ;» Αλλ' αυτό δεν βοήθησε.Τίναξε το κεφάλι του, προσπαθώντας να διώξει αυτές τις μακάβριες σκέψεις. Από που του είχαν έρθει; Απ' την κουβέντα για το θάνατο που έκανε με τον Νίτσε; Όχι, μάλλον δεν του τις έβαλε ο Νίτσε στο μυαλό, απλώς τις απελευθέρωσε. Πάντα ήταν εκεί. Όλες τις είχε ξανασκεφτεί. Σε ποια περιοχή του μυαλού του όμως κατοικούσαν, όταν δεν τις σκεφτόταν; Ο Φρόυντ είχε δίκιο: πρέπει να υπάρχει μια δεξαμενή σύνθετων σκέψεων στον εγκέφαλο, πέρα απ' τη συνείδηση, αλλά σε ετοιμότητα, έτοιμες οποιαδήποτε στιγμή να κληθούν να παρελάσουν στη σκηνή της συνειδητότητας.Και σ' αυτή τη μη συνειδητή δεξαμενή, δεν θα υπάρχουν μόνο σκέψεις, αλλά και συναισθήματα! Πριν λίγες μέρες, μέσ' απ' το αμάξι του, ο Μπρόιερ κοίταξε το διπλανό αμάξι. Τα δυό του άλογα τριπόδιζαν τραβώντας πίσω τους την καρότσα, που μέσα της κάθονταν δυο επιβάτες, ένα σκυθρωπό ηλικιωμένο ζευγάρι. Όμως δεν υπήρχε αμαξάς. Ένα αμάξι φάντασμα! Ο τρόμος τον τύφλωσε, κι είχε μια στιγμιαία εφίδρωση: τα ρούχα του μέσα σε δευτερόλεπτα έγιναν μούσκεμα. Κι έπειτα φάνηκε ο οδηγός του αμαξιού: είχε απλώς σκύψει για να δέσει την μπότα του.Στην αρχή ο Μπρόιερ είχε γελάσει με την ανόητη αντίδρασή του. Αλλά όσο περισσότερο τη σκεφτόταν, τόσο συνειδητοποιούσε ότι, όσο ορθολογιστής κι ελεύθερος διανοητής κι αν ήταν, στο μυαλό του όμως κρύβονταν φωλιές υπερφυσικού τρόμου. Κι όχι πολύ βαθιά: «εφημέρευαν», βρίσκονταν δευτερόλεπτα μακριά απ' την επιφάνεια. Α, να υπήρχε μια λαβίδα να ξεριζώσει αυτές τις φωλιές, σαν τις αμυγδαλές!