Aberatii intelectuale

Sa ne imaginam ca intr-o zi te trezesti de dimineata si iti aduci aminte ca ieri ai fost la doctor. Nu la orice fel de doctor, ci la un doctor care se ocupa cu memoria. Doctorul ti-a spus ca ai probleme cu memoria si uneori iti aduci aminte de lucruri care pur si simplu nu s-au intamplat. De obicei, astfel de fantasme sunt despre doctori care se ocupa cu memoria si iti spun ca ai probleme cu ea si iti aduci aminte lucruri care nu s-au intamplat, iti spune apoi doctorul. Gandindu-te putin, te intrebi daca chiar ai fost la doctor sau doar ti-ai imaginat. Doctorul ti-a spus ca ai astfel de tendinte. Dar daca ti-ai imaginat ca ai fost la doctorul care ti-a spus ca-ti imaginezi, inseamna ca nu ai fost la un astfel de doctor. Si deci ca memoria ta este buna si nu ai astfel de probleme. Dar daca nu ai astfel de probleme inseamna ca chiar ai fost la doctor si chiar ti-a spus ca ai astfel de probleme, si deci ca-ti imaginezi. Dar daca iti imaginezi inseamna ca de fapt nu ai fost la doctor si ca...

The moment has come to finally talk about the wonderful world of foot fetishes. OK, not just that, but about some interesting cases of neurology that I know about from VS Ramachandran's books, "The Tell-Tale Brain" and "Phantoms in the Brain". What you see in the image is what is called the "sensory homunculus" - a strip of neurons in the brain whose role is to represent the sensory information from the different parts of the body - the so called "Penfield map". You can see the different body parts represented in the different areas of this strip, some body parts being represented by more neurons than others, hence they appear bigger in the drawing to reflect that. So what's up with the foot fetishes, so widely spread in the population (from what I'm hearing from the streets)? Well, take a look at the feet and toes representation in the homunculus - they are represented at the "top of the head", in the strip. But right under...

An argument for libertarian (or "true") free will I've covered free will for a handful of times already and I've made clear that my position is that of compatibilism - free will is compatible and is even based on determinism - to be free is to act according to what I want, and what I want depends on what I am. However, I think there's a third option besides determined and random, which are usually the only two considered options regarding what happens in the world. We usually either consider that an event was determined by a previous one - "caused" by it, or that an event is purely stochastic - random. None of these work for "true free will" of the libertarian kind, one where your choice doesn't depend on what happened previously and is not random, either. The third possibility is one that I will call "indetermined". In other words, it is one which starts a new causal chain without having a prior cause. It can be informed by prior...