Gray Matter

I'm sick. Pity me. Coddle me. Love me.

Skipped class today so that I could eat and take a much-needed nap. We had a convocation with Stephen Pinker, a renowned person in the field of something-or-other who talked up the nature side of the neverending nature vs. nurture argument.

Afterwards, it was skip class or skip lunch. And I'm sick: see above.

I was impressed by his arguments, especially in his bashing of Descartes "ghost in the machine" theory, which (a healthy dose of Nietzsche has convinced me) is outdated and ultimately a bad thing. The idea of an inscrutable "soul" seperate from the brain is a comforting lie that could cause a lot of trouble.

I'm a Lapsed Catholic, as I'm improbably fond of saying, and as such I can believe (albeit, for me, in a purely academic fashion) that human free will and divine knowledge of the fated course of everything can peacefully coexist. It just seems so obvious.

But, of course, it isn't to everyone. Over the years, I've found myself arguing this point against various people of varying intelligence, most recently The Pancake Man and The West Coaster in Germany.

Their argument: that reducing people to the level of extremely complicated clocks whose actions can be predicted takes away free will and, therefore, leads to determinism (there's nothing I can do) and nihlism (so why bother?).

But, be it God or science who knows the final score, our choices still have meaning to us. Like I said, it seems obvious to me, to the point where I can't argue it effectively without getting frustrated.

So I agree with Pinker; I just wish I could carry him around so that he could, when necessary, agree with me.