Russell Hasan's Blog

The below post was incorporated into my e-book The Apple of Knowledge. If this interests you, please consider buying my book. Okay, this blog is not supposed to be focused upon the philosophical question of the mind-brain identity. Next month I am going to start posting on entirely different topics. But permit me one last mind-brain blog post. . . . How do we know that the mind is the brain? Three reasons: 1. Brain damage. Science has learned, from over 100 years of experience, that brain damage to a specific section of the brain corresponds to a failure in a specific function of the mind. For example, there is a part of the brain which once damaged causes the mind to cease to recognize faces, so a person can see the face of a loved one and not know who they are, and be unable to remember faces. This strongly suggests that the mind is composed of the collection of mental functions of each part of the human brain. 2. Drug effects. Drugs such as alcohol and marijuana have a spec...

This blog post has found a new home in my book The Apple of Knowledge. If you enjoy it, please buy my book! There is a popular Philosophy 101/Philosophy of Mind argument that looks at the data from brains which have had the corpus collosum, which connects the brain's right and left hemispheres together, severed. Severing the corpus collosum was an old remedy for seizures which is no longer used, but the data remains. These brains had minds where one part of the mind did not know what another part of the mind was seeing. For example, the left eye would look at an apple but the mouth would say "I don't see an apple." The Analytic philosophers' argument is that a "person" or a "mind" is one whole being, and therefore the self cannot be identical with the brain. I draw precisely the opposite conclusion: it is scientifically undeniable that the mind is the brain, and therefore cognitive neuroscience must conclude that the mind/brain has many diff...

My favorite movies of 2012: 1. Atlas Shrugged. They really did this one right. I am surprised that it was not more popular at the box office. A must-see for objectivists and libertarians. Don't bother to see Part One though, it was not nearly as good. Atlas Shrugged Part Two stands by itself, and was very impressive. 2. The Avengers. The first truly incredible 3-D action movie. As a lifelong Buffy fan, it was nice to have another chance to see Joss Whedon work his magic. I wonder how long it will be before all movies and TV shows are in 3-D. Probably only a matter of time. 3. Batman. Surprisingly this movie had a very libertarian, anti-socialism message in the end, and it was a fun film with great action and some unexpected twists. Implausible at times, but well thought out and good execution by good actors. 4. Skyfall. Finally, the producers have decided to return James Bond to what made the classic 007 films great. Enough of all that new stuff, the last two Bond movies we...

This blog post was refined and published in my e-book The Apple of Knowledge, which gives a far broader analysis of science vs. religion. Christians and Muslims, please turn away. It’s about to get ugly. Jews and atheists, keep reading: you don’t believe in Hell, so there’s really no downside to being exposed to my heresy. Let me begin by disclosing that I am an atheist. My theory of religion is that religion is a mixture of mythology and psychological defects arising from “design flaws” in the human brain. I can explain the myth part of religion very simply: ancient humans circa 10,000 BC to 1500 AD did not have science, but they needed theories to explain the natural phenomena they observed, so they dreamed up gods and supernatural forces to explain lightning, fire, death, etc. The mental illness side of religion is the more interesting aspect, which I will discuss here. What is a “mental illness”? Let me begin with two foundational premises. First, humans are animals. S...

This blog post is now a chapter in my book The Apple of Knowledge. Today I would like to introduce two related concepts: experimental philosophy, and external contradictions. Many philosophers claim to want to introduce the "scientific method" into philosophy. Hume said this. So did Kant. But philosophers have been notoriously lazy in terms of actually using science in philosophy. The scientific method begins with a belief, theory, assumption, premise, hypothesis or postulate, and then looks at experience, usually in the form of empirical data from tests and experiments, and science asks: "is our experiences exactly what we would have expected them to be if our theory was correct?" If not, throw out the theory and try a new one. If it is confirmed, always be looking for more verification from other new tests. What would experimental philosophy look like? Well, if Kantian subjectivism is true and the mind creates the experience of space and time, then you could...

I have decided that this blog is going to be as accurate a reflection of my personality as it can be. As such, it will be rare for me to post a blog post where I ramble on about gossip or comment on current events. There are enough other blogs which do that. More frequently I will be posting short stories (usually in the fantasy or science fiction genres, my specialties), libertarian political essays, or philosophical essays from a somewhat Objectivist-oriented point of view (although I am not a traditional Objectivist and have deep disagreements with some of Ayn Rand's ideas). I hope that these blog posts are interesting and that someone somewhere reads them, but to paraphrase Ellsworth Toohey, the villain in Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead": "How can we ever know who reads our stuff?"

This is the inaugural post of my new Blogspot blog, RussHasan. Let's see how it looks!