Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Judgments of responsibility depend upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the metaphysics of mental cause and effect.
Sam Harris • Free Will
As we will see, this distinction can be preserved—and with it, our most important moral and legal concerns—while banishing the idea of free will once and for all.
Sam Harris • Free Will
As David Hume observed: “Human reason and even morality are rejected [by enthusiasts] as fallacious guides, and the fanatic madman delivers himself over blindly” to what he believes to be divine inspiration, but what may in fact be overheated self-importance or frenzied rage.
Jonathan Sacks • Studies in Spirituality (Covenant & Conversation Book 9)
Most people still believe that religion provides something essential that cannot be had any other way.
Sam Harris • Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
But the tricky part is not to explain ignorance, lying, cynicism, indifference, political spin, or even delusion. We have lived with these for centuries. Rather, what seems new in the post-truth era is a challenge not just to the idea of knowing reality but to the existence of reality itself.
Lee McIntyre • Post-Truth (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
Frankfurt’s astute observation of where that leads us feels prophetic in 2017. He argues that once we decide that it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, we simply resort to being true to ourselves. This, to me, is the birthplace of one of the great bullshit problems of our time: the “you’re either with us or against us” argument.
Brené Brown • Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves
amazon.com
William B. Irvine, a philosophy professor at Dallas University, is the author of On Desire: Why We Want What We Want. Upon exploring the subject for this book, he found himself particularly drawn to the teachings of the Stoics and decided to become one.
Derren Brown • Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine
Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.