How Do You Explain Déjà Vu?

When we experience déjà vu, we feel something which is happening has happened before and I'm not sure if this involves different time dimensions, since it essentially involves memory, which is of the past. I like the theory that déjà vu is concurrent memory and consciousness of a single situation. It is thought that the brain races forward and acquires information before it enters consciousness, so informationally, in the brain, there is a memory. When we then become conscious of the situation, the brain matches this with what has become a memory as far as the brain is concerned — since it rushed forward. We then have both a memory and consciousness of a current situation.

What is the Perfect Lifestyle?

I think this is the wrong question. I think the question would be better as "What is the perfect lifestyle for me?" If we agree that different people have different likes, preferences, values and commitments, then no one lifestyle will suit all.

But even my new version seems wrong to me. It assumes that we can rank lifestyles best to worst. But if we agree (and I think there are good arguments that we must) that each person's likes, preferences, values and commitments do not form a perfectly coherent whole (so that some preferences are somewhat at odds with others — e.g. I want to be a sports star, and I want to travel extensively while I'm young), then while we can say that some lifestyles are better for me than others, we will come to a conclusion that, among the better ones, this lifestyle (training every day) is better in this way (making me a sports star), while that lifestyle (setting off overseas on an open ticket) is better in some other way (travelling), and there does not seem to be any way of saying that one is absolutely better than the other.

So now the question becomes, for me, "What would be a good lifestyle for me — one I would be happy with?" And while asking other people is a perfectly good way to go about answering this, there will not be a single answer for all of us, or even for me alone, and I will have to make my choice as best I can among the alternatives. When I do, some possibilities open up and others close down. As long as I end up happy, it doesn't matter that some of my preferences were never fully met.

What is the Difference Between History and the Past?

The most simple and direct illustration of the difference between history and the past is your own life. Assuming that the universe was not created five minutes ago by a playful Deity, you do have a past. Much of it is unknown. There is some number which is the total number of your heart beats from the moment as an embryo when your heart started beating, to the time you reach the end of this sentence. That is an unalterable, objective fact about your past.

We are story-telling beings. That is a fundamental fact about our 'natural history'. When we look at the course of our own lives we feel compelled to re-construct the actions we have done and the events that have happened to us in a way that makes some sort of sense. Why is it necessary to do this? Why not just lay out all the 'facts' that we are able to recall to memory, or reconstruct from external evidence?

Explanations in the form, 'X caused Y to happen', whenever they are available, will be part of this collection of facts. But causal explanations will not always be available, or, when they are available, may be highly conjectural. What is the real, objective explanation of any human action? How far back do you go? From this perspective, it seems an impossible task.

Yet we do explain our past actions. We succeed in telling a coherent story about our own lives. Of course, there will always be opportunities for self-deception. But remember that these personal 'histories' have to stand the test of the questions and criticisms of others. If your attempt at autobiography falls apart under the most cursory examination, then that is as good a sign as any that the historical claims you have made regarding your own life are false. But what exactly does that mean?

A record of your actions and the events that happened to you in the past can only be true or false. Either what the diary records, or what your memory tells you, happened or it didn't. Such records constitute the evidence for a history. By contrast, a history can only be more or less coherent than another history based on the same historical evidence. Some philosophers would draw the conclusion that a history cannot strictly be 'true' or 'false'. I would rather say that when we are concerned with history, rather than with the past, questions of truth and falsity remain open-ended, not just with respect to the possibility of uncovering new evidence, but also with respect to the possibility of seeing past events in a new light.

What I have said about personal history, about constructing an autobiography, is intended to generalize to all history. Just as I can attempt to tell my history, so I can attempt to tell yours. Or we can attempt to tell ours — or theirs. It is not necessary that the span of one's own life should be placed within the history that one is telling. Yet it seems to me that a good historian always does succeed, in imagination, in putting himself in the historical period that he is recounting, and by so doing, enables the reader to do the same. A historical account is believable, makes sense, to the extent that we can imagine what it was like to have been there.

If God Really Exists Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

I certainly don't know, but here is an answer based on the supposition that God exists:

It is that certain bad things that happen, what are often called evils, are necessary evils. That means that without these evils certain good things could not exist, and that these good things are worth these evils so that it is better for these good things to exist even if the evil things also exist, than for the good things (and of course the evil things) not to exist.

You know how sometimes you are willing to accept a necessary evil because you believe that only that way can you have a good thing whose goodness is worth the bad thing? For instance, suppose your dentist tells you that you need a root canal procedure. Not a pleasant thing. But you have it done anyway because unless you do you will have greater trouble. So you have this unpleasant procedure for the sake of a healthy mouth. You accept an evil because it is a necessary evil. Now, let's apply this to the question. We all believe that compassion for people in trouble or in need is a good thing, don't we? On the other hand, isn't it true that for there to be compassion, there have to be people in trouble, perhaps very ill? You could not be compassionate about nothing! So, according to this answer, certain kinds of evils exist for the sake of the compassion which is good.

How Would Epicurus Feel About Pornography?

As far as Epicurus goes, his philosophy has been largely misinterpreted as being one of pursuing sensual pleasure as an end in itself. From my readings, what he actually proposed was much more sophisticated and more in line with the general attitude of the ancient Greeks: that pleasure was the result of living life in the most fulfilling way. Sensual pleasure was only one, and not the most important, source of pleasure. There was also intellectual pleasure, much more important, and various pleasures derived from social interactions. As I understand him, his notion of pleasure related to happiness and fulfillment coming from a life well-led, which thus would include but not be limited to sensual pleasure.

However, the question is interesting to me in that it doesn’t define the term "pornography". That term is usually associated with explicit sexual material. From the point of view of the ancient Greeks, as I understand it, since their notion of sexuality was radically different from our own, I suspect that what we commonly regard as pornographic would be in the main quite ordinary to them, and indeed desirable. My own take on the term "pornographic" is rather different from the norm: I take it to mean sexuality which is portrayed as bad or "dirty". In addition, sexuality which causes harm or suffering (and there's a fine line here concerning consensual sex and S&M, etc., which probably cannot be generally adjudicated, but must be judged case-by-case), however it is portrayed, I also regard as pornographic. Sex can be presented with any degree of explicitness without being pornographic, and pornography can have any degree of explicitness. Pornography, for me, implies misapprehension and misuse of sexuality. I think that this is actually more in line with the ideas of the ancient Greeks

Which Came First: the Chicken or the Egg?

This is a factual, rather than a philosophical question. However, it is a legitimate task for philosophy to analyze the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the chicken came first, as well as the conditions under which it would be correct to say that the egg came first.
If the theory of Creationism is true, then God could have created the first chicken, which hatched the first egg, or He could have created the first egg, from which the first chicken hatched. Either task would have been equally easy (or difficult). Unfortunately, the information which would enable us to answer this question is missing from the Book of Genesis.

If Darwin's theory of evolution is true, then we can say that the 'trick' of producing a soup of proteins and fats enclosed in a hard casing, inside which an embryo is protected and nourished, was developed by the prehistoric creatures from which chickens evolved. We know that dinosaurs laid eggs. Dinosaurs are reptiles. The accepted view is that birds evolved from reptiles. So in that sense it would be true to say that the egg came before the chicken.

But what about that first chicken? What kind of egg did it hatch from?

If we had the power to go back in time to follow every line back of each one of the millions of generations that led up to the chicken that supplied your breakfast egg this morning, it would be impossible to identify the first chicken. There is no single characteristic, so far as I understand it, which separates a real chicken from a bird which is ever so much like a chicken, but is not a real chicken. However, supposing there is some unique, new feature, a crucial genetic mutation which separates chickens from non-chickens, it logically follows that the first bird to possess that new feature was hatched from an egg which was laid by a bird which did not possess that feature.

The Idea of Lifelong Learning

It is not necessary for a person to believe that they know everything that is worth knowing, in order for them to feel — perhaps at a certain time of their life — that they have had their fill of knowledge and learning. Nor need this be a matter of glorifying in one's ignorance. It is simply the realization that one has reached a comfortable plateau. — Is that a justifiable attitude?

In an age as one that has made a god of the ideal of personal growth, the view I have just expressed is often regarded with scornful disdain. One is 'never too old to learn'. Now the evening classes are packed with old folk learning History, Indian Cuisine and Italian. I think that's great. But I have no criticism to make of those who choose to stay at home.

From a practical standpoint, we are told that today's job market emphasizes the need for continual re-training throughout one's working life. One cannot count any more on following a single career path. However, couldn’t this be an apology for wage slavery?

But, yes, I believe in lifelong learning. What I would seriously question is the view that the value or the cause of lifelong learning is somehow compromised if some persons refuse to jump on board.