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The article discusses the risk of overthinking and how it can hinder one's pursuit of happiness and flourishing. Drawing from the experiences of philosopher John Stuart Mill, the article suggests that seeking something other than happiness, such as benefiting others or humanity, can lead to happiness indirectly. The article also highlights the negative effects of comparing one's own life to others, particularly in the age of social media. It concludes by suggesting that excessive self-reflection on flourishing may actually impede one's ability to achieve it. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the relationship between philosophers and wealth throughout history. It highlights examples of philosophers who embraced poverty, such as Diogenes of Sinope and Francis of Assisi, as well as those who accumulated great wealth, like Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Voltaire. The article also mentions Ludwig Wittgenstein, who inherited a vast fortune but chose to give it all away, and Peter Singer, who won a million-dollar prize but immediately donated the entire amount to charitable causes. The author presents these diverse perspectives without passing judgment, allowing readers to consider the complex relationship between philosophy and wealth. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the concept of memory and personal identity from a philosophical perspective. It discusses John Locke's idea that memories are essential to our personal being and the basis of our identity over time. The article also introduces the extended mind thesis, which suggests that external tools or memory devices, such as smartphones, can be considered extensions of our minds. It argues that the death of someone close to us can result in the loss of not only the person but also a part of ourselves. Overall, the article encourages readers to reconsider the relationship between memory, personal identity, and the external world. [Extracted from the article]

While he'd turned to see that the young man was OK, someone had stolen the cash that he'd just been served up by the machine. It reminds me of a similar distraction technique in which a "lost tourist" approaches people at a café table, asking for directions. A young man of about 20 had started foaming at the mouth and seemed to be on the verge of an epileptic fit. [Extracted from the article]

Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity--and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay Swift Press, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 352 Liberal values are [...]

GLO:l0rm/01dec22:33n1.jpg PHOTO (COLOR): Close-up of August Landmesser refusing to give the Nazi salute, 1936 gl GLO:l0rm/01dec22:34n1.jpg PHOTO (COLOR): August Landmesser refusing to give the Nazi salute, 1936 gl History is replete with similar examples of immensely courageous people who have defied powerful authorities, well-aware that grim consequences are almost inevitable, taking risks with their own lives because they think that some things are more important than personal safety. Landmesser was well aware that there would be serious consequences for refusing to make the Nazi salute, and he also knew there would be consequences for continuing his relationship with Irma, in defiance of the Nuremberg Laws. Real courage, like the kind displayed by Landmesser, the Scholls, and Rekabi, is rare and wonderful. [Extracted from the article]

Bentham's surprising decision about what should be done with his corpse was in part intended to challenge taboos about what happened to the body after death, many of them stemming from Christian concerns about the need to have an intact body for it to be resurrected. One of the first people known to have donated his own body to medical science was the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It's not clear what we should do with dead bodies, but we certainly shouldn't do what a 16-year-old Damien Hirst did: pose for a photograph grinning next to the corpse of a man in a Leeds morgue. [Extracted from the article]

Think of what Boethius achieved as he waited for his execution by strangulation in a prison cell on charges of conspiracy to overthrow King Theodoric the Great: he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, an early medieval bestseller in which Philosophy appears in Boethius's cell as a tall woman who implores him not to forsake her even in these dark days. To balance Boethius and Tichborne with hypothetical anecdotal evidence on the other side: knowing I was to be hanged in a fortnight would probably tip me into glum inaction rather than creative and productive fervour, and I suspect I'm not alone in this. As the English writer Dr Johnson observed, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully". [Extracted from the article]

Philosophy Smackdown by Douglas Edwards Polity, [pounds sterling]13, pp. 200 One of the delights of going to stay with my grandparents in the 1970s was that my grandmother was a [...]

Wittgenstein so approved of Leavis's direct honesty in telling him this that he replied, "We must know one another", to which Leavis replied, "I don't see the necessity." Aware that Wittgenstein, an Austrian by birth, was in the room, the man said nervously, "Dr Wittgenstein will correct my German", - to which Wittgenstein rudely replied, "How can I? Norman Malcolm in his Memoir of Wittgenstein, describes this relentless honesty: "Primarily, what made him an awesome and even terrible person, both as a teacher and in personal relationships, was his ruthless integrity, which did not spare himself or anyone else.". [Extracted from the article]

Both Locke and Reid wrote as if memories were necessarily accurate. That gives the contradictory conclusion that for Locke the general both was and was not the same person as the child (although he was clearly the same man in Locke's sense of the term). Perhaps Locke set the bar too high, and all we need as a criterion for personal identity is some sort of sequential overlapping pattern of memories of the kind Reid described. [Extracted from the article]

Even the Hollywood star with a private plane and a recycled coffee cup signals something - that environmental concerns are important, even if the individual is apparently blind to the disproportional impact his or her flying makes on the world. I can't help wondering if my compulsive light switching isn't a bit like the Hollywood star with a private jet who feels good about using recycled cardboard. But there's another part that whispers, "Leave them on, it won't make a significant difference, life's too short, you're behaving like that Hollywood star with the private plane and the recycled coffee cup. [Extracted from the article]