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“I am optimistic that the so-called hard problem of consciousness will be solved by empirical and conceptual advances - working in tandem - made in cognitive neuroscience. What is the hard problem? No-one has a clue (at the moment) how to answer the question of why the neural basis of the phenomenal feel of my experience of, for example red, is the neural basis of that particular phenomenal feel rather than a different one or none at all. There is an explanatory gap here that we do not know how to close now, but I have faith that we will someday. The hard problem is conceptually and explanatorily prior to the issue of what the nature of the self is, as can be seen in part by noting that the problem would persist even for experiences that aren't organised into selves. No doubt solving the hard problem (i.e closing the explanatory gap) will require ideas we cannot now anticipate. The mind-body problem is so singular that no appeal to the closing of past explanatory gaps justifies optimism. But I remain optimistic nonetheless.”
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“Learned arguments do not make a man holy and righteous, whereas a good life makes him dear to God.”
― The Imitation of Christ
― The Imitation of Christ
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
― The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
― The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”
― Lectures on Literature
― Lectures on Literature
“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
― The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
― The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The Catholic Book Club
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This reading group is for Catholics and anyone else interested in reading and discussing Catholic literature from devotional and theological writings ...more
Classics and the Western Canon
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This is a group to read and discuss those books generally referred to as “the classics” or “the Western canon.” Books which have shaped Western though ...more
Cole’s 2025 Year in Books
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