Today, when I’d just begun to recover from last weekend’s exhausting music-marathon, I had to go in for a colonoscopy. (I was due, and my beloved brother David’s sudden death from colorectal cancer back in May sharply focused my attention.)
Too much information? Sorry, at my age I don’t really care anymore. Like it or not, we are mortal, and all of this stuff is coming for you too, folks, if it hasn’t already. (In Ernest Becker’s extraordinary book The Denial of Death, he summarized the psychologically irreconcilable tension between our spiritual, immaterial selves and our gross corporeality by referring to us, memorably, as “gods with anuses”.)
Anyway, I haven’t the oomph for much of a post tonight. But I will call your attention to two ongoing discussions elsewhere:
The first is at my friend Bill Vallicella’s place, where once again (we’ve been arguing about this for decades now) we are staking out somewhat divergent opinions about intentionality (the rise of AI has brought the question to the fore once again). That one’s here, in the comments.
The second is at The Orthosphere (a site you should visit often), where Kristor brought in Grok for a discussion of Anselm’s Ontological Argument for the existence of God. I thought I’d invite Claude to join in, and an interesting technical exchange has ensued. (For my own part, I could never find the OA compelling; it always seemed like some sort of sleight-of-hand to me. But that’s not to say I can refute it, either — so it was interesting to see what our future overlords had to say about it all.) You can read that one here.