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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Athanatism: Consciousness and Immortality Under a Skeptic's Microscope

Athanatism: Consciousness and Immortality Under a Skeptic's Microscope

Haeckel, Ernst
McCabe, Joseph
Lane, David

Paperback

Biology

ISBN10: 143576157X
ISBN13: 9781435761575
Publisher: Lulu Pr
Published: Apr 30 2022
Pages: 52
Weight: 0.20
Height: 0.12 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
I find it quite remarkable that an evolutionary zoologist working in the latter part of the 19th century could be so prescient about the utility of studying consciousness from a purely physicalist perspective. While Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was readily aware that many of his colleagues held dualistic views on the nature of self-awareness (a soul apart from the body), he saw more clearly than most that such supernatural conjecturing was both unnecessary and non-progressive. By focusing our attention on the sensible world, and in particular the brain, we can develop a much deeper and richer understanding of how and why consciousness must have emerged in the first place. If, however, we adopt a purely spiritualist perspective, arguing that the soul is non-material, then we have basically put a halt to any scientific study of the very biochemistry that gives rise to varying degrees of consciousness. Haeckel points out that our own self-awareness is a natural phenomenon and not something part from the world we inhabit. As he so clearly states, We shall see that consciousness is simply a natural phenomenon like any other psychic quality, and that it is subject to the law of substance like all other natural phenomena.

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