Oh Cecilia!

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez/Cecilia Gimenez After the heartfelt restoration job that Cecilia Gimenez conducted on the fresco of Jesus  at the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza, some more of her work has come to light: Mantegna's classic piece deserved some added decorum, Gimenez thought Da...

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Empathy for the Poor Devil

UPDATE 22/8/12: Today Tony Nicklinson died. My thoughts are with his family and friends. The High Court in Britain yesterday refused Tony Nicklinson and 'Martin' the means to end their lives without causing another to commit a crime. The judgement of Lord Justice Toulson concludes: Tony’s and Martin’s circumstances are deeply moving....

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Are Minds Functional?

H/t Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick René Descartes’s two substance dualism, which proposes that mind is a separate immaterial substance from body, has a number of conceptual problems that are hard to overcome, but it is in tune with many of our common intuitions about the way we are. It appears to us that there is a material world...

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The Advantages of History but None of its Risks

This appears to be the only picture of Van Harvey available. He's the one in the hat, I think. The title of this piece is, I think, a pretty fair description of what faith, in the religious sense, gives a believer (I've paraphrased it from a better writer than me). I've long been intrigued by faith, having failed to maintain it...

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