Manu Joseph on life: It is beautiful, and without any magic
An odd quality of the Western intellectual world is that its giants take simplistic questions very seriously. It is as though social equality makes it hard for them to be dismissive of majority opinions that are usually very naive. For instance, almost every Western intellectual superstar finds the need to denounce God.
But how sophisticated can any argument against God be? Stripped of all ornaments of articulation, such debates cannot be qualitatively any different from what we used to have in high school. But there is a related question that Western intellectuals are obsessed with, which is more complex and for that reason highly entertaining: Is there magic? Is life mystical? Are some things, plainly, spooky? In my view, most people who are called philosophers are not that at all. Most of them are fans of philosophy, or actors who simulate thinkers.
But I have for several years grown to accept what Daniel Dennett suspected about himself—that he was a philosopher, even though he was also known as a ‘cognitive scientist.’ Dennett died last week of what some people would call old age. But he was only 82. He said there is no magic, and even as he persuaded us to let go of our last hope of a mystical world, he somehow made it seem that the alternative was more entertaining.
He said there was no magic in the mind, especially the human mind which can perceive itself as a mind. He said the mental can be physically explained; every aspect of the mind can be explained as we understand more and more about our physical body. If there is a human soul, it would not faze him.
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