Philosophers have expressed wide ranging views on the infinite, and even distinguished different kinds of infinites. In terms of the 'infinite' standing for a sequence of events without end, then (just as there is no greatest possible number) it is difficult for someone to claim to have experienced that (experienced all numbers, none of which is lacking in a greater number), though not perhaps difficult for one to claim to understand it (that is, understanding that there is no greatest possible number) or for someone to have an experience of time or space, along with the feeling that this will never end.

There has been some interesting testimony by some philosophers to have experienced soemthing related that may be of interest. Some philosophers have claimed to experience that which is boundless or, in some sense, eternal. Probably the two most famous philosophers to have spoken and analyzed such experiences are Boethius and Augustine. Boethius spoke of God's eternity (and having some experiential acquaintance with God as eternal) in terms of God possessing the 'whole, simultansous, and complete fruition of a life without bounds' (interminabilis vitae tot simul et perfecta possessio'). This would be different from claiming to experience what you might think of as 'forever' or 'endless'; it is more like experiencing an event so overwhelming and perhaps good that you seem to lose track of future and the past. This has been analyzed by some philosophers as experiencing something that is atemporal or beyond metric time or not bound by it. The philosopher A.E. Taylor in an interesting book in the early part of the last century wrote of the experience of eternity in ways that are (to use your term) intense, but more satisfying than jarring or incredible (not worthy of belief). In one example, he describes 'spending an evening of prolonged enjoyment in the company of wholly congenial friends. The past may be represented for us, if we stay to think of it at all, by whatever happened before the party began, the future -but when we are truly enjoying ourselves we do not anticipate it- by what will happen when the gathering is over. The enjoyment of the social evening has, of course, before and after within itself; the party may last two or three hours. But while it lasts and while our enjoyment of it is steady and at the full, the first half-hour in not envisaged as past, nor the third as future, while the second is going on....' Taylor goes on to defend the coherence and importance of experiences that seem to be in response to a value that we wish to last forever or not be bound by time, a state in which one or more people might be completely present to each other that they would never wish it to end. See Taylor's book The Faith of a Moralist --the title is a bit misleading given what we mean by 'moralist' or 'moralistic' today versus when he wrote the book in 1930. It is a good text for thinking about the experience of values and time. (See especially chapters three to six.)

I think that how one sees the relation between intelligence and morality might well depend on how one conceives of morality. If one had a strongly intellectualist conception of morality--as, arguably, Plato and certain early modern Rationalists, such as Leibniz, had--then one might well think that an agent's capacity for moral reflection might well depend directly on her intelligence, and so one might conclude that a more intelligent agent would at least have the capacity to be a more moral agent as well (although, of course, s/he might fail to exercise that capacity). By contrast, if one thought that morality was a matter of following the law (as, for example, early modern natural law theorists, such as Pufendorf, thought), or that it was a matter of habituation (as, at least on certain interpretations, Aristotle thought), then one might think that the capacity to be a moral agent would be altogether independent of one's capacity for moral reflection. Indeed, certain philosophers have suggested that one's capacity for moral reflection is most manifest in unreflective actions or choices, which would suggest that morality and intelligence could come unhooked altogether. To be sure, regardless of how one conceives of morality, 'real life' examples may well reveal that theories of morality do not capture the choices or actions of agents: one might take such examples to reveal a problem with one's conception of morality, or instead merely to manifest a problem with an agent's moral 'performance', that is to say, the agent's actual manifestation of moral capacities, which nevertheless does not constitute any relevant evidence against a given theory of morality.

great question ... we might make some useful distinctions -- whether memories, beliefs, etc. are 'true' does NOT make an immediate difference to the individual, psychologically: we act on what we think, believe, remember etc., and in that sense the false thoughts/memories are just as 'valuable' or 'real' or important as the true ones .... however in many ways we like to orient ourselves towards the truth, to get our beliefs to be true, etc.; and thus when we discover some belief/memory is false we want to correct it .... (why we do or should care about truth in general is a separate issue; but most people simply do) -- so from that perspective, there's a large difference between the true ones and the false ones, as we seek to overcome the latter ....

the "idealist' tradition in philosophy -- esp figures such as George Berkeley -- would ultimately deny the difference between the true ones/false ones (or at least reconstrue it very differently from the way I've implicitly done here) -- so if you want to pursue your idea in more detail, I'd recommend exploring the work of Berkeley ...

hope that's useful --

Andrew

I think the simple answer is that any probabilities we come up with here are pretty much meaningless. Probability calculations ade only as good as the information we feed into them, and it's hard to see what a well-formed question would be like here - not least since it would require some way of quantifying how hard the universe is to understand.

Perhaps there's some clever way to come up with a calculation, but let me turn to your other issue - the brain/pancreas thing. To my inexpert eye, brains and pancreases hace a certain superficial resemblance, but neuroscientists will be able to tell you in a good deal of detail why the brain is better suited to computing than the pancreas is. The real point here is that our casual impressions on such matters aren't really worth very much. After all, a casual look at my iPad makes it pretty mysterious that it could be used to write this response, but that's exaclry what it let me do.

Interesting! Philosophers have disagreed about the scope of our freedom and even over whether we (in non-addictive states) have freedom at all. Spinoza, for example, denied that we have libertarian freedom (the freedom to do other than what we are determined to do). The great majority of philosophers have affirmed our morally responsible freedom (or voluntariness), however. Probably the two most famous cases of a "fake it, till you make it" involve Pascal and Descartes. Pascal thought there were good prudential reasons for living a life of religious devotion, a life that included a belief in God. He proposed that nonbelievers could cultivate a belief in God by practicing religious rites and acting as though they believed in God. Descartes undertook a radical skeptical inquiry but decided before doing so that he would act in the world in conformity with the prevailing customs no matter how far his skepticism took him. In a sense, he would "fake" or at least act as though he did not doubt the existence of the town he was in, even though his philosophy led him (at one stage) to doubt the existence of the material world itself.

Although I am not acquainted first hand with the 12 step program, I suggest that it would be backed up by Aristotle who held that virtue is achieved (in part) through the cultivation of habits.

Here is a simple response, which I think is true: Language shapes our understanding and our perception of reality (different words will cause us to focus on different aspects of the world around us) and reality shapes our language (different environments will cause us to adopt different words). Speakers of different languages all belong to the same world, however, for there is only one world.

Here is a more complicated response that may do a better job of addressing your concern: When people use different words to refer to the very same objects -- a bug, a chair, a curtain -- the differences in their view of the world can seem trivial. But when different languages focus on entirely different things (even the words for objects such as bugs and chairs can have importantly different associations in different languages), they are bound to reflect important differences in the worldviews of the relevant speakers. In some cases, the different views may be quite compatible because they simply attend to different things -- different parts of a single world. In other cases, where there seems to be a disagreement about the very same thing (about what will help a fever, for example), it may be difficult to decide who is right because it is difficult to decide whether the disagreement is really about the same thing (fever or something of which the fever is just a symptom? help reduce a fever or help it do its work? reduction in objective temperature or reduction in felt distress? etc.). In these cases, we may say that the different speakers exist in different worlds as way of noting differences in their worldviews, but I think that this way of talking is dangerous insofar as it encourages us to give up on the attempt to communicate with others about our common world.

The prospect of going under anesthesia is a scary one, for all sorts of reasons. But I don't think you should have much cause to worry about identity issues. I have two comments that might help alleviate your concerns.

First, you might ask yourself: What would be the difference between its being you who wakes up from the anesthesia and its being a doppelganger with your memories? From the outside, you would seem exactly the same. And from the inside, it would seem the same too. Your doppelganger might be thinking something like this: "Yesterday I was worried about whether I would wake up from the anesthesia, and I'm glad that my worries were for naught -- here I am." In other words, the prospect that you're proposing is not really one that can be discerned -- either from the inside or from the outside -- as one that makes any difference to anything.

But if that doesn't help (and I'm a bit worried that it won't), it might better reassure you if you think about anesthesia on the analogy of sleep. I doubt that you think that the person who wakes up each morning is merely your doppelganger with your memories, so why should it be any different with anesthesia?

Good luck with your surgical procedure.

Without getting into the technicalities of philosophy of mind, I suggest that there is a general sense in which you give other people access to your mind any time you are honestly disclosive and expressive of your thoughts, feelings, desires. Films and books may be disclosive of the mind of the author / director, but they also may obscure and mask a person's inner thoughts.

Actually, you might consider flipping around the question and ask whether it makes some sense to think of works of art having a mind of their own. Arguably, this is all a matter of metaphorical attributions, but in our experience of art works can't we sometimes pick up a mood or emotion (there is anger or passion or desire in that film / book / painting, for example). John Updike once remarked that he thought books should have at least one secret. Of course one may interpret that as Updike claiming that the author should perhaps not be completely disclosive of all aspects of the plot and characters. But what about considering the idea that a book itself may be keeping a secret from you. It is a metaphor, but isn't it one that can make reading more exciting?

Great question! Undoubtedly there is a neurological basis for conscious thinking and so there is a sense in which the brain plays a role in sustaining thinking and the brain definitely has a location, BUT it is not clear whether thoughts themselves are the sorts of things that can have location. Does the thought "New York City is not the capital of New York State" have a certain size or weight or mass or color? It would be odd to think so. But let's consider where thoughts go, not in terms of spatial location, but in relationship to our conscious minds.

Some philosophers acknowledge that in addition to our conscious mental life there is the unconscious and the sub-conscious. The difference between these is not obvious, but in general the former is thought to be more difficult to retrieve or bring to the surface of full consciousness. Presumably you know many things or can be said to have lots of thoughts about subjects you are not consciously reflecting on now. This knowledge is sometimes called dispositional knowledge. When you are not actually playing the piano it may be true that you know how to play (or you have the disposition to play) because, under proper circumstances, you could play. So, one answer to the question of where thoughts go when you no longer are reflecting of them is that you either retain the thoughts sub-consciously (or maybe even unconsciously) or that they are what we might think of as dispositions (you are disposed to recall them). A fuller reply to your question would need to take into account the philosophy of memory.

Yes, I agree with you. There are good philosophical reasons for experimenting with mind altering drugs, the same reasons that make it desirable to experience travel, different kinds of people, different cuisines, different art, etc. Now, of course, the benefits of mind-altering drugs must be balanced against the harms they can produce, and those harms are real enough, although, arguably suffering of various kinds is also something that can provide one opportunities philosophical insight. But just as one is not obligated to suffer or experiment with different cuisines, one is not obligated to experiment with mind-altering drugs. Those who do not experiment will be in some sense ignorant, but it's not clear that philosophically speaking theirs will always or often be a pernicious or limiting ignorance, no more so than the ignorance of one who has not traveled to Peru or experienced the pain of cancer. Moreover, the ignorance will not be complete, for many philosophical purposes one can gain relevant information about the effects of mind-altering drugs from scientific, journalistic, and autobiographical literature. Nevertheless, benefits are possible and well established by the testimony of those who have experimented.