Observations:

Now I am a Ph.D. candidate. In three years or so and with some intervening thesis committee meetings and paper submissions and so on, I’ll have the highest degree anyone can get in this field. Ironically my metaphysical suspicions indicate that this knowledge has no real application. In spite of the fact that neuroscience will inevitably make it possible to farm out all sorts of thought processes to implants, drugs, and so on, I maintain that these changes we will make to our bodies will not change the essential questions that humanity has posed since it acquired language. Consequently my continued interest in this field can take two interpretations. First, that the process of discovery has value even if its ends do not. Second, that as careers go this one is not too bad: the best you can hope for is to work at something that engages all of your faculties and pays for the kids or house or whatever.

My critics will be sure to point out that both interpretations are the same.

Saw today a photograph with a woman I used to love and her current boyfriend. I don’t love her any more, not that I can tell, yet I’m certain she could do better than him. But who am I to know? If after all she prefers money, nice restaurants, and a two car garage somewhere in the future, there’s no way I could ever oblige her. It ain’t me, babe.

These same critics will also ask why I loved her in the first place.

I cannot help but think it important that love has so much power over supposedly rational beings.