CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS

My earliest memories are vivid and illicit nostalgia: the aroma of baked goods from my mother’s kitchen, a gigantic cottonwood tree in our backyard, the smell of burning leaves in the fall, the glow of a real fireplace and sledding down the hills at the golf course up the street in the winter, and spring … when one could play baseball again. Was life ever better than when playing baseball? Or when playing football in the rain, snow, mud, and freezing cold? I don’t think so.

I was loved more than I deserved, almost worshipped by my parents, whose every ounce of energy and strength pushed my life forward. How indebted I am to them; how I can never repay them adequately. My mother (Mary Jane Hurley Messerly) died on September 18, 2005 at the age of 86. She is no longer the beauty that stole my father’s heart in the 1930s; no longer the concert pianist who played on the Fox Theatre stage in St. Louis as a teenager; no longer the wife who waited through world war II for her husband to return; no longer middle aged—but she was my first love, she was my father’s only love, and she is beloved by all her children.

My father died in 1989 at the age of 71, but not before he talked with me about politics and religion and history and sports and so much else. He labored, physically, for more than 50 years so that his family could have a bit more than he did in his poverty-filled youth. And he succeeded. In short, my mother and father did their best. They may not have received the wages due them—not many parents do—but they labored nonetheless. So now, after more than 50 years, I thank them for their effort, their labor, and their love. My mother was comfort, consolation and tenderness; my father was strength, guidance, and toughness. Both resonate within me still.

GRADE & HIGH SCHOOL (1961-1973)

I grew up in an old suburb of St. Louis in the midst of the baby boom. Thus, there were plenty of kids to play with. I grew up, as my childhood friend Jim Foley says, "with a ball in my hands." We played outside every day, since there wasn't much to do inside back then. Baseball, football, and soccer mostly. Our grade school soccer team won multiple city championships, and some of my soccer comrades went on to play college and professional soccer. Our baseball team was less successful, mostly because I was a pitcher who could throw every ball right down the middle--with little or no velocity! As for football, I was "all-sandlot," that is until we neared puberty and I found out I was much to little for football. By high school my sport of choice had changed to table tennis. I was lucky enough to play a number of the top-ranked players in the world, but unlucky enough to be beaten soundly by all of them.

The private high school I attented marked the beginning of my academic life. I can easily trace that interest to an american literature class in my sophomore year. There I first encountered the New England Transcendentalists--Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman--the first real philosophers I had ever read.

In the summer before college I had the good fortune to become friends with a philosophy major, Dan Dunay, who would subsequently receive a PhD in computer science. It was this chance encounter which brought about the realization that there was a world of ideas to explore. It was as if a dam had broken, and I saw immediately the parochialism of the ideas to which I had so far been exposed. I was determined to explore this mindscape and die with as large a mind as possible.

COLLEGE - UNDERGRADUATE (1973-1978)

My first semester of college, I eagerly enrolled in "major questions in philosophy" There I was introduced to Descartes' epistemological skepticism, Hume's critique of religion, and Lenin's critique of the state. It was all I needed; I was hooked. This was not the intellectual dribble to which I had previously been exposed; this was the real thing. Subsequently, I took the maximum number of hours in philosophy possible. I learned a few things about medieval, american, modern, and asian philosophy, and a bit of philosophy of religion, science, and law. I was fortunate to have had excellent instructors like Edward Costello, Peter Fuss, Paul Gomberg, and David Griesedeck. In the meantime I discovered girls; and later, high stakes poker.

YOUNG ADULTHOOD & CHILDREN (1978-1986)

I wooed my wife by the display of hundred dollar bills I carried in my wallet. She was quite impressed, although less impressed when she found out that that was all the money I had! (And that only 1 of the 4 doors on my car opened.) But she married me nonetheless in 1980. Our son John Benjamin was born in 1981 and his sister Katie in 1983. We struggled mightly during these years, as my poker income was inconsistent--like my poker playing. By 1985 we moved to Las Vegas where I dealt blackjack. However, the desert wasn't to our liking and we moved back to St. Louis where I started graduate school in 1986.

GRADUATE SCHOOL (1986-1992)

This is when I finally became a good student. I raised kids, study hard, taught my own classes, and made some good friends. And I learned a lot, both from my fellow graduate student--Darrell Arnold, John Ries, and Julie Stepanek--and from Professors Richard J. Blackwell and William C. Charron. (For more on my professors influence see the "academic geneology" section of this website.)

POST-DOCTORAL (1992-PRESENT)

My first full-time job was at Ursuline College in Ohio--big mistake--both Ohio and the college. I did rise to become chair of the philosophy department, but still couldn't wait to get out of Cleveland. In 2000 I accepted a postion as lecturer in one of the world's best philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2002, I moved to one of the world's most highly ranked computer science departments at UT, where I taught computer ethics until 2006. In the meantime, I taught part-time at Austin Community College which is now my sole means of income--well, in addition to my wife!

My children have done well. My son earned a Presidential scholarship to Case Western Reserve University when he was only 15 and received his BS in computer science from the Case School of Engineering in 2000,where he won the William Everett award for outstanding work in engineering. He subsequently did graduate work in the computer science department at UT and is currently employed by microsoft in Seattle, where he does research on compilers. My daughter Katie also received a Presidential scholarhip at CWRU when she was 15. She earned a BS in computer science at UT in 2004 where she was a Dean's Honored Graduate in the School of Natural Sciences. Her name is permanently inscribed on the wall outside the Dean of Natural Sciences office. She is a program manager for Microsoft in Seattle and travels the world for them. My youngest daughter Anne is currently enrolled at UT here in Austin, following in her Dad's footsteps as a philosophy major.

My wife Jane has been the only woman I have ever truly loved, and we have been married for more than 28 years. She is an extraordinary woman in every conceivable way. She is intelligent, thoughtful, and efficient; while at the same time possessing a heart full of warmth, compassion, and love. For her the only appropriate words are not my own but the Bard's:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

With no parting words of wisdom that are my own, I provide the following. They express, most simply, most of my thoughts.

BETRAND RUSSELL'S THREE PASSIONS

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) won the Nobel prize for literature and was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

ULYSSES

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy
Hyades Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life.
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas.
My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was the Poet Laureate of England and the most popular poet of the Victorian era.

MENCKEN'S CREED

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

I - But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Henry Louis Mencken (1880 -1956) was the most prominent newspaperman, book reviewer, and political commentator of his day.

And finally, philosophically, I am a transhumanist. And what is Transhumanism?

(from the website of the WTA)

Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades.[1] It promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology. Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. Other transhumanist themes include space colonization and the possibility of creating superintelligent machines, along with other potential developments that could profoundly alter the human condition. The ambit is not limited to gadgets and medicine, but encompasses also economic, social, institutional designs, cultural development, and psychological skills and techniques.

Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.

Some transhumanists take active steps to increase the probability that they personally will survive long enough to become posthuman, for example by choosing a healthy lifestyle or by making provisions for having themselves cryonically suspended in case of de-animation.[2] In contrast to many other ethical outlooks, which in practice often reflect a reactionary attitude to new technologies, the transhumanist view is guided by an evolving vision to take a more proactive approach to technology policy. This vision, in broad strokes, is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives. This affirmation of human potential is offered as an alternative to customary injunctions against playing God, messing with nature, tampering with our human essence, or displaying punishable hubris.

Transhumanism does not entail technological optimism. While future technological capabilities carry immense potential for beneficial deployments, they also could be misused to cause enormous harm, ranging all the way to the extreme possibility of intelligent life becoming extinct. Other potential negative outcomes include widening social inequalities or a gradual erosion of the hard-to-quantify assets that we care deeply about but tend to neglect in our daily struggle for material gain, such as meaningful human relationships and ecological diversity. Such risks must be taken very seriously, as thoughtful transhumanists fully acknowledge.[3]

Transhumanism has roots in secular humanist thinking, yet is more radical in that it promotes not only traditional means of improving human nature, such as education and cultural refinement, but also direct application of medicine and technology to overcome some of our basic biological limits.