Philosophy is Greek for “Love of Wisdom.”  It is the study of the most abstract and general questions about the world, how we think, experience, and should behave.  It has now branched into a variety of interdisciplinary cognitive sciences, composed of philosophers, psychologists, computer scientists, and linguists, among others, who explore the nature of thought and its connections to the brain. 

I have given them plenty of material to pore over.  Hopefully with analysis my story can be reduced to its simplest and most basic elements in order to understand it better.

It would behoove the entire field of psychology and psychiatry to steer clear of any observation that asserts mental defect on my part.

I need analysis not on the ordinary level, but at a deeper level that views the adequacy or inadequacy of concepts at the ordinary level.

We must investigate questions concerning the nature of reality, and perhaps move beyond scientific inquiry in exploring questions about the self, God, free will, and the origins of the universe.

Any theory in the social sciences about social groups or institutions must invariably be reduced to theories about individual human beings, so that the individual becomes the primary basis for inquiry.

Ego, the self, is the seat of all conscious thought, the organizer of all subjective sensory experience, and the originator of voluntary action.

We should study human behavior solely through the observation and measurement of external behavior, thereby classifying internal mental processes - such as introspection, the unconscious, and thought - as unscientific because they are immeasurable or unobservable by others.

Inquiry into concepts of the non-physical mind should correlate with biological extrapolation, because by themselves, such psychological inquiries (and their resulting “explanations”) are so fraught with error as to render them useless.  Restrict the data used in analysis to observable and measurable human behavior, thus excluding mental activity outside its physical state as proper area of study.

Ethical statements are mere expressions of emotion and, as such, have no basis in truth or falsehood.  So “abortion is wrong” is neither true nor false, but merely means, “I have negative feelings about abortion.”

Evaluate ethical problems in a situational manner by analyzing the circumstances of a case.  I reject the idea that application of rules or principles yields real solutions.

To me and many others, reality is empirical, and that which can be proved or disproved by sensory experience. 

All human knowledge arises from sensation and experience, not innate concepts. 

Mental events, such as conscious thought, subjective experience, and emotions really do exist, but not in any way independent of the brain and body; instead, they are merely the effects of the physical brain.  More importantly, such mental states can have no causal effect on the natural world or the human body.