Happy Mind: The Philosophy and Science of Happiness

Halloween special: in Katherine Power's short story a materialist ghost examines his puzzling immaterial existence – or is it material after all?

 

How odd that Descartes should be right after all! (Well, almost.) I so wish I could let you know, sweetness, but, without a body, us souls are quite useless.

  

You are a lecturer now. I'm so proud. I watch you explain mind body dualism to first years. I wonder if ‘watch’ is the right way of putting it – if I still see, strictly speaking…

 

“Descartes,” you say, “was a substance dualist.” 

 

As Lemony Snicket's dark and witty A Series of Unfortunate Events draws to an end, Katherine Power finds out why misery and woe have sold so well.

 

“I am sorry that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant,” reads the blurb on the back of The Bad Beginning, the first of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. “It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe.”