But understanding and explaining motives does not compromise freedom; nor does even predicting acts necessarily do so. A person committed to a politi… - Mary Midgley

Philosophy, in spite of all its tiresome features, is not a luxury but a necessity, because we always have to use it when things get difficult.

"Cognition" cannot be "translated into circuitry." Learning and creativeness cannot be "defined as specific portions of the cognitive machinery." They cannot be because translating and defining are operations performed, not on the mean in any thinker's brain, but on language. Learning, knowing and so forth are words to describe the relation of a thinking subject (as a whole) to the things he thinks and talks about. Defining these words is clarifying their proper use, so as to get rid of whatever ambiguities and confusions dog them. Since these words describes functions of the whole thinking subject, they cannot be used to describe changes in "portions of the cognitive machinery" he uses to perform them. This would again be like saying that the carburetor had won the race, instead of the car of the driver. Carburators do not even know how to enter races, let alone win them. Winners need carburetors, and thinkers (including neurologists) need brain cells.

The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death. There is a kind of gestalt-shift between the two positions which makes it hard to change, and hard to raise questions on the matter at all without becoming embattled.