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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
Subconscious and the Superconscious Planes of Mind, written by W.W.
Atkinson in 1909, is a somewhat supernatural text on the different
levels at which the mind works and functions. There are the
sub-conscious (below normal), conscious (normal), and
super-conscious (above normal) levels, which Atkinson describes in
detail. He also covers the elements of each level-for example, in
the subconscious our memory works and resides. While based in hard
facts, Atkinson uses the mind theories to justify instances such as
telepathy and mind reading, in which he strongly believed. American
writer WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON (1862-1932) was editor of the
popular magazine New Thought from 1901 to 1905, and editor of the
journal Advanced Thought from 1916 to 1919. He authored dozens of
New Thought books under numerous pseudonyms, including "Yogi," some
of which are likely still unknown today.
Some things in the world-intentional items such as words, thoughts,
portraits, and passport photos-are about things, whereas other
things in the world-sticks, stones, and fireflies-are not about
anything. Necessary Intentionality is a study of aboutness, or
intentionality, with a focus on the following question: are
intentional items typically about whatever they are about as a
matter of necessity, or is their aboutness, rather, a matter of
mere contingency? Consider, for example, a particular name
referring to a particular person, or a specific belief with respect
to some particular thing that it is such and so. Is it possible for
the name not to have referred to the person and for the belief not
to have been about the thing? Ori Simchen defends a negative answer
to such questions. That the name refers to the person is necessary
for the name and that the belief is about the thing is necessary
for the belief. Simchen articulates his overall position in two
main stages. In the first stage he fleshes out a requisite modal
metaphysical background. In the second stage he brings the modal
metaphysics to bear on cognition, specifically the aboutness of
cognitive states and episodes. Simchen presents a productivist
approach, which takes aboutness to be determined by the conditions
of production of intentional items, rather than an
interpretationist approach that takes aboutness to be determined by
conditions of consumption of such items.
Alain Badiou's Being and Event continues to impact philosophical
investigations into the question of Being. By exploring the central
role set theory plays in this influential work, Burhanuddin Baki
presents the first extended study of Badiou's use of mathematics in
Being and Event. Adopting a clear, straightforward approach, Baki
gathers together and explains the technical details of the relevant
high-level mathematics in Being and Event. He examines Badiou's
philosophical framework in close detail, showing exactly how it is
'conditioned' by the technical mathematics. Clarifying the relevant
details of Badiou's mathematics, Baki looks at the four core topics
Badiou employs from set theory: the formal axiomatic system of ZFC;
cardinal and ordinal numbers; Kurt Goedel's concept of
constructability; and Cohen's technique of forcing. Baki then
rebuilds Badiou's philosophical meditations in relation to their
conditioning by the mathematics, paying particular attention to
Cohen's forcing, which informs Badiou's analysis of the event.
Providing valuable insights into Badiou's philosophy of
mathematics, Badiou's Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set
Theory offers an excellent commentary and a new reading of Badiou's
most complex and important work.
The principal aim of this volume is to elucidate what freedom,
sovereignty, and autonomy mean for Nietzsche and what philosophical
resources he gives us to re-think these crucial concepts. A related
aim is to examine how Nietzsche connects these concepts to his
thoughts about life-affirmation, self-love, promise-making, agency,
the 'will to nothingness', and the 'eternal recurrence', as well as
to his search for a 'genealogical' understanding of morality.
These twelve essays by leading Nietzsche scholars ask such key
questions as: Can we reconcile his rejection of free will with his
positive invocations of the notion of free will? How does
Nietzsche's celebration of freedom and free spirits sit with his
claim that we all have an unchangeable fate? What is the relation
between his concepts of freedom and self-overcoming?
The depth in which these and related issues are explored gives this
volume its value, not only to those interested in Nietzsche, but to
all who are concerned with the free will debate, ethics, theory of
action, and the history of philosophy.
Law of the New Thought: A Study of Fundamental Principles and Their
Application is study of "new thought," or the oldest school of
thought that teaches spiritual and psychic truth concerning the
planes of the mind, telepathy, the celestial and clairvoyant. In
it, Atkinson instructs on the definition of "New Thought," the
nature of thought in general, the law of attraction, the nature and
planes of mind and body, the soul, and the absolute-God and the
Universe. He shows how students of New Thought can apply its
principles to their everyday lives, while students of philosophy
and psychology will find his theories an interesting read. American
writer WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON (1862-1932) was editor of the
popular magazine New Thought from 1901 to 1905, and editor of the
journal Advanced Thought from 1916 to 1919. He authored dozens of
New Thought books under numerous pseudonyms, including "Yogi," some
of which are likely still unknown today.
Introduction to New Realism provides an overview of the movement of
contemporary thought named New Realism, by its creator and most
celebrated practitioner, Maurizio Ferraris. Sharing significant
concerns and features with Speculative Realism and Object Oriented
Ontology, New Realism can be said to be one of the most prescient
philosophical positions today. Its desire to overcome the
postmodern antirealism of Kantian origin, and to reassert the
importance of truth and objectivity in the name of a new
Enlightenment, has had an enormous resonance both in Europe and in
the US. Introduction to New Realism is the first volume dedicated
to exposing this continental movement to an anglophone audience.
Featuring a foreword by the eminent contemporary philosopher and
leading exponent of Speculative Realism, Iain Hamilton Grant, the
book begins by tracing the genesis of New Realism, and outlining
its central theoretical tenets, before opening onto three distinct
sections. The first, 'Negativity', is a critique of the postmodern
idea that the world is constructed by our conceptual schemas, all
the more so as we have entered the age of digitality and
virtuality. The second thesis, 'positivity', proposes the
fundamental ontological assertion of New Realism, namely that not
only are there parts of reality that are independent of thought,
but these parts are also able to act causally over thought and the
human world. The third thesis, 'normativity,' applies New Realism
to the sphere of the social world. Finally, an afterword written by
two young scholars explains in more detail the relationship between
New Realism and other forms of contemporary realism.
Method and Metaphysics presents twenty-six essays in ancient
philosophy by Jonathan Barnes, one of the most admired and
influential scholars of his generation. The essays span four
decades of his career, and are drawn from a wide variety of
sources: many of them will be relatively unknown even to
specialists in ancient philosophy. Several essays are now
translated from the original French and made available in English
for the first time; others have been substantially revised for
republication here.
The volume opens with eight essays about the interpretation of
ancient philosophical texts, and about the relationship between
philosophy and its history. The next five essays examine the
methods of ancient philosophers. The third section comprises
thirteen essays about metaphysical topics, from the Presocratics to
the late Platonists. This collection will be a rich feast for
students and scholars of ancient philosophy.
Uncovering the theoretical and creative interconnections between
posthumanism and philosophies of immanence, this volume explores
the influence of the philosophy of immanence on posthuman theory;
the varied reworkings of immanence for the nonhuman turn; and the
new pathways for critical thinking created by the combination of
these monumental discourses. With the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari serving as a vibrant node of immanence, this
volume maps a multiplicity of pathways from Deleuze, Guattari and
their theoretical allies - including Spinoza and Nietzsche - to
posthuman thought. As positions that insist, respectively, on the
equal yet distinct powers of mind and body (immanence) and the
urgent need to dismantle human privilege and exceptionality
(posthumanism), each chapter reveals concepts for rethinking
established notions of being, thought, experience, and life. The
authors here take examples from a range of different media,
including literature and contemporary cinema, featuring films such
as Enthiran/The Robot (India, 2010) and CHAPPiE (USA/Mexico, 2015),
and new developments in technology and theory. In doing so, they
investigate Deleuzian and Guattarian posthumanism from a variety of
political and ethical frameworks and perspectives, from
afro-pessimism to feminist thought, disability studies,
biopolitics, and social justice. Countering the dualisms of
Cartesian philosophy and flattening the hierarchies imposed by
Humanism, From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism launches vital
interrogations of established knowledge and sparks the critical
reflection necessary for life in the posthuman era.
Does a philosopher have an 'identity'? What kind of 'identity' is
mobilized when the work of a philosopher becomes a major reference
for certain schools of thought, as in the case of Gilles Deleuze
and postcolonial theory? Have the promoters of a generalized
Deleuzeanism taken care their usage of his specialized work does
him justice? Few exponents of postcolonial and subaltern theories
now dispute the influence that Deleuze's work exerted on the
intellectuals and theorists who developed those theories. However,
this book contends that postcolonial and subaltern theorists have
engaged with Deleuzean thought in ways that have perhaps produced a
long series of misunderstandings - for which Deleuze himself is not
responsible. By engaging with recent innovations in North African
culture and by examining the dissemination of Deleuze's identities
across a broad range of postcolonial theory, Reda Bensmaia shows
that the 'encounter' between Deleuze and the postcolonial movement
can only be understood through the idea of a 'transcendental'
field, in which Deleuze and his postcolonial followers find
themselves captured.
The problem of the limits of science is twofold. First, there is
the problem of demarcation, i.e., the boundaries or "barriers"
between what is science and what is not science. Second, there is
the problem of the ceiling of scientific activity, which leads to
the "confines" of this human enterprise. These two faces of the
problem of the limits - the "barriers" and the "confines" of
science - require a new analysis, which is the task of this book.
The authors take into account the Kantian roots but they are
focused on the current stage of the philosophical and
methodological analyses of science. This vision looks to supersede
the Kantian approach in order to reach a richer conception of
science.
Few concepts have been considered as essential to the theory of
knowledge and rational belief as that of evidence. The simplest
theory which accounts for this is evidentialism, the view that
epistemic justification for belief--the kind of justification
typically taken to be required for knowledge--is determined solely
by considerations pertaining to one's evidence. In this
ground-breaking book, leading epistemologists from across the
spectrum challenge and refine evidentialism, sometimes suggesting
that it needs to be expanded in quite surprising directions.
Following this, the twin pillars of contemporary
evidentialism--Earl Conee and Richard Feldman--respond to each
essay. This engaging debate covers a vast number of issues, and
will illuminate and inform.
Can we ever act freely if everything we do is determined by our
genes, our upbringing and our environment? On the other hand, if
everything we do isn't determined, is it just a matter of luck what
we do? What are the requirements on acting freely: are they easily
satisfied by ordinary people so long as they aren't coerced or
manipulated or suffering from compulsion, or does acting freely
involve requirements that are difficult or impossible to meet? This
introduction to the contemporary free will debate explores these
questions in a lively and accessible way, with the emphasis on
giving readers the intellectual tools to make their own minds up on
this important and controversial topic.
The Evident Connexion presents a new reading of Hume's 'bundle
theory' of the self or mind, and his later rejection of it. Galen
Strawson argues that the bundle theory does not claim that there
are no subjects of experience, as many have supposed, or that the
mind is just a series of experiences. Hume holds only that the
'essence of the mind is] unknown'. His claim is simply that we have
no empirically respectable reason to believe in the existence of a
persisting subject, or a mind that is more than a series of
experiences (each with its own subject).
Why does Hume later reject the bundle theory? Many think he became
dissatisfied with his account of how we come to believe in a
persisting self, but Strawson suggests that the problem is more
serious. The keystone of Hume's philosophy is that our experiences
are governed by a 'uniting principle' or 'bond of union'. But a
philosophy that takes a bundle of ontologically distinct
experiences to be the only legitimate conception of the mind cannot
make explanatory use of those notions in the way Hume does. As Hume
says in the Appendix to the Treatise of Human Nature having
'loosen'd all our particular perceptions' in the bundle theory, he
is unable to 'explain the principle of connexion, which binds them
together'. This lucid book is the first to be wholly dedicated to
Hume's theory of personal identity, and presents a bold new
interpretation which bears directly on current debates among
scholars of Hume's philosophy.
Vivid dreams, astral travel, and clairvoyant visions are all
routine occurrences for Elaine Kuzmeskus. Her fascination with
dreams began in childhood and eventually led to her career as a
medium. Dreams have also been an inspiration in her writing career.
In this wide-ranging philosophical work, Koons takes on two powerful dogmas: anti-realism and materialism. In doing so, Koons develops an efficient metaphysical system that accounts for such phenomena as information, mental representation, our knowledge of logic, mathematics and science, the structure of spacetime, the identity of physical objects, and the objectivity of values and moral norms.
This edited volume brings together contributions from prominent
scholars to discuss new approaches to Plato's philosophy,
especially in the burgeoning fields of Platonic ontology and
psychology. Topics such as the relationship between mind, soul and
emotions, as well as the connection between ontology and ethics are
discussed through the analyses of dialogues from Plato's middle and
late periods, such as the Republic, Symposium, Theaetetus, Timaeus
and Laws. These works are being increasingly studied both as
precursors for Aristotelian philosophy and in their own right, and
the analyses included in this volume reveal some new
interpretations of topics such as Plato's attitude towards artistic
imagination and the possibility of speaking of a teleology in
Plato. Focusing on hot topics in the area, Psychology and Ontology
in Plato provides a good sense of what is happening in Platonic
scholarship worldwide and will be of interest to academic
researchers and teachers interested in ancient philosophy, ontology
and philosophical psychology.
Lloyd Gerson offers an original new study of Plato's account of persons, a topic of continuing interest to philosophers. His book locates Plato's psychology within his two-world metaphysics, showing that embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal, and that they reflect many of the conflicting states of the sensible world. For Plato, Gerson argues, philosophy is the means to recognizing one's true identity.
Metaphysics has often held that laws of nature, if legitimate, must
be time-independent. Yet mounting evidence from the foundations of
science suggests that this constraint may be obsolete. This book
provides arguments against this atemporality conjecture, which it
locates both in metaphysics and in the philosophy of science,
drawing on developments in a range of fields, from the foundations
of physics to the philosophy of finance. It then seeks to excavate
an alternative philosophical lineage which reconciles
time-dependent laws with determinism, converging in the thought of
Immanuel Kant.
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