This collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars's thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars's place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book's final section extracts some of the most significant lessons Sellars's work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience.

This book begins with a survey of various readings of Locke as a materialist, as a substance dualist, and as a property dualist, and demonstrates that these inconsistent interpretations result from a general failure of modern commentators to notice the significance of Locke's 'mind-body nominalism'. By illuminating this largely overlooked aspect of Locke's philosophy, this book reveals a common mistake of previous interpretations: that of treating what Locke conceives to be 'nominal' as real. The nominal symmetry that Locke posits between mind and body is distinct from any form of metaphysical dualism, whether substance dualism or property dualism. It is a brand of naturalism, but does not insist that the material is ontologically more basic than the mental or that the former determines the latter. On this view, the material and the mental both relate solely to a certain set of functional roles, rather than to an intrinsic property that plays these roles. The term 'matter' is thus rendered vague, and materialism is conceived as a precariously grounded ontological doctrine. Elaborating on this interpretation of Locke's Essay, this book examines the insightful readings of Locke developed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers such as Richard Burthogge, William Carroll, and Joseph Priestley. This book also seeks to clarify what Locke's position would look like in a modern setting by noting some significant parallels with the ideas of leading contemporary philosophers such as Donald Davidson, David Lewis, and Colin McGinn.

Is the appropriate form of human action explanation causal or rather teleological? While this is a central question in analytic philosophy of action, it also has implications for questions about the differences between methods of explanation in the sciences on the one hand and in the humanities and the social sciences on the other. Additionally, this question bears on the problem of the appropriate form of explanations of past human actions, and therefore it is prominently discussed by analytic philosophers of historiography. This volume brings together causalists and anti-causalists to address enduring philosophical questions at the heart of this debate, as well as their implications for the practice of historiography. Part I considers the quarrel between causalism and anti-causalism in recent developments in the philosophy of action. Part II presents papers by causalists and anti-causalists that are more narrowly focused on the philosophy of historiography.

This volume addresses key questions related to how content in thought is derived from perceptual experience. It includes chapters that focus on single issues on perception and cognition, as well as others that relate these issues to an important social construct that involves both perceptual experience and cognitive activities: aesthetics. While the volume includes many diverse views, several prominent themes unite the individual essays: a challenge to the notion of the discreet, and non-temporal, unit of perception, a challenge to the traditional divide between perception and cognition, and a challenge to the traditional divide between unconscious and conscious intentionality. Additionally, the chapters discuss the content of perceptual experience, the value of traditional notions of content, disjunctivism, adverbialism, and phenomenal experience. The final section of essays dealing with perception and cognition in aesthetics features work in experimental aesthetics and unique perspectives from artists and gallerists working outside of philosophy. Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics is a timely volume that offers a range of unique perspectives on debates in philosophy of mind surrounding perception and cognition. It will also appeal to scholars working in aesthetics and art theory who are interested in the ways these debates influence our understanding of art.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market - nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion's 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

The primary aim of this study is to dissolve the mind-body problem. It shows how the 'problem' separates into two distinct sets of issues, concerning ontology on the one hand, and explanation on the other, and argues that explanation - whether or not human behaviour can be explained in physical terms - is the more crucial. The author contends that a functionalist methodology in psychology and neurophysiology will prove adequate to explain human behaviour. Defence of this thesis requires: an examination of the mental/physical dichotomy, and its rejection in favour of a distinction between psychological and physical terms; a description and discussion of functionalism in psychology and neurophysiology, showing how the notorious problem of the necessary intensionality of psychological terms may be circumvented; an examination of the role of computer simulation in psycho-physical research; and an explanation of how the phenomena of sentience fit the functional framework. The book concludes that the thesis presented is in all essentials that of Aristotle; Aristotle had no 'mind-body problem', and were it not for a subsequent over-obsession with Cartesian scepticism, we need not have had one either.

This book provides an account of discursive or reason-governed cognition, by synthesizing research in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and evolutionary anthropology. Using the grasp of a natural language as a model for the autonomous or self-governed rationality of discursive cognition, the author uses a semantics for individual intentions, shared intentions, and normative attitudes as a framework for understanding what it is to be a rational animal. This semantics interprets claims about shared intentions and claims about what people ought and may do as the expression of plans of action that involve taking the points of view of other people within a community. This has important consequences for our understanding of both the natural basis and the social relevance of intentional and normative mental states. In order to distinguish the strong and weak modal force, which characterizes normativity but not shared intentionality, the author argues that a notion of single-minded practical cognition is necessary. This account of single-mindedness is then used to shed light on the autonomy or self-government characteristic of discursive cognition, as manifest in a linguistic community whose members are able to adopt the standpoints of others. Drawing together research in philosophy and the related sciences, the formal account of the semantic content of the claims we use to give expression to shared intentional and normative mental states integrates well with research in cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, and social psychology concerning the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of shared intentionality and norm psychology in human beings and other primates. The Single-Minded Animal will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on shared intentionality, normativity, rationality, cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and evolutionary anthropology.

The concepts of mind and soul have occupied the thoughts of philosophers throughout the ages and have given rise to numerous conflicting theories. This book provides an incisive and stimulating introduction to central tropics in the philosophy of mind. The author writes about the differences and connections between the ideas of 'mind' and 'soul' and about the metaphysical issues of Dualism, Solipsism, Behaviourism and Materialism. In the course of her account she discusses the arguments of several philosophers including Plato, Descartes, Wittgenstein, Ryle and Hume. Review of the original edition, 1974: "It is clear, incisive and unidiosyncratic. Issues and theories are discussed simply yet without serious distortion or vapidity, and the book is full of argument.' - Stewart Candish, Mind

The purpose of this book is to use neuroscience discoveries concerning religious experiences, the Self and personhood to deepen, enhance and interrogate the theological and philosophical set of ideas known as Personalism. McNamara proposes a new eschatological form of personalism that is consistent with current neuroscience models of relevant brain functions concerning the self and personhood and that can meet the catastrophic challenges of the 21st century. Eschatological Personalism, rooted in the philosophical tradition of "Boston Personalism", takes as its starting point the personalist claim that the significance of a self and personality is not fully revealed until it has reached its endpoint, but theologically that end point can only occur within the eschatological realm. That realm is explored in the book along with implications for personalist theory and ethics. Topics covered include the agent intellect, dreams and the imagination, future-orientation and eschatology, phenomenology of Time, social ethics, Love, the challenge of AI, privacy and solitude and the individual ethic of autarchy. This book is an innovative combination of the neuroscientific and theological insights provided by a Personalist viewpoint. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Cognitive Science, Theology, Religious Studies and the philosophy of the mind.

This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism's focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions-from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West-evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce's pragmatic maxim and its relation to James's Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.

This book is about the interweaving between cognitive penetrability and the epistemic role of the two stages of perception, namely early and late vision, in justifying perceptual beliefs. It examines the impact of the epistemic role of perception in defining cognitive penetrability and the relation between the epistemic role of perceptual stages and the kinds (direct or indirect) of cognitive effects on perceptual processing. The book presents the argument that early vision is cognitively impenetrable because neither is it affected directly by cognition, nor does cognition affect its epistemic role. It also argues that late vision, even though it is cognitively penetrated and, thus, affected by concepts, is still a perceptual state that does not involve any discursive inferences and does not belong to the space of reasons. Finally, an account is given as to how cognitive states with symbolic content could affect perceptual states with iconic, analog content, during late vision.

A man with schizophrenia believes that God is instructing him through the public address system in a bus station. A nun falls into a decades-long depression because she believes that God refuses to answer her prayers. A neighborhood parishioner is bedeviled with anxiety because he believes that a certain religious ritual must be repeated, repeated, and repeated lest God punish him. To what extent are such manifestations of religious thinking analogous to mental disorder? Does mental dysfunction bring an individual closer to religious experience or thought? Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences explores these questions using the tools of the cognitive science of religion and the philosophy of psychopathology. Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained as the cultural activation of our natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but which are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context. The authors examine hallucinations of the voice of God and of other supernatural agents, spiritual depression often described as a "dark night of the soul," religious scrupulosity and compulsiveness, and challenges to theistic cognition that Autistic Spectrum Disorder poses. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity.

Presenting some modern views on the problem of the nature of mind and its relationship to the brain, this book, published in 1965, brings together contributors from various disciplines which are affected by this issue. Coming from different philosophical outlooks as well as subjects, these contributors also comment on each other's' chapters with a view of developing thought on the approaches to the problem. The theory of mind-brain relationship is vital to human interest and has been in debate throughout western thought over centuries, split mainly into dualist and monistic theories. These discussions had and still have wide impact philosophy, psychology, religion and cosmology, among other areas.

The body has always had the potential to unsettle us with its strange exigencies and suppurations, its demands and desires, and thus throughout the ages, it has continued to be a subject of interest and obsession. This collection of twelve peer-reviewed essays on Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault interrogates the body in all of its beauty...and with all of its blights and blemishes. Written by a diverse body of scholars-art historians, cultural theorists, English professors, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and sociologists from North America and Europe-these essays bring into conversation two intellectual giants frequently seen as antagonists, and thus rarely seen together. Topics covered include: the intersections of Foucault and Lacan and how they bring to light new thoughts on the senses, the self-destructive body, ableism and disability in Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, body image and the ego, selfie-culture, and metamorphosis in Ottessa Moshfegh's novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, among others.

1. Phil Cushman is a highly esteemed scholar in the academy, and has been a prolific author. The present project of featuring the work of his students is an innovative approach to dissemination of scholarship on hermeneutics. 2. Interest in hermeneutic approaches is on the rise, but little has been written on applying these approaches to a dissertation. This book will fill an important and niche. 3. Dissertations cover a range of challenging and topical issues, such as end of life care, motherhood, trauma and racism.

1. Phil Cushman is a highly esteemed scholar in the academy, and has been a prolific author. The present project of featuring the work of his students is an innovative approach to dissemination of scholarship on hermeneutics. 2. Interest in hermeneutic approaches is on the rise, but little has been written on applying these approaches to a dissertation. This book will fill an important and niche. 3. Dissertations cover a range of challenging and topical issues, such as end of life care, motherhood, trauma and racism.

Ten original essays examine the central themes of John Searle 's ontology of society. Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle 's work. Moreover, these essays open the door to new approaches to addressing fundamental questions about social phenomena. This book also features a new essay by Searle himself that summarizes and further develops his work.

First published in 1913, Jevons "Personality" marries the disciplines of philosophy and psychology in order to question the existence of personality and the arguments surrounding it. Intriguingly, Jevons suggests that if a person can question their own personality and existence, by extension they can also question the personality and existence of God. The book is arranged into four chapters based on a series of lectures delivered in Oxford in 1912: these discuss such areas as the relationship between science, psychology, and personality; the argument that "there are changes, but no things which change," and consequently there are changes, but no persons who change; and, the concepts of individualism and unity."

This book addresses the current challenges of sustainable development, including its social, economic and environmental components. The author argues that we need to develop a new concept of time based on inter-generational solidarity, which focuses both on the long- and the short term. The evolution of man's notions of time are analyzed from prehistory to modern times, showing how these concepts shape our worldviews, our ecological paradigms and our equilibrium with our planet. Practical approaches to dealing with the major medium- and long term sustainability challenges of the 21st century are presented and discussed. This is a thought provoking and timely book that addresses the main global socioeconomic and environmental challenges facing the current and future generations, using science-based analysis and perspectives. It presents an historical narrative of the advent of progress, economic growth and technology, and discusses the structural changes needed to co-create sustainable pathways. It provides hope for our future on Earth, mankind's common home. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations This is an amazing, almost mind-boggling book. The author takes a look at the true whole, i.e., the development of the human enterprise since its very beginning. This enterprise is evidently a possibility under the boundary conditions of cosmological dynamics and natural evolution, but evidently also a highly improbable one. It is all but a miracle that the Earth system in its present form exists and happens to support a technical civilization. Will this civilization last long, will it transform itself into something even more exceptional, or will it perish in disgrace? Santos dares to address these grandest of all questions, equipped with a unique transdisciplinary wisdom drawing on physics, cybernetics, geology, biology, economics, anthropology, history, and philosophy. And he dares to dive into the deepest abysses of thinking, where categorial monsters like time and progress lurk. Thereby, he takes us on fascinating journey, during which we perceive and grasp things we have never seen and understood before. One of the best essays I have ever read. John Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change

Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind, and also of interest to those in related discplines where idealist and immaterialist ontology impinge on history, science, and theology.

This opinionated guide to free will offers a clear and straightfoward introduction to a vexing topic, from an internationally recognized authority on free will. What did you do a moment ago? What will you do after you read this? Are you deciding as we speak, or is something else going on in your brain or elsewhere in your body that is determining your actions? Stopping to think this way can freeze us in our tracks. A lot in the world feels far beyond our control-the last thing we need is to question whether we make our own choices in the way we usually assume we do. Questions about free will are so major and consequential that we may prefer not to think about them at all, lest we feel completely lost and unsure of everything we thought we knew! Free will is certainly important, but it does not need to be daunting. Free Will: An Opinionated Guide offers a clear and straightforward introduction to this vexing topic. Drawing on decades of extensive research in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, internationally recognized authority on free will Alfred R. Mele explains and explores the most prominent theories, puzzles, and arguments about free will, all the while presenting his own distinctive take on the topic. Mele's use of attention-grabbing thought experiments brings deep philosophical issues to life. He tackles the questions already on readers' minds and some they will encounter for the first time, on topics like determinism, neuroscience, and control. Whether this is the only book on free will you will read, or just the beginning of a deeper investigation, you will never think about free will, or the decisions you believe you're making, in the same ways again.

This book suggests that to know how Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy could have developed from the work of Kant is to know how they relate to each other. The development from the latter to the former is invoked heuristically as a means of interpretation, rather than a historical process or direct influence of Kant on Wittgenstein. Ritter provides a detailed treatment of transcendentalism, idealism, and the concept of illusion in Kant's and Wittgenstein's criticism of metaphysics. Notably, it is through the conceptions of transcendentalism and idealism that Wittgenstein's philosophy can be viewed as a transformation of Kantianism. This transformation involves a deflationary conception of transcendental idealism along with the abandonment of both the idea that there can be a priori 'conditions of possibility' logically detachable from what they condition, and the appeal to an original 'constitution' of experience. The closeness of Kant and post-Tractarian Wittgenstein does not exist between their arguments or the views they upheld, but rather in their affiliation against forms of transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Ritter skilfully challenges several dominant views on the relationship of Kant and Wittgenstein, especially concerning the cogency of Wittgenstein-inspired criticism focusing on the role of language in the first Critique, and Kant's alleged commitment to a representationalist conception of empirical intuition.

In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity.

This book is an inquiry into particular matters concerning the nature, normativity, and aftermath of evil action. It combines philosophical conceptual analysis with empirical studies in psychology and discussions of historical events to provide an innovative analysis of evil action. The book considers unresolved questions belonging to metaethical, normative, and practical characteristics of evil action. It begins by asking whether Kant's historical account of evil is still relevant for contemporary thinkers. Then it addresses features of evil action that distinguish it from mundane wrongdoing, thereby placing it as a proper category of philosophical inquiry. Next, the author inquires into how evil acts affect moral relationships and challenge Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility. He then draws conceptual and empirical connections between evil acts such as genocide, torture, and slavery and collective agency, and asks why evil acts are often collective acts. Finally, the author questions both the possibility and propriety of forgiveness and vengeance in the aftermath of evil and discusses how individuals ought to cope with the pervasiveness of evil in human interaction. Evil Matters: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in philosophy working on the concept of evil, moral responsibility, collective agency, vengeance, and forgiveness.

Building on the thriving discussion on the role of attention within the phenomenological tradition, from Aron Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty to Bernhard Waldenfels, this book investigates the enigmatic role of attention as a faculty that enables change within subjective and intersubjective experience. The aim of the book is to reveal some characteristics of the processes in which subjects are unmade and remade, and to highlight how we are able to change our relation to an empirical world that nevertheless has unity and constancy in our perception.