This handbook is a thorough and state of the art overview of a central and fast-growing topic in philosophy including up-to-date topics throughout making it the ideal reference source for both students and scholars. This is the only handbook to pull together a thoroughly comprehensive overview of the topic of philosophy of agency. This handbook will help the field of study organise itself: it will be a rallying point for any student and researcher interested in the subject. All chapters are specially commissioned, written by an international team of renowned contributors and not previously published.

For Aristotle, excellence is not an act but a habit, and Hume regards habit as 'the great guide of life'. However, for Proust habit is problematic: 'if habit is a second nature, it prevents us from knowing our first.' What is habit? Do habits turn us into machines or free us to do more creative things? Should religious faith be habitual? Does habit help or hinder the practice of philosophy? Why do Luther, Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard and Bergson all criticise habit? If habit is both a blessing and a curse, how can we live well in our habits? In this thought-provoking book Clare Carlisle examines habit from a philosophical standpoint. Beginning with a lucid appraisal of habit's philosophical history she suggests that both receptivity and resistance to change are basic principles of habit-formation. Carlisle shows how the philosophy of habit not only anticipates the discoveries of recent neuroscience but illuminates their ethical significance. She asks whether habit is a reliable form of knowledge by examining the contrasting interpretations of habitual thinking offered by Spinoza and Hume. She then turns to the role of habit in the good life, tracing Aristotle's legacy through the ideas of Joseph Butler, Hegel, and Felix Ravaisson, and assessing the ambivalent attitudes to habit expressed by Nietzsche and Proust. She argues that a distinction between habit and practice helps to clarify this ambivalence, particularly in the context of habit and religion, where she examines both the theology of habit and the repetitions of religious life. She concludes by considering how philosophy itself is a practice of learning to live well with habit.

Philosophy of mind is one of the core disciplines in philosophy. The questions that it deals with are profound, vexed and intriguing. This volume of 15 new cutting-edge essays gives young researchers a chance to stir up new ideas. The topics covered include the nature of consciousness, cognition, and action.

This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans' subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals. The book offers a systematic study of the increasing importance of the metaphors, the virtual, and figures in contemporary animal studies. It explores human-animal and real-imaginary dichotomies, revealing them to be the source of oppressive cultural structures. Through an analysis of creative, playful and theatric enactments and mimicry of animal behaviors and communication, the book establishes that human imagination is based on animal imagination. This helps redefine our traditional knowledge about animals and presents new practices and ethical concerns in regard to the animals. The book strongly contends that allowing imagination to play a role in our relation to animals will lead to the development of a more empathetic approach towards them. Drawing on works in phenomenology, contemporary animal philosophy, as well as ethological evidence and biosemiotics, this book is the first to rethink the traditional philosophical concepts of imagination, images, the imaginary, and reality in the light of a zoocentric perspective. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars and students in the field of animal studies, as well as anyone interested in human and non-human imaginations.

The first textbook to integrate standard philosophy of mind approach with developments in psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience Covers all the essential subjects and topics in philosophy of mind,such as dualism, materialism, mental representation, functionalism and mental causation Also discusses many more recent topics, including infant and animal cognition; the embodied or 'extended' mind; and consciousness Includes chapter summaries, further reading, boxes, and notes to help students Clearly explains the ideas and arguments of leading philosophers of mind such as Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam and Jaegwon Kim

The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis of Consciousness and the Human Soul develops, from a number of different viewpoints, the significance of home in our lives. Roger Kennedy puts forward the central role of what he has termed a 'psychic home' as a vital psychic structure, which gathers together a number of different human functions. Kennedy questions what we mean by the powerfully evocative notion of the human soul, which has important links to the notion of home and he suggests that what makes us human is that we allow a home for the soul. As an illustration of this concept he explores how it can help to understand a vital element of William Wordsworth's development as a poet. The word soul is both abstract and yet also powerfully emotive. Kennedy shows that it can be approached from a number of different angles, from psychoanalysis, philosophy, religion, sociology, literature and neuroscience. The Psychic Home, discusses the mysteries and complexities of the soul, and aims to evoke some restoration of its place in our thinking. It illustrates how the word soul and similar key words, such as spirit and inwardness, express so much that is essential for humans, even if we cannot be too precise about their meanings. Insightful, enlightening and broad reaching, The Psychic Home brings the concept of the soul centre stage as an entity that is elemental, an essence, irreducible, and what makes us human as subjects of experience. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, neuroscientists, philosophers and those interested in spirituality and religion.

Using COVID-19 as a base, this groundbreaking book brings together several renowned scholars to explore the concept of crisis, and how this global event has shaped the discipline of psychology. It engages directly with the challenges that psychology continues to face when theorizing societal issues of gender, race, class, history, and culture, while not disregarding "lived" experiences. This edited volume offers a set of pathways to rethink psychology beyond its current scope and history to become more apt to the conditions, needs, and demands of the 21st century. The book explores topics like resilience, interpersonal relationships, mistrust in the government, and access to healthcare. Dividing the book into three distinct sections, the contributors first examine the current crisis within psychology, then go on to explore how psychology theorizes the subject and the other in a social world of perpetual political, economic, cultural, and social crises, and lastly consider the role of crises in the creation of new theorizing. This is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of theoretical and philosophical psychology, social psychology, community psychology, and developmental psychology.

* Presents Fanon's theories and insights in a manner that is easy to understand for students * Highlights the various ways that multi-disciplinary forms of psychological analysis can be applied to the critique of contemporary forms of racism * Seamlessly ties together critical and contemporary scholarship from and about Fanon that introduces his analyses of racism and racialized subjectivity in an accessible manner

What if philosophy could solve the psychological puzzle of trauma? Embodied Trauma and Healing argues just that, suggesting that one might be needed in order to understand the other. The book demonstrates how the body-mind problem that haunted Descartes was addressed by phenomenologists, whilst also proposing that the human experience is lived subjectively as embodied consciousness. Throughout this book, the author suggests that the phenomenological tools that are used to explore the body can also be an effective way to discuss the physical and mental aspects of embodied trauma. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, the book outlines a phenomenological approach to the embodied and relational subject. It offers a reading of embodied trauma that can connect it to wider conversations in psychological underpinnings of trauma through Peter Levine's somatic research and Bessel van der Kolk's embodied remembering. Connecting to the analytic tradition, the book suggests that phenomenology can unify both language-based and body-based therapeutic practice. It also presents a compelling discussion that ties the embodied experience of relation in trauma to the wider causal factors of social suffering and relational rupture, intergenerational trauma and the trauma of land, as informed by phenomenology. Embodied Trauma and Healing is essential reading for researchers within the fields of philosophy, psychology and medical humanities for it actively engages with contemporary configurations of trauma theory and recent research developments in healing and mental disorder diagnosis.

This volume answers questions that lead to a clearer picture of third-person self- knowledge, the self-interpretation it embeds, and its narrative structure. Bringing together current research on third-person self-knowledge and self-interpretation, the book focuses on third-person self-knowledge, and the role that narrative and interpretation play in acquiring it. It regards the third-personal epistemic approach to oneself as a problem worthy of investigation in its own right, and makes clear the relation between third-person self-knowledge, self-interpretation, and narrative capacities. In recent years, the idea that each person is in a privileged position to acquire knowledge about her own mental states has come under attack. A growing body of empirical research has cast doubt upon the existence of what philosophers call 'first person self-knowledge', i.e., knowledge about our mental states that is often thought to be immediate, transparent, and authoritative. This line of thought has led some philosophers to claim that what seems to be 'first-person self-knowledge' is really just 'third-person self-knowledge,' i.e., knowledge about our mental states that is inferential, opaque, and fallible. This book discusses challenges for first-person knowledge and explores the true nature of third-person knowledge.

* Offers an original approach to madness and mental health by integrating human experience in history * Furnishes practical implications for advancing holistic care in mental health * Gives a new synthesis between the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Foucault

* Offers an original approach to madness and mental health by integrating human experience in history * Furnishes practical implications for advancing holistic care in mental health * Gives a new synthesis between the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Foucault

This volume establishes the conceptual foundation for sustained investigation into tool development in neuroscience. Neuroscience relies on diverse and sophisticated experimental tools, and its ultimate explanatory target-our brains and hence the organ driving our behaviors-catapults the investigation of these research tools into a philosophical spotlight. The chapters in this volume integrate the currently scattered work on tool development in neuroscience into the broader philosophy of science community. They also present an accessible compendium for neuroscientists interested in the broader theoretical dimensions of their experimental practices. The chapters are divided into five thematic sections. Section 1 discusses the development of revolutionary research tools across neuroscience's history and argues to various conclusions concerning the relationship between new research tools and theory progress in neuroscience. Section 2 shows how a focus on research tools and their development in neuroscience transforms some traditional epistemological issues and questions about knowledge production in philosophy of science. Section 3 speaks to the most general questions about the way we characterize the nature of the portion of the world that this science addresses. Section 4 discusses hybrid research tools that integrate laboratory and computational methods in exciting new ways. Finally, Section 5 extends research on tool development to the related science of genetics. The Tools of Neuroscience Experiment will be of interest to philosophers and philosophically minded scientists working at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience.

Holding Wrongdoers Responsible contests a number of widely accepted claims about blame and forgiveness that are insufficiently examined in the philosophical literature, and their relationship to each other. These claims are: i Anger is the most fitting kind of blame for those who are guilty of wrongdoing. ii Culpable wrongdoers should be blamed for what they have done. iii Forgiving consists of renouncing blame and blame feelings, especially angry ones. iv Forgiving is a kind and compassionate act for which a wrongdoer should be grateful. Against (i), the book argues that there are a number of reasons why we should be skeptical about the singular importance given to anger in this connection; against (ii), that blame is just one possible response to wrongdoing and, like other responses, has to be evaluated in relation to its purposes and the available alternatives; against (iii), that the continuation of blame after forgiveness is neither conceptually nor morally ruled out; and against (iv), that the image of forgiveness as benevolent and gift-like belies its dark side. By contesting these claims, the book reveals some of the moral and psychological complexities of these phenomena.

There is an important gap in the philosophical literature concerning the concept of fear and its remedies, and this book has been designed to examine different concepts of fear that inform its therapy. Structured as a historical-philosophical investigation of the concept of fear, this book is not a purely historical analysis of fear but also provides a broad brushwork rendition of the main concepts of fear as presented by selected philosophers and thinkers, and how they have approached its therapy.

Clearly organised around a single question--is love possible?--Joanne Brown's book provides conceptualizations of love and of its possibility from sociological, philosophical and psychoanalytic viewpoints. Material from biographical, narrative interviews are presented in order to look at how people from two age groups conceptualise love and view its realisation or possibility in their own lives. The book argues for the importance of a psychosocial understanding of love and provides a critical discussion of the philosophy and methods of psychosocial studies.

The Prison House of Alienation is an exploration of the humanist theme of alienation that Marx theorized in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. It relates this theme of alienation with the themes of haunting in the Manifesto of the Communist Party and accumulation of capital that he outlined in his magnum opus Capital. The volume claims that humanity plagued by ghosts is dwelling in a prison house from which there seems no escape. Yet humanity seeks to escape from this prison house. The essays are a consequent journey in dramaturgy where science and art truly meet to create emancipatory politics that goes well beyond the entire discourse of twentieth-century socialism. The volume begins with Hamlet's lament in Shakespeare's tragedy, who, struck by alienation, is haunted by the ghost of his dead father. It then discusses how instead of creating a radical theory for creating a socialist alternative, 'haunting' gave way to interpretation as an estranged hermeneutical act that displaces revolutionary theory and praxis. This displacement of revolutionary praxis in turn gave way to violence. This volume therefore also analyzes violence from Clausewitz to Mao, revealing that a rigorous line must be drawn between Stalinism and Maoism on one side, and authentic Marxism on the other side. It concludes by questioning the very idea of ideology, suggesting that ideology is not merely a false consciousness, but a terrible psychotic act that would devour the entire emancipatory project of Marxism itself. Placing the human condition at the centre for alternative twenty-first-century politics, The Prison House of Alienation reveals that there can be no science without art and no politics without humanity. It will be of great interest to scholars of philosophy and politics. The essays were originally published in various issues of Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

Featuring original essays from leading scholars in philosophy and psychology, this volume investigates and rethinks the role of practical wisdom in light of the most recent developments in virtue theory and moral, social and developmental psychology. The concept of phronesis has long held a prominent place in the development of Aristotelian virtue ethics and moral education. However, the nature and development of phronesis is still in need of investigation, especially because of the new insights that in recent years have come from both philosophy and science. The essays in this volume contribute to the debate about practical wisdom by elucidating its role in empirical psychology and advancing important new research questions. They address various topics related to practical wisdom and its development, including honesty, ecocentric phronesis, social cognitive theory, practical wisdom in limited-information contexts, Whole Trait Theory, skill models, the reciprocity of virtue, and challenges from situationism. Practical Wisdom will interest researchers and advanced students working in virtue ethics, moral psychology, and moral education.

This collection of essays brings together research on sense modalities in general and spatial perception in particular in a systematic and interdisciplinary way. It updates a long-standing philosophical fascination with this topic by incorporating theoretical and empirical research from cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. The book is divided thematically to cover a wide range of established and emerging issues. Part I covers notions of objectivity and subjectivity in spatial perception and thinking. Part II focuses on the canonical distal senses, such as vision and audition. Part III concerns the chemical senses, including olfaction and gustation. Part IV discusses bodily awareness, peripersonal space, and touch. Finally, the volume concludes with Part V on multimodality. Spatial Senses is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on the philosophy of perception that takes into account important advances in the sciences.

The claim according to which there is a categorial gap between meaning and saying - between what sentences mean and what we say by using them on particular occasions - has come to be widely regarded as being exclusively a claim in the philosophy of language. The present essay collection takes a different approach to these issues. It seeks to explore the ways in which that claim - as defended first by ordinary language philosophy and, more recently, by various contextualist projects - is grounded in considerations that transcend the philosophy of language. More specifically, the volume seeks to explore how that claim is inextricably linked to considerations about the nature of truth and representation. It is thus part of the objective of this volume to rethink the current way of framing the debates on these issues. By framing the debate in terms of an opposition between "ideal language theorists" and their semanticist heirs on the one hand and "communication theorists" and their contextualist heirs on the other, one brackets important controversies and risks obscuring the undoubtedly very real oppositions that exist between different currents of thought.

This book shines a light on the meaning of happiness and how public perceptions of it have changed over time. A question that has engaged philosophers from the days of Aristotle, happiness is a subject of growing academic interest, and its recent integration into government policy is provoking increased debate into its definition and nature. Sandie McHugh and her associates build on the work of social anthropologist Tom Harrison's 'Worktown' Mass Observation study from 1938, repeating the original study today. Together these accounts show how perceptions of happiness have changed over the years for the people of Bolton, UK, and reveal major difference between its definition then and now. This unique study is a useful tool in the understanding and study of happiness, offering invaluable insights for scholars and practitioners working in the fields of social psychology, positive psychology, health psychology and wellbeing. With chapters by Martin Guha and Jerome Carson; John Haworth; Robert Snape; and Matthew Watson and Linda Withey.

The essays in this collection explore the idea that discursive norms-the norms governing our thought and talk-are profoundly social. Not only do these norms govern and structure our social interactions, but they are sustained by a variety of social and institutional structures. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. The first offers historical perspectives on discursive norms, including a chapter by Robert Brandom on the way Hegel transformed Kant's normativist approach to representation by adding both a social and a historicist dimension to it. Section II features four chapters that examine the sociality of normativity from within a broadly naturalistic framework. The third and final section focuses on the social dimension of linguistic phenomena such as online speech acts, oppressive speech, and assertions. The Social Institution of Discursive Norms will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy.

The question of innateness, or nativism, is one of the most heated problems in philosophy, reaching as far back as Plato but generating fierce debates in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. Which aspects of the human mind are innate and which are the products of experience? Do we have any innate concepts or knowledge or are all the contents of the mind acquired by means of learning? Innateness and Cognition is a much-needed overview of this important problem. Through addressing the following topics M.J. Cain argues for a nativist perspective which, nevertheless, finds an important role for culture and social learning in cognitive development: the nature of innateness the coherence and explanatory value of the concept of innateness the acquisition of concepts and the role of learning in conceptual development domain specific knowledge, including the 'massive modularity' thesis and the theory of core knowledge domains cognitive development relating the theory of mind and mathematics the relationship between biological and cultural evolution and their respective roles in cognitive development language and innateness, particularly Chomsky's linguistic nativism and challenges to this morality, moral judgment, and innateness. Innateness and Cognition is an excellent resource for those researching and studying philosophy of psychology and philosophy of mind, as well as those interested in foundational issues in cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology.

Why ought we concern ourselves with understanding a concept of evil? It is an elusive and politically charged concept which critics argue has no explanatory power and is a relic of a superstitious and primitive religious past. Yet its widespread use persists today: we find it invoked by politicians, judges, journalists, and many others to express the view that certain actions, persons, institutions, or ideologies are not just morally problematic but require a special signifier to mark them out from the ordinary and commonplace. Therefore, the question of what a concept of evil could mean and how it fits into our moral vocabulary remains an important and pressing concern. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil provides an outstanding overview and exploration of these issues and more, bringing together an international team of scholars working on the concept of evil. Its 27 chapters cover the crucial discussions and arguments, both historical and contemporary, that are needed to properly understand the historical development and complexity of the concept of evil. The Handbook is divided into three parts: Historical explorations of evil Recent secular explorations of evil Evil and other issues. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evil is essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of ethics and philosophy of psychology. It also provides important insights and background for anyone exploring the concept of evil in related subjects such as literature, politics, and religion.

This essential book critically examines the various ways in which Eastern spiritual traditions have been typically stripped of their spiritual roots, content and context, to be more readily assimilated into secular Western frames of Psychology. Beginning with the colonial histories of Empire, the author draws from the 1960s Counterculture and the subsequent romanticising and idealising of the East. Cohen explores how Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist traditions have been gradually transformed into forms of Psychology, Psychotherapy and Self-Help, undergoing processes of 'modernisation' and secularisation until their respective cosmologies had been successfully reinterpreted and reimagined. An important component of this psychologisation is the accompanying commodification of Eastern spiritual practices, including the mass-marketing of mindfulness and meditation as part of the burgeoning well-being industry. Also presenting emerging voices of resistance from within Eastern spiritual traditions, the book ends with a chapter on Transpersonal Psychology, showing a path for how to gradually move away from colonisation and towards collaboration. Engaging with the 'mindfulness movement' and other practices assimilated by Western culture, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, philosophy and religious studies, as well as mindfulness practitioners.