|
|
Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind
The Realm of Reason develops a new, general theory of what it is
for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. The theory
locates entitlement in the nexus of relations between truth,
content, and understanding. Peacocke formulates three principles of
rationalism that articulate this conception. The principles imply
that all entitlement has a component that is justificationally
independent of experience. The resulting position is thus a form of
rationalism, generalized to all kinds of content.
To show how these principles are realized in specific domains,
Peacocke applies the theory in detail to several classical problems
of philosophy, including the nature of perceptual entitlement,
induction, and the status of moral thought. These discussions
involve an elaboration of the structure of entitlement in ways that
have applications in many other areas of philosophy. He also
relates the theory to classical and recent rationalist thought, and
to current issues in the theory of meaning, reference and
explanation. In the course of these discussions, he proposes a
general theory of the a priori.
The focus of the work lies in the intersection of epistemology,
metaphysics, and the theory of meaning, and will be of interest
both to students and researchers in these areas, and to anyone
concerned with the idea of rationality.
Our visual system can process information at both conscious and
unconscious levels. Understanding the factors that control whether
a stimulus reaches our awareness, and the fate of those stimuli
that remain at an unconscious level, are the major challenges of
brain science in the new millennium. Since its publication in 1984,
Visual Masking has established itself as a classic text in the
field of cognitive psychology. In the years since, there have been
considerable advances in the cognitive neurosciences, and a growth
of interest in the topic of consciousness, and the time is ripe for
a new edition of this text. Where most current approaches to the
study of visual consciousness adopt a 'steady-state' view, the
approach presented in this book explores its dynamic properties.
This new edition uses the technique of visual masking to explore
temporal aspects of conscious and unconscious processes down to a
resolution in the millisecond range. The 'time slices' through
conscious and unconscious vision revealed by the visual masking
technique can shed light on both normal and abnormal operations in
the brain. The main focus of this book is on the microgenesis of
visual form and pattern perception - microgenesis referring to the
processes occurring in the visual system from the time of stimulus
presentation on the retinae to the time, a few hundred milliseconds
later, of its registration at conscious or unconscious perceptual
and behavioural levels. The book takes a highly integrative
approach by presenting microgenesis within a broad context
encompassing visuo-temporal phenomena, attention, and
consciousness.
Dana Kay Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom
and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of
challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before
ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents.
Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of
the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible
for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize
and act for good reasons. The view is compatibilist - that is, on
the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism -
and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it
requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when
actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are blameworthy. In
defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held
assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness
and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as
resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a
metaphysical picture of causation - agent-causation - often assumed
to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives
positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can
Principle, and establishes a new interpretation of freedom and
moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of
our inescapable commitments as rational agents.
Marx, the Body, and Human Nature shows that the body and the
broader material world played a far more significant role in Marx's
theory than previously recognised. It provides a fresh 'take' on
Marx's theory, revealing a much more open, dynamic and unstable
conception of the body, the self, and human nature.
Sudduth provides a critical exploration of classical empirical
arguments for survival arguments that purport to show that data
collected from ostensibly paranormal phenomena constitute good
evidence for the survival of the self after death. Utilizing the
conceptual tools of formal epistemology, he argues that classical
arguments are unsuccessful.
Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be
understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a
respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for
making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that
might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has
five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that
simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the
present commentary, here translated into English for the first
time, Alexander develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He
preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work
is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable
picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time,
including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for
dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the
syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest
not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and
debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the
Middle Ages and later.
Providing the most comprehensive examination of the two-way traffic
between literature and psychoanalysis to date, this handbook looks
at how each defines the other as well as addressing the key
thinkers in psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Klein, Lacan, and the
schools of thought each of these has generated). It examines the
debts that these psychoanalytic traditions have to literature, and
offers plentiful case-studies of literature's influence from
psychoanalysis. Engaging with critical issues such as madness,
memory, and colonialism, with reference to texts from authors as
diverse as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Virginia Woolf, this collection
is admirably broad in its scope and wide-ranging in its
geographical coverage. It thinks about the impact of psychoanalysis
in a wide variety of literatures as well as in film, and critical
and cultural theory.
This volume comprises nine lively and insightful essays by leading
scholars on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, focusing mainly
on his early work. The essays are written from a range of
perspectives and do not belong to any one exegetical school; they
approach Wittgenstein's work directly, seeking to understand it in
its own terms and by reference to the context in which it was
produced. The contributors cover a wide range of aspects of
Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but three central themes emerge:
the relationship between Wittgenstein's account of representation
and Russell's theories of judgment; the role of objects in the
tractarian system; and Wittgenstein's philosophical method.
Collectively, the essays demonstrate how progress in the
understanding of Wittgenstein's work is not to be made by focusing
on overarching, ideological issues, but by paying close attention
to his engagement with specific philosophical problems.
When Harambe, a now-famous gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo, was shot
for endangering a small child, animal rights activists protested,
calling into question moral reasoning that privileges the
possibility of injury to a human over definite violence to an
animal. Many others, though less vehement in their objection,
voiced the same questions: was the gorilla any worse than the
negligent parents? Doesn't Harambe have rights just like you and
me? How do we decide what animals deserve and how we ought to treat
them? To what extent are our attitudes towards animals embedded in
our subconscious and immune to reason? The foundations of our moral
attitudes to animals are more complex than many may appreciate.
Subhuman takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions,
drawing from research in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, law,
history, sociology, economics, and anthropology, to unearth
surprising revelations about human relationships with animals. T.J.
Kasperbauer argues provocatively that behind our positive and
negative attitudes to animals is an enduring concern that animals
pose a threat to our humanness. Namely, our need to ensure animals'
inferiority to human beings affects both our kindness and cruelty
to animals. Kasperbauer develops this idea by looking at research
on the phenomenon of dehumanization, revealing that our attitudes
to other humans are predicted and reflected in our treatment of
other species. In making his case, Kasperbauer provides a critical
survey of leading theories that range over the role of animals in
human evolutionary history, the psychology of meat-eating and
keeping pets, feelings of fear and disgust toward animals, the use
of animal minds to determine their moral status, and the "expanding
moral circle" hypothesis. By exploring the psychological obstacles
humans face in meeting ethical demands, Kasperbauer sets forth new
and fascinating ways of thinking about our moral obligations to
animals, and how we might correct them.
The scientific study of the human mind and brain has come of age
with the advent of technologically advanced methods for imaging
brain structure and activity in health and disease, plus
computational theories of cognition. These advances are leading to
sophisticated new accounts for how mental processes are implemented
in the human brain, but they also raise new challenges.
Mental Processes in the Human Brain provides an integrative
overview of the rapid advances and future challenges in
understanding the neurobiological basis of mental processes that
are characteristically (and in some cases, perhaps uniquely) human,
including: language; thought; understanding of others; attention;
planning and decision-making; emotion; memory; prediction; and
awareness itself. It also presents the latest insights into how
these various processes can break down after brain injury. With
chapters from some of leading figures in the brain sciences, this
book will be essential for all those in the cognitive and brain
sciences.
Commonsense Consequentialism is a book about morality, rationality,
and the interconnections between the two. In it, Douglas W.
Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports
with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other
consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological
conception of practical reasons.
Broadly construed, consequentialism is the view that an act's
deontic status is determined by how its outcome ranks relative to
those of the available alternatives on some evaluative ranking.
Portmore argues that outcomes should be ranked, not according to
their impersonal value, but according to how much reason the
relevant agent has to desire that each outcome obtains and that,
when outcomes are ranked in this way, we arrive at a version of
consequentialism that can better account for our commonsense moral
intuitions than even many forms of deontology can. What's more,
Portmore argues that we should accept this version of
consequentialism, because we should accept both that an agent can
be morally required to do only what she has most reason to do and
that what she has most reason to do is to perform the act that
would produce the outcome that she has most reason to want to
obtain.
Although the primary aim of the book is to defend a particular
moral theory (viz., commonsense consequentialism), Portmore defends
this theory as part of a coherent whole concerning our commonsense
views about the nature and substance of both morality and
rationality. Thus, it will be of interest not only to those working
on consequentialism and other areas of normative ethics, but also
to those working in metaethics. Beyond offering an account of
morality, Portmore offers accounts of practical reasons, practical
rationality, and the objective/subjective obligation distinction.
"An Essay toward the Other" considers the three fundamental
verities of the human experience-the True, the Good, and the
Beautiful-and presents three arguments, one from the domain of each
verity, in support of theism and in opposition to materialism. "The
True" is the way things are. "The Good" is that which contributes
to the happiness of the individual and the group. "The Beautiful"
is an indefinable quality that evokes a pleasing and enjoyable
inner experience. The verities derive from a Divine source and
point toward that Divine source, thus the opening sentence, "From
the One, three; from the three, One." While the verities are part
of the human experience, their source and their vision transcend
our realm. They are of God. The author accepts the classical view
that all human intention, however flawed and misguided, looks to a
final good. That final good we call happiness, and insofar as our
aims and ways are shaped and guided by the True, the Good, and the
Beautiful, we are drawn toward happiness.
Properties and objects are everywhere. We cannot take a step
without walking into them; we cannot construct a theory in science
without referring to them. Given their ubiquitous character, one
might think that there would be a standard metaphysical account of
properties and objects, but they remain a philosophical mystery.
Douglas Ehring presents a defense of tropes--properties and
relations understood as particulars--and of trope bundle theory as
the best accounts of properties and objects, and advocates a
specific brand of trope nominalism, Natural Class Trope Nominalism.
This position rejects the existence of universals, and holds that
the nature of each individual trope is determined by its membership
in various natural classes of tropes (in contrast with the view
that a trope's nature is logically prior to those class
memberships).
The first part of the book provides a general introduction and
defense of tropes and trope bundle theory. Ehring demonstrates that
there are tropes and indicates some of the things that tropes can
do for us metaphysically, including helping to solve the problems
of mental causation, while remaining neutral between different
theories of tropes. In the second part he offers a more specific
defense of Natural Class Trope Nominalism, and provides a full
analysis of what a trope is.
This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal
collection of his work on interrelated issues in the philosophy of
mind and metaphysics. Reproducing all of the original papers, many
of which are now regarded as classics, and including four papers
published since the first edition appeared in 1984, Identity,
Cause, and Mind's reappearance will be warmly welcomed by
philosophers and students alike.
Pierre Janet (1859 - 1947) is considered to be one of the founders
of psychology, and pioneered in the disciplines of psychology,
philosophy and psychotherapy. Janet's most crucial research,
particularly in the subjects of 'dissociation' and 'subconscious' -
terms coined by him - is explored in this book, first published in
1952. As Janet did not publish much in English, these notes provide
guidance on such areas of study as hysteria and hypnosis, obsessive
thinking and the psychology of adaption. Elton Mayo's comprehensive
collection is an important guide for any student with an interest
in the history of psychology, psychopathology and social study, and
Janet's revolutionary work in the field.
Aristotle's De Anima has a claim to be the first systematic
treatment of issues in the philosophy of mind, and also to be one
of the greatest works on the subject. This volume provides an
accurate translation of Books II and III, together with some
sections of Book I; particular attention has been given to the
translation of difficult terms, to help the student of philosophy
who does not know Greek. A brief Introduction discusses Aristotle's
approach to his subject, while the Notes provide a continuous
philosophical commentary on the text. Since the original
publication of this volume, Aristotle's philosophy of mind has been
the focus of lively scholarly debate; for this revised edition,
Christopher Shields has added a substantial review of this recent
work, together with a new bibliography.
The ways in which human action and rationality are guided by norms
are well documented in philosophy and neighboring disciplines. But
how do norms shape the way we experience the world perceptually?
The present volume explores this question and investigates the
specific normativity inherent to perception.
This book aims to answer two simple questions: what is it to want
and what is it to intend? Because of the breadth of contexts in
which the relevant phenomena are implicated and the wealth of views
that have attempted to account for them, providing the answers is
not quite so simple. Doing so requires an examination not only of
the relevant philosophical theories and our everyday practices, but
also of the rich empirical material that has been provided by work
in social and developmental psychology. The investigation is
carried out in two parts, dedicated to wanting and intending
respectively. Wanting is analysed as optative attitudinising, a
basic form of subjective standard-setting at the core of compound
states such as 'longings', 'desires', 'projects' and 'whims'. The
analysis is developed in the context of a discussion of
Moore-paradoxicality and deepened through the examination of rival
theories, which include functionalist and hedonistic conceptions as
well as the guise-of-the-good view and the pure entailment
approach, two views popular in moral psychology. In the second part
of the study, a disjunctive genetic theory of intending is
developed, according to which intentions are optative attitudes on
which, in one way or another, the mark of deliberation has been
conferred. It is this which explains intention's subjection to the
requirements of practical rationality. Moreover, unlike wanting,
intending turns out to be dependent on normative features of our
life form, in particular on practices of holding responsible. The
book will be of particular interest to philosophers and
psychologists working on motivation, goals, desire, intention,
deliberation, decision and practical rationality.
Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference extends Wayne Davis's
groundbreaking work on the foundations of semantics. Davis revives
the classical doctrine that meaning consists in the expression of
ideas, and advances the expression theory by showing how it can
account for standard proper names, and the distinctive way their
meaning determines their reference. He also shows how the theory
can handle interjections, syncategorematic terms, conventional
implicatures, and other cases long seen as difficult for both
ideational and referential theories. The expression theory is
founded on the fact that thoughts are event types with a
constituent structure, and that thinking is a fundamental
propositional attitude, distinct from belief and desire. Thought
parts ('ideas' or 'concepts') are distinguished from both sensory
images and conceptions. Word meaning is defined recursively:
sentences and other complex expressions mean what they do in virtue
of what thought parts their component words express and what
thought structure the linguistic structure expresses; and
unstructured words mean what they do in living languages in virtue
of evolving conventions to use them to express ideas. The
difficulties of descriptivism show that the ideas expressed by
names are atomic or basic. The reference of a name is the extension
of the idea it expresses, which is determined not by causal
relations, but by its identity or content together with the nature
of objects in the world. Hence a name's reference is dependent on,
but not identical to, its meaning. A name is directly and rigidly
referential because the extension of the idea it expresses is not
determined by the extensions of component ideas. The expression
theory thus has the strength of Fregeanism without its
descriptivist bias, and of Millianism without its referentialist or
causalist shortcomings. The referential properties of ideas can be
set out recursively by providing a generative theory of ideas,
assigning extensions to atomic ideas, and formulating rules whereby
the semantic value of a complex idea is determined by the semantic
values of its components. Davis also shows how referential
properties can be treated using situation semantics and possible
worlds semantics. The key is to drop the assumption that the values
of intension functions are the referents of the words whose meaning
they represent, and to abandon the necessity of identity for
logical modalities. Many other pillars of contemporary
philosophical semantics, such as the twin earth arguments, are
shown to be unfounded.
|
You may like...
Insect Ecology
Christopher Fleming
Hardcover
R3,062
R2,777
Discovery Miles 27 770
|