The Interactions Between Instinct and Intellect and its Impact on Human Behavior
Length: 200 Pages
The paradoxes of human sexuality although self-evident, have been difficult to explain through the conventional understanding of the human mind. A legitimate question to ask would be, if polygamy is natural for humans, then why are there so many rules against it worldwide? And if humans by nature are monogamous, then, why is there so much infidelity in the all of the cultures of the world? All beings instinctively are either polygamous or monogamous and they behave accordingly. However, humans demonstrably are both at the same time. This too, can only be understood through understanding the differences between the make up of human mind as compared to that of all the rest of the beings. In that, except for humans, every aspect of all beings, including their sexual conduct is driven by their instincts and instincts alone. This renders their mind a single polar entity, however, the human mind alone being equipped to both instincts and intellect is bipolar.
As such, each of these two mental forces of instincts and intellect issues its own command pertaining to human sexuality. It just so happens that humans are instinctively polygamous, however, through the application of human intellect and reasoning and for practical reasons for millennia they have devised harsh rules against free sex to regulate peoples' sexual activities through marriage. These sever punishments are still enforced in many parts of the world even today. And that was mostly designed to impose monogamy, although some societies also allowed polygamy. Thus, instincts and intellect issue two opposite commands and that renders humans as the only species that is sexually confused. This inner contradiction often leads to infidelity that severely affects the committed relationships among many couples. The same phenomenon also creates a fascinating psychology of its own what is commonly known sexual fantasy. Through this people in the privacy of their mind and in their imagination practice polygamy without committing adultery that partially satisfies both realms of the mind.

This book examines the nexus between the corporeal, emotional, spiritual and intellectual aspects of human life as represented in the writing of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Authors from different fields examine not only the question of the body and soul (or body and mind) but also how this question fits into a broader framework in the medieval and early modern period. Concepts such as gender and society, morality, sexuality, theological precepts and medical knowledge are a part of this broader framework. This discussion of ideas draws from over two thousand years of Western thought: from Plato in the fifth century BC and the fourth century Byzantine dialogues on the soul, to the philosophical and medical writings of the early 1700s. There are four sections to this book: each section is based on where the authors have found a conjunction between the body and mind/soul. The work begins with a section on text and self-perception, which focuses on creative output from the period. The second conjunction is human emotions which are described in their social contexts. The third is sex, where the human body and mind are traditionally believed to meet. The fourth section, Material Souls, engages with bodies and other material aspects of existence perceived, studied or utilised as material signs of emotional and spiritual activity.

Religious belief combines thought, feeling and experience in a way that optimally leverages the natural tendency of the mind to latch on to socially and personally useful concepts. This effect delivers tangible benefits because religious concepts and practice feed the mind's natural drive to cling to strong beliefs. At the same time, beliefs are reinforced by favourable emotional responses. This text explains how these elements work together to make religious belief such a powerful placebo effect.

This volume is about the many ways we perceive. In nineteen new essays, philosophers and cognitive scientists explore the nature of the individual senses, how and what they tell us about the world, and how they interrelate. They consider how the senses extract perceptual content from receptoral information and what kinds of objects we perceive and whether multiple senses ever perceive a single event. Questions pertaining to how many senses we have, what makes one sense distinct from another, and whether and why distinguishing senses may be useful feature prominently. Contributors examine the extent to which the senses act in concert, rather than as discrete modalities, and whether this influence is epistemically pernicious, neutral, or beneficial. Many of the essays engage with the idea that it is unduly restrictive to think of perception as a collation of contents provided by individual sense modalities. Rather, contributors contend that to understand perception properly we need to build into our accounts the idea that the senses work together. In doing so, they aim to develop better paradigms for understanding the senses and thereby to move toward a better understanding of perception.

Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Sport explores the philosophical significance of sport - the phenomenological experience, the training, coaching, and the competition - from a uniquely pragmatic angle of vision. The philosophical insights of John Dewey, William James, C.S. Peirce, Jane Addams, and Josiah Royce shed new light on the meaning of the physical practices that take place on our soccer fields, national arenas, backyards, and playgrounds. Interestingly, a close examination of these contemporary practices allows us to understand a wide array of ethical, epistemological and metaphysical commitments that the American pragmatic tradition has articulated for more than a century. Pragmatism's insistence that truth be embodied in the practical consequences of everyday life, its balancing of communal and individual purposes, its emphasis on the role of chance and spontaneity in experience - resonate with the findings of modern kinesiology and sport science.

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

We all daydream and yet the purpose of waking fantasy, or episodes of conscious and private fiction-making, has never been really clarified. Instead, mainstream psychology characterises the daydream as task-distracted mind wandering, which does little to explain why people engage in creating fictions of often unrealizable proportions regularly for themselves, at times incidentally and at other times deliberately. This work overturns, re-organises and redefines established concepts of the role of waking fantasy in human life. It shows how the purpose of all fantasy is to transform mood states into specific emotional responses, a feature apparent in daydreams, sexual fantasies and even unconscious fantasy structures. Understanding how feeling states motivate fantasy explains why we daydream at all, how repetitive daydreams and sexual fantasies develop to elicit reliable emotional reactions, and even how we at times use and appropriate published or released fictional works to propagate our own fantasies. Along the way, the work explores the relation of waking fantasy to some of our buying practices, attachments to objects in early childhood, preferred genres of fiction and cultural phenomena such as the worship of celebrities.

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.

Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity draws new theoretical conclusions from a study of Spinoza's legacy in the age of Goethe and beyond, largely transmitted through the writings of Herder, that will have implications for the study of German intellectual history and, more broadly, the study of religion and literature. Michael Mack describes how a line of writers and thinkers re-configured Spinoza's ideas and how these ideas thus became effective in society at large. Mack shows that the legacy of Spinoza is important because he was the first thinker to theorize narrative as the constitutive fabric of politics, identity, society, religion and the larger sphere of culture. Indeed, Mack argues for Spinoza's writings on politics and ethics as an alternative to a Kantian conception of modernity.

"The Echoes Of My Soul" shares the legacy of a highly revered, deeply prized and treasured Family through their enchanting, engaging and enthralling life saga and tradition. Through her stories, the Author celebrates her Family's rich history and legend. She brings audience to the fall and rise of her Family as they not only witnessed, experienced and survived the world's cruelest brutality again and again; but also as her Family flourished and thrived to success in spite of a vindictive and vengeful world.

"The Echoes Of My Soul" encapsulates inherent philosophies of life which teach us to learn from our children and to reach for the lessons of our parents. The echoes within speak of embracing our lives with discernment and distinction, with command and conception, with perseverance and perception.

"The Echoes Of My Soul" penetrates deep crevasses of the soul where devotion and dignity reside. The spirit of this book addresses the voice that lives within us and reveals that we should all listen to the echoes of our soul. The call of this book reminds us each that our lives are the echoes of our families and that only our families speak the language of our souls.

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.

There is a tendency in current philosophical thought to treat sensory experiences as a peculiar species of propositional attitude. Alan Millar argues against this view. While allowing that experiences may in some sense bear propositional content, he presents a view of sensory experiences as a species of psychological state. He applies the resulting analytical framework to a discussion of justified belief, dealing, firstly, with how beliefs may derive justification from other beliefs, and secondly, with how current sensory experiences may contribute to the justification of a person's beliefs. A key theme in his general approach is that justified belief results from the competent exercise of conceptual capacities, some of which involve an ability to respond appropriately to current experience. In working out this approach the author develops a view of concepts and their mastery, explores the role of groundless beliefs drawing on suggestions of Wittgenstein, illuminates aspects of the thought of Locke, Hume, Quine, and Goldman, and finally offers a response to a sophisticated variety of scepticism.

Philosophers have usually argued that the right way to explain people's actions is in terms of their beliefs and intentions rather than in terms of objective facts. Rowland Stout takes the opposite line in his account of action. Appeal to teleology is widely regarded with suspicion, but Dr Stout argues that there are things in nature, namely actions, which can be teleologically explained: they happen because they serve some end. Moreover, this teleological explanation is externalist: it cites facts about the world, not beliefs and intentions which only represent the world. Such externalism about the explanation of action is a natural partner to externalism about knowledge and about reference, but has hardly ever been considered seriously before. One dramatic consequence of such a position is that it opens up the possibility of a behaviourist account of beliefs and intentions.

"This book unites research in philosophy and cognitive science with cultural history to re-examine memory in early modern religious practices. Offering an ecological approach to memory and culture, it argues that models derived from Extended Mind and Distributed Cognition can bridge the gap between individual and social models of memory"--

Sanford C. Goldberg argues that a proper account of the communication of knowledge through speech has anti-individualistic implications for both epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language. In Part I he offers a novel argument for anti-individualism about mind and language, the view that the contents of one's thoughts and the meanings of one's words depend for their individuation on one's social and natural environment. In Part II he discusses the epistemic dimension of knowledge communication, arguing that the epistemic characteristics of communication-based beliefs depend on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers. In acknowledging an ineliminable social dimension to mind, language, and the epistemic categories of knowledge, justification, and rationality, his book develops fundamental links between externalism in the philosophy of mind and language, on the one hand, and externalism is epistemology, on the other.

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.

In this book, the author provides an account of three central ideas in the philosophy of action: trying to act, acting or doing, and one's action causing further consequences. In all three cases, novel theories of these phenomena are offered: trying to act is not a particular mental or physical act but can be explained using conditionals; that action is not the same as causing something to happen; and in the case of a special but important subset of actions, for example the opening of a window, the action is identical to the event of the window's opening. A result of this last account is that it places actions out in the world, sometimes far removed in time and space from the actor's body. The world is full of action; actions do not just exist in the many little islands of space and time that all of our bodies inhabit. In the final chapter, Ruben describes and discusses a skeptical challenge to the idea that we can ever know whether or not someone else has acted, rather than just passive events having happened to that person.

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.

This book shows us how rather than abandoning psychology once he liberated phenomenology from the psychologism of the philosophy of arithmetic, Edmund Husserl remained concerned with the ways in which phenomenology held important implications for a radical reform of psychology throughout his intellectual career. The author fleshes out what such a radical reform actually entails, and proposes that it can only be accomplished by following the trail of the transcendental reduction described in Husserl's later works. In order to appreciate the need for the transcendental even for psychology, the book tracks Husserl's thinking on the nature of this relationship between phenomenology as a philosophy and psychology as a positive science as it evolved over time. The text covers Husserl's definition of phenomenology as "descriptive psychology" in the Logical Investigations, rejecting the hybrid form of "phenomenological psychology" described in the lectures by that name, and ends with his proposal for a "fundamental refashioning" of psychology by situating it within the transcendental framework of The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. The Author argues for a re-grounding of psychology by virtue of a "return to positivity" after having performed the reduction to transcendental intersubjectivity. What results is a phenomenological approach to a transcendentally-grounded psychology which, while having returned to the life-world, no longer remains transcendentally naive. A phenomenologically-grounded psychology thus empowers researchers, clinicians, and clients alike to engage in social actions that move the world closer to achieving social justice for all. This text appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and psychology.

This book offers new insights into the workings of the human soul and the philosophical conception of the mind in Ancient Greece. It collects essays that deal with different but interconnected aspects of that unified picture of our mental life shared by all Ancient philosophers who thought of the soul as an immaterial substance. The papers present theoretical discussions on moral and psychological issues ranging from Socrates to Aristotle, and beyond, in connection with modern psychology. Coverage includes moral learning and the fruitfulness of punishment, human motivation, emotions as psychic phenomena, and more. Some of these topics directly stemmed from the Socratic dialectical experience and its tragic outcome, whereas others found their way through a complex history of refinements, disputes, and internal critique. The contributors present the gradual unfolding of these central themes through a close inspection of the relevant Ancient texts. They deliver a wide-ranging survey of some central and mutually related topics. In the process, readers will learn new approaches to Platonic and Aristotelian psychology and action theory. This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers in Ancient philosophy. Any scholar with a general interest in the history of ideas will also find it a valuable resource.

This book addresses the contemporary disillusion with truth, manifest in sceptical relativism. Contending that all contemporary theories of truth are too narrow, it argues for a novel conception of truth, by showing how error is implicated in the actions of all living things; and by analyzing uses of 'true' in non-linguistic contexts.

At a recent workshop, Despina Gurlides was the only one out of 40 people who raised her hand when the leaders asked, "Who is happy?" When asked for the recipe for happiness, she replied, "Do not betray yourself."

Like everyone, however, Despina had fallen into the trap of self-betrayal. At one point, she thought she was happy after climbing the corporate ladder to success and marrying a successful man, but then she realized she felt empty inside. It took a lot of maneuvering for her to break out of her material trance, but she did it. Then she fell into a spiritual trance and had to break out of that as well.

Along the way, she learned the answers to some tough questions, including: How can someone feel unhappy even if she is successful? What important message does depression bring? What are the rewards of failure? What is the way Home? Follow Despina as she navigates the murky waters dominated by career, image and money until she finds the way to happiness. If you are feeling trapped and want some answers, it may be time to take some advice from someone who is Not a Guru.

This concise volume presents for the first time a coherent and detailed account of why we experience feelings of being present in the physical world and in computer-mediated environments, why we often don't, and why it matters - for design, psychotherapy, tool use and social creativity amongst other practical applications.

Using the work of Wittgenstein, John Heaton challenges the notion of theoretical expertise on the mind, arguing for a new understanding of therapy as an attempt by patients to express themselves in an effort to see and say what has not been said or seen, and accept that the world is not as fixed as they are constituting it.