![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind
'A truly awe-inspiring piece of writing' David Robson, author of The Intelligence Trap In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the question of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings in neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence have given us the necessary tools to solve its mystery. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio elucidates the myriad aspects of consciousness and presents his analysis and new insights in a way that is faithful to our own intuitive sense of the experience. In forty-eight brief chapters, Damasio helps us understand the relation between consciousness and the mind; why being conscious is not the same as either being awake or sensing; the central role of feeling; and why the brain is essential for the development of consciousness. He synthesises the recent findings of various sciences with the philosophy of consciousness, and, most significantly, presents his original research which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behaviour. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding the fundamental human capacity for informing and transforming our experience of the world around us and our perception of our place in it.
Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque and strange. This introduction to the problems posed by consciousness discusses the most important work of cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy of mind of the past thirty years and presents an up to date assessment of the issues and debates. The reader is first introduced to the way that consciousness has been thought about in the history of philosophy and psychology. The author then presents an informal and largely non-technical account of the properties of consciousness that are thought to be the most paradigmatic and problematic. Recent scientific work on consciousness, from neurophysiological studies of the brain and evolutionary studies of the development of consciousness to computational theories of the mind are then examined and the philosophical problems that these accounts raise are systematically introduced. The final chapters of the book consider more practical matters by addressing self-deception, neuroses, the unconscious and notions of the self, before concluding with an assessment of the future for psychology and the philosophy of mind.
How do we see? This question has fascinated and perplexed philosophers and scientists for millennia. In visual perception, mind and world meet, when light reflected from objects enters the eyes and stimulates the nerves leading to activity in the brain near the back of the head. This neural activity yields conscious experiences of a world in three dimensions, clothed in colors, and immediately recognized as (say) ground, sky, grass, trees, and friends. The visual brain also produces nonconscious representations that interact with other brain systems for perception and cognition and that help to regulate our visually guided actions. But how does all of this really work? The answers concern the physiology, psychology, and philosophy of visual perception and cognition. Gary Hatfield's essays address fundamental questions concerning, in Part I, the psychological processes underlying spatial perception and perception of objects; in Part II, psychological theories and metaphysical controversies about color perception and qualia; and, in Part III, the history and philosophy of theories of vision, including methodological controversies surrounding introspection and involving the relations between psychology and the fields of neuroscience and cognitive science. An introductory chapter provides a unified overview; an extensive reference list rounds out the volume.
In the early 20th century, Marxist theory was enriched and rejuvenated by adopting the concept of reification, introduced by the Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs to identify and denounce the transformation of historical processes into ahistorical entities, human actions into things that seemed part of an immutable "second nature." For a variety of reasons, both theoretical and practical, the hopes placed in de-reification as a tool of revolutionary emancipation proved vain. In these original and imaginative essays, delivered as the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, the distinguished third-generation Frankfurt School philosopher Axel Honneth attempts to rescue the concept of reification by recasting it in terms of the philosophy of recognition he has been developing over the past two decades. Three distinguished political and social theorists: Judith Butler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan Lear, respond with hard questions about the central anthropological premise of his argument, the assumption that prior to cognition there is a fundamental experience of intersubjective recognition that can provide a normative standard by which current social relations can be judged wanted. Honneth listens carefully to their criticism and provides a powerful defense of his position.
Descartes is possibly the most famous of all writers on the mind, but his theory of mind has been almost universally misunderstood, because his philosophy has not been seen in the context of his scientific work. Desmond Clarke offers a radical and convincing rereading, undoing the received perception of Descartes as the chief defender of mind/body dualism. For Clarke, the key is to interpret his philosophical efforts as an attempt to reconcile his scientific pursuits with the theologically orthodox views of his time.
All humans can interpret sentences of their native language quickly and without effort. Working from the perspective of generative grammar, the contributors investigate three mental mechanisms, widely assumed to underlie this ability: compositional semantics, implicature computation and presupposition computation. This volume brings together experts from semantics and pragmatics to bring forward the study of interconnections between these three mechanisms. The contributions develop new insights into important empirical phenomena; for example, approximation, free choice, accommodation, and exhaustivity effects.
Philosophical theories of emotions, and to an extent some theories of scientific psychology, represent attempts to capture the essence of emotions basically as they are conceived in common sense psychology. Although there are problems, the success of explanations of our behavior in terms of believes, desires and emotions creates a presumption that, at some level of abstraction, they reflect important elements in our psychological nature. It is incumbent on a theory of emotions to provide an account of two salient facts about emotions as conceived in common sense psychology. As intentional states, emotions have representational and rational properties: emotions represent states of affairs; and they are rationally related to other mental representations, figure in rational explanations of behavior, and are open to rational assessment. Emotions also have a close relationship to a range of non-intentional phenomena: in typical cases, emotions involve physiological changes, usually associated with the activation of the autonomic nervous system, which are proprioceptively experienced; and they often involve behavioral tendencies, as well.
My interest in gathering together a collection of this sort was generated by a fortuitous combination of historical studies under Professor Keith Lehrer and studies in cognitive science under Professor R. Michael Harnish at the University of Arizona. Work on the volume began there while I was an instructor in the Department of Linguistics and was greatly encouraged by participants in the Faculty Seminar on Cognitive Science chaired by Professor Lance J. Rips. I wish to express my appreciation to all of these and to many other individuals with whom I discussed the possibility of contribution to this work. I am especially grateful to the authors of the essays included here, as they showed more patience than I could have hoped for in seeing me through a number of uncertain stages in development of the project. My thanks are also due to my colleague Charles Reid for assistance in reviewing submissions, to Tim McFadden for computer resources, and again, to Keith Lehrer for continuing advice in arrangements for publication. Financial support for manuscript preparation was provided in part under University Research Grant No. 617 from the University Research Council, Youngstown State University.
This book studies the problem of acquaintance against the background of a more general theory of intentionality. Much of the relevant background is laid out in the book I wrote with Ronald McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality (1982). However, since this book is not focussed on HusserI, I shall not assume the reader's familiarity with the prior book or with HusserI's philosophy. (I have sometimes referred to this book-in progress as Acquaintance; I've rounded out the title a bit. ) of The initial inspiration for this work, in the 1970's, was a confluence ideas from the logic of perception and the logic of demonstratives, ideas in which I found phenomenological inspiration. These included Jaakko Hintikka's notion of perceptual individuation, Romane Clark's account of a demonstrative element in perception, David Kaplan's analysis of the meaning (character and content) of demonstratives, and Hector-Neri Castaneda's notion of quasi-indicators. I would later add to the list John Perry's appraisal of belief reports involving indexicals (extending Castaneda's ideas) and Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought-experiments (complementing Clark's and Kaplan's ideas of the same vintage). I want to thank Chuck Dement and Ronald McIntyre for their responses to the first draft. For many discussions of issues addressed in the book I thank David Blinder, Hubert Dreyfus, Dagfinn F llesdal, Jaakko Hintikka, David Kaplan, Ronald McIntyre, Izchak Miller, Esa Saarinen, John Searle, and Peter Woodruff. I have benefited also from colleagues and students too numerous to name but deserving my thanks nonetheless. Philosophy is a surprisingly communal affair."
This book has been a long time in the making. Other issues have taken me away from it from time to extended time. But I kept coming back to the problem of other minds. It has remained a great issue, it is much contested still, and it is, after all, elose to us all. I like believing that the time taken has deepened my understanding of the problem and how it is to be handled. Other people, some by disagreeing vehemently, have helped greatly. I mention in particular, Brian Ellis, Robert Fox, Graeme Marshali, Tim Oakley, Ray Pinkerton and Robert Young. Robert Pargetter argued with me, and kept insisting that I write this book. John Bigelow, Michael Bradley, Keith Campbell, Frank Jackson, and William Lycan assisted by reading an earlier version and providing valued comments. Frank Jackson has been specially helpful, not just on this topic. He can be blamed for initially causing me to take the analogical inference seriously. Tbe La Trobe Philosophy Department has been a good place to do philosophy. I am grateful to Suzanne Hayster, Sandra Paul, and Betty Pritchard for struggling at various times with various recalcitrant manuscripts. Most particularly I thank Gai Larkin. She has seen the project through, with considerably more than efficiency.
Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the commentators to other cultures. Tantalisingly, Priscian fully recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers to the king's questions on philosophy and science. But these answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood both the Greek and the subject matter very poorly. Our translators have often had to reconstruct from the Latin what the Greek would have been, in order to recover the original sense. The answers start with subjects close to the Athenians' hearts: the human soul, on which Priscian was an expert, and sleep and visions. But their interest may have diminished when the king sought their expertise on matters of physical science: the seasons, celestial zones, medical effects of heat and cold, the tides, displacement of the four elements, the effect of regions on living things, why only reptiles are poisonous, and winds. At any rate, in 532 AD, they moved on from the palace, but still under Khosroes' protection. This is the first translation of the record they left into English or any modern language. This English translation is accompanied by an introduction and comprehensive commentary notes, which clarify and discuss the meaning and implications of the original philosophy. Part of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership and includes additional scholarly apparatus such as a bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.
A precious resource for anybody interested in contemporary thinking on happiness, "Philosophy and Happiness" encompasses a variety of philosophical traditions and draws from empirical work in psychology and economics to answer some of the oldest, and most pressing, questions about what contributes to individual well-being and life satisfaction.
Wittgenstein's aphoristic style holds great charm, but also a great danger: the reader is apt to glean too much from a single fragment and too little from the fragments as a whole. In my first confron tations with the Philosophical Investigations I was such a reader, and so, it turned out, were most of the writers on Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Wittgenstein's remarkable ability to bring together many facets of his thought in one fragment is fully exploited in the critical literature; but hardly any attention is paid to the connection with other fragments, let alone to the many hitherto unpublished manuscripts of which the Philosophical Investigations is the final product. The result of this fragmentary and ahistorical approach to Wittgenstein's later work is a host of contradictory interpretations. What Wittgenstein really wanted to say remains insufficiently clear. Opinions are also strongly divided about the value of his work. Some authors have been encouraged by his aphorisms and rhetorical questions to dismiss the whole Cartesian tradition or to halt new movements in linguistics or psychology; others, exasperated, reject his philo sophy as anti-scientific conceptual conservatism. After consulting unpublished notebooks and manuscripts which Wittgenstein wrote between 1929 and 1951, I became a very different reader. Wittgenstein turned out to be a kind of Leonardo da Vinci, who pursued a form from which every sign of chisel ling, every attempt at improvement, had been effaced."
This book is an effort to bring genetic-phenomenological analyses in contact with empirical psychology, neurology, cognitive science and research in primate cognition. The first part adresses the role of weak but not arbitrary phantasy in perception, and argues that it has a transcendental function with several different aspects. Weak phantasma can be found in all fields of sensibility and at all levels of constitution. Relevant aspects of Charles-Bonnet Syndrome are analyzed in addition to the contributions of empirical psychology to our understanding of hallucinations in normal subjects. The second part is dedicated to the process of self-organization in human and animal perception from the point of view of genetic phenomenology, concentrating on the formation, change and use of the so-called "types" (Typus). The third part investigates whether cognition, thinking and other higher order performances of the mind - both human and animal - can be understood by taking into account the contributions of phantasmatic elements in three important fields: scenic imagination in daydreams, feelings, and co-feeling with others. To this end dual-mode theories of mind and some contributions from neurology are taken into account. The conclusion reached is that most higher-order achievements of our mind - which we tend to identify with the performance of our language-system - might in fact be accomplished without language in the low-level system of phantasmatic imagination. This leads to an "inclusive theory of the subject" which allows us to understand how higher-organized animals like primates can think.
"Lost Works" tells the story a man who once lived and is still alive, seeking to share his poetry, art, stories, creativity, thought, and science with the world.With a strong grounding in physics, Daniel Roberts presents his philosophies for life and living, touching a wide range of topics, from art to virtue to God and religion. "Lost Works" offers a free-form, flowing, prose exploration of many of humanity's most essential questions.v
EXPERIENCE AND NATURE JOHN DEWEY LONDON GEORGE ALLEN UNWIN, LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W. CX 1929 w Q W o d U PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS JPAGE THE PAUL CARUS FOUNDATION .... ix CHAPTER I. EXPERIENCE AND PHILOSOPHIC METHOD . la II. EXISTP NCE AS PRECARIOUS AND AS STABLE . 40 III. NATURE, ENDS AND HISTORIES .... 78 IV. NATURE, MEANS AND KNOWLEDGE . . . 121 V. NATURE, COMMUNICATION AND AS MEANING 166 VI. NATURE, MIND AND THE SUBJECT . . . 208 VII. NATURE, LIFE AND BODY-MIND . . . . 248 VIII. EXISTENCE, IDEAS AND CONSCIOUSNESS . . 298 IX. EXPERIENCE, NATURE AND ART . . . . 354 X. EXISTENCE, VALUE AND CRITICISM . . . 394 INDEX 439 THE PAUL CARUS FOUNDATION Dr. Paul Carus was born in Usenburg, Germany, hi 1852. He was educated at the Universities of Strass burg and Tubingen, from the latter of which he received the doctorate of philosophy in 1876. It was, however, in the United States, to which he shortly after removed, that his life-work was performed. He became editor of the Open Court in 1888, and later established The Monist, remaining throughout his career, editor of these two peri odicals and Director of the editorial policies of the Open Court Company. He died in February, 1919, at La Salle, Illinois. The primary interests which actuated Dr. Caruss life work were in the field of philosophy, touching with almost equal weight the two great phases of modern speculative concern represented by the philosophy of science and com parative religion. To each of these he devoted numerous special studies, and to each he gave the influence of the press which he directed. This influence was in no sense narrow or specialistic. Dr. Caxus was personally pro foundlyconcerned for the broadening of that understand ing in all intellectual fields which he felt must be the foundation of whatever is to be valuable in our future human culture he saw his philosophy never as a closet pursuit, but always as a quest for the social illumination of mankind, in which his hope of betterment lay. In this interest he combatted prejudice, in religion and science alike, seeking to divest the spirit of truth of all cloaking of formula, and turning with eager and open x THE PAUL CARUS FOUNDATION eyes in every direction in which there was a suggestion of light and leading to men and to thought of every com plexion and to all levels of active human concern with matters of reflection. Dr. Cams was, in fact, strongly Socratic in disposition he wished to bring philosophy down from the skies of a too studied abstraction and habituate it to the houses of mens souls and to the rich and changing tides of cultural interests. Certainly so far as America is concerned his service is a signal one. During much of his career he stood almost alone as a philosopher outside academic walls, a living exponent of the fact that philosophy is significant as a force as well as useful as an educational discipline. He looked to the cultivation of philosophy as a frame of mind open to all, lay and professional, who should come to see that social liberty is made secure only where there is growth of a sympathetic public intelligence. It is with the spirit and intention of Dr. Caruss life work in mind that his family have established in his memory the Paul Cams Lectures. In the United States, foundations devoted to the cultivation of philosophy are so confined to scholastic institutions that thewhole field of philosophic concern tends to assume the slant of an immured and scholastic discipline and the observer is tempted to say that the greatest gift that can befall philosophic liberalism is one that will cause its followers to forget their professional character. Such a gift, certainly, is more than suggested by a lectureship which comes with no institutional atmosphere to further the free play of the mind upon all phases of life...
Is there a universal biolinguistic disposition for the development of basic' colour words? This question has been a subject of debate since Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution was published in 1969. Naming the Rainbow is the first extended study of this debate. The author describes and criticizes empirically and conceptually unified models of colour naming that relate basic colour terms directly to perceptual and ultimately to physiological facts, arguing that this strategy has overlooked the cognitive dimension of colour naming. He proposes a psychosemantics for basic colour terms which is sensitive to cultural difference and to the nature and structure of non-linguistic experience. Audience: Contemporary colour naming research is radically interdisciplinary and Naming the Rainbow will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists concerned with: biological constraints on cognition and categorization; problems inherent in cross-cultural and in interdisciplinary science; the nature and extent of cultural relativism.
Increasingly, the mind is being treated as a fit subject for scientific inquiry. As cognitive science and empirical psychology strive to uncover the mind's secrets, it is fitting to inquire as to what distinctive role is left for philosophy in the study of mind. This collection, which includes contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field, offers a rich variety of perspectives on this issue. Topics addressed include: the place of a priori inquiry in philosophy of mind, moral psychology, consciousness, social dimensions of intentionality, the relation of logic to philosophical psychology, objectivity and the mind, and privileged access.
Cognitive science, in Howard Gardner's words, has a relatively short history but a very long past. While its short history has been the subject of quite a few studies published in recent years, the current book focuses instead on its very long past. It explores the emergence of the conceptual framework that was necessary to make the rise of modem cognitive science possible in the first place. Over the long course of the history of the theory of perception and of cognition, various conceptual breakthroughs can be discerned that have contributed significantly to the conception of the mind as a physical symbol system with intricate representational capacities and unimaginably rich computational resources. In historical retrospect such conceptual transitions-seemingly sudden and unannounced-are typically foreshadowed in the course of enduring research programs that serve as slowly developing theoretical con straint structures gradually narrowing down the apparent solution space for the scientific problems at hand. Ultimately the fundamental problem is either resolved to the satisfaction of the majority of researchers in the area of investigation, or else-and much more commonly-one or more of the major theoretical constraints is abandoned or radically modified, giving way to entirely new theoretical vistas. In the history of the theory of perception this process can be witnessed at vari ous important junctures."
Splendid, spiritual, and subversive, this anthology offers a
sampler of just some of the feminisms emerging in academic
seminars, street demonstrations for justice, and places where
people are reclaiming their ancestral values.
Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson's knowledge argument, Kim's exclusion problem, and Burge's anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism--reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism--come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism.
Consciousness has become a major topic of scientific interest, and dozens of books have been written in recent years to explain it, yet it still remains a mystery. Science and the Riddle of Consciousness explains why consciousness is a riddle for science, and demonstrates how this riddle can be solved. The questions examined in the book speak directly to neuroscientists, computer scientists, psychologists, and philosophers.
This book discusses two of the oldest and hardest problems in both science and philosophy: What is matter?, and What is mind? A reason for tackling both problems in a single book is that two of the most influential views in modern philosophy are that the universe is mental (idealism), and that the everything real is material (materialism). Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged. Besides, both groups tend to ignore the other levels of existence-chemical, biological, social, and technological. If such levels and the concomitant emergence processes are ignored, the physicalism/spiritualism dilemma remains unsolved, whereas if they are included, the alleged mysteries are shown to be problems that science is treating successfully.
Although highly influential, Brentano's doctrines from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint were taken up and changed by his students and subsequent thinkers. Tassone's study of this important text offers readers a better understanding of PES and outlines its ongoing relevance for contemporary philosophy of mind. |
You may like...
Teaching and Learning about…
Irvin J. Levy, Catherine H. Middlecamp
Hardcover
R5,467
Discovery Miles 54 670
Reliability, Risk and Safety - Back to…
Ben J. M. Ale, Ioannis A. Papazoglou, …
CD-ROM
CO2 in Seawater: Equilibrium, Kinetics…
R. E. Zeebe, D. Wolf-Gladrow
Paperback
Project Management For Engineering…
John M. Nicholas, Herman Steyn
Paperback
R2,111
Discovery Miles 21 110
Sustainable Waste Management Challenges…
Agamuthu Pariatamby, Fauziah Shahul Hamid, …
Hardcover
R6,221
Discovery Miles 62 210
Advances in Energy, Environment and…
Ahmad Zuhairi Abdullah, Azlin Fazlina Osman
Hardcover
R7,619
Discovery Miles 76 190
DRILLING ENGINEERING - TOWARDS ACHIEVING…
M.Rafiqul Islam, M. Enamul Hossain
Paperback
R4,056
Discovery Miles 40 560
Synthesis and Chemistry of…
Don R. Baker, Joseph G. Fenyes, …
Hardcover
R2,086
Discovery Miles 20 860
|