What is belief? "Beliefs aim at truth" is the commonly accepted starting point for philosophers who want to give an adequate account of this fundamental state of mind, but it raises as many questions as it answers. For example, in what sense can beliefs be said to have an aim of their own? If belief aims at truth, does it mean that reasons to believe must also be based on truth? Must beliefs be formed on the basis of evidence alone? Is truth the constitutive norm of belief? Does aiming at truth bring in a normative dimension to the nature of belief? How can the aim of truth guide the formation of our beliefs? In what ways do partial beliefs aim at truth? Is truth the aim of epistemic justification? Last but not least, is it knowledge rather than truth which is the fundamental aim of belief? In recent years, pursuing these questions has proved extremely fertile for our understanding of a wide range of current issues in philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, and meta-ethics. The Aim of Belief is the first book to be devoted to this fast-growing topic. It brings together eleven newly commissioned essays by leading authors on the aim of belief. The volume not only reflects the state of the art, but further advances the current debate. It will be key reading for researchers and students of philosophy interested in mind, knowledge and reason.

Debates in Psychology tackles some of the major issues and controversies within the field of psychology. The book includes a discussion of the major debates in psychology prescribed by the AQA Specification A-Level syllabus, such as free will and determinism, whether or not psychology can (or indeed should) be a science, reductionism, and the nature-nurture debate. Additionally, the 'mind-body question' is examined as an example of reductionism in psychology. A chapter on behaviourism is also included in order to draw together the debates covered throughout the book.
Each topic covered in Debates in Psychology is presented in a highly readable and accessible manner. The book will be invaluable for students wishing to gain a greater understanding of this exciting area.

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Mainstream philosophy of religion has persistently failed to engage seriously or critically with animist beliefs and practices. The field that is now called "philosophy of religion" could quite easily be renamed "philosophy of theism" with few lecturers on the subject having to change their lecture notes. It is the aim of this volume to rectify that failure and to present animism as a live option among the plethora of religious worldviews. The volume addresses four major questions: 1. What is this thing called "animism"? 2. Are there any arguments for or against animist belief and practice? 3. What is the relationship between animism, naturalism, and the sciences? And 4. Should we take animism seriously? Animism and Philosophy of Religion is intended to be the first authoritative scholarly volume on the issue of animism and its place in the philosophy of religion. Ambitiously, it aims to act as the cornerstone volume for future work on the subject and as a key text for courses engaging with the subject.

A Psychological Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism is a thoroughly researched interdisciplinary exploration of the critical role metaethical beliefs play in the way morality functions. Whether people are "moral objectivists" or not is something that deserves much more empirical attention than it has thus far received, not only because it bears upon philosophical claims but also because it is a critical piece of the puzzle of human morality. This book aims to facilitate incorporating the study of metaethical beliefs into existing research programs by providing a roadmap through the theoretical and empirical landscape as it currently exists and evaluating the methodological approaches used thus far. In doing so, it summarizes the key findings-both in terms of metaethical beliefs and their correlates, causes, and consequences-that have emerged, and explores the value of this area of study for anyone interested in the development, function, causes, and/or consequences of morality. A Psychological Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism offers a helpful guide to social scientists interested in joining this thriving new area of research. It is a valuable resource for upper level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in moral psychology, theoretical psychology, experimental philosophy, metaethics, and philosophy of the mind.

This book outlines how the protagonists in The Nibelung's Ring, The Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones attempt to construct identities and expand their consciousness manifestations. As the characters in the three works face the ends of their respective worlds, they must find answers to their mortality, and to the threat it implies: the loss of identity and consciousness. Moreover, it details how this process is depicted performatively. In a hands-on and interdisciplinary approach, this book seeks to unveil the underlying philosophical concepts of identity and consciousness in the three works as they are represented audio-visually on stage and screen. Through the use of many practical examples, this book offers both academic scholars and any interested readers a completely new perspective on three enduringly popular and interrelated works.

The philosophy of perception investigates the nature of our sensory experiences and their relation to reality. In the second edition of this popular book, William Fish introduces the subject thematically, setting out the major theories of perception together with their motivations and attendant problems. While providing historical background to debates in the field, this comprehensive overview focuses on recent presentations and defenses of the different theories, and looks beyond visual perception to take into account the role of other senses. The second edition organizes the contents into two main parts: the first deals with philosophical theories of perception, and the second covers key topics and issues in perception as they are discussed in philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology. Two completely new chapters have been added - one on color and color vision; and a second on the interaction between sense modalities - and other chapters have been significantly updated to include discussion of topics such as pre-twentieth-century philosophy of perception, phenomenal intentionality, color adverbialism, predictive processing approaches to perception, ecological approaches to perception, and in-depth discussions of the non-visual senses. Additional updates include fuller and easier-to-understand explanations of some important views that were glossed over in the first edition and greater coverage of research from the last 25 years. All chapter summaries, references, and Suggested Reading lists at the end of each chapter have been brought up to date and the volume now includes a more extensive index at the back of the book. Key Features and Benefits: The only single-authored textbook on philosophy of perception currently available Devoted to contemporary theories and topics, but with appropriate historical coverage for fuller understanding of contemporary work Each chapter includes a chapter overview, questions for further consideration, and an annotated list of Suggested Readings Includes coverage of topics like: - the phenomenal principle - perception and hallucination - perception and content - naive realism and disjunctivism - intentionalism and representationalism - the nature of content - qualia theories and phenomenal intentionality - perception and empirical science - color and color science - theories of non-visual perception - Molyneux's problem - cross-modal illusions - multimodality Key Changes to the Second Edition The division of the book into two major parts: Part I on philosophical theories of perception, Part II on key interdisciplinary topics in perception The addition of two new chapters on color and color vision, and interaction between different sense modalities More topics from the last 25 years of philosophy of perception Combined chapters on belief acquisition theories and intentional theories into one larger chapter More material on the growing intersection of the philosophy and psychology of perception Includes coverage of Molyneux's problem and of cross-modal illusions Updated chapter summaries, references, and Suggested Reading lists at the end of each chapter A summary table and a more extensive index

This book is a collection of studies on topics related to subjectivity and selfhood in medieval and early modern philosophy. The individual contributions approach the theme from a number of angles varying from cognitive and moral psychology to metaphysics and epistemology. Instead of a complete overview on the historical period, the book provides detailed glimpses into some of the most important figures of the period, such as Augustine, Avicenna, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume. The questions addressed include the ethical problems of the location of one's true self and the proper distribution of labour between desire, passion and reason, and the psychological tasks of accounting for subjective experience and self-knowledge and determining different types of self-awareness.

This book grew out of a graduate student paper 261] in which I set down some criticisms of J. R. Lucas' attempt to refute mechanism by means of G6del's theorem. I had made several such abortive attempts myself and had become familiar with their pitfalls, and especially with the double edged nature of incompleteness arguments. My original idea was to model the refutation of mechanism on the almost universally accepted G6delian refutation of Hilbert's formalism, but I kept getting stuck on questions of mathematical philosophy which I found myself having to beg. A thorough study of the foundational works of Hilbert and Bernays finally convinced me that I had all too naively and uncritically bought this refutation of formalism. I did indeed discover points of surprisingly close contact between formalism and mechanism, but also that it was possible to under mine certain strong arguments against these positions precisely by invok ing G6del's and related work. I also began to realize that the Church Turing thesis itself is the principal bastion protecting mechanism, and that G6del's work was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to both mechanism and formalism. I pushed these lines of argument in my dis sertation with the patient help of my readers, Raymond Nelson and Howard Stein. I would especially like to thank the latter for many valuable criticisms of my dissertation as well as some helpful suggestions for reor ganizing it in the direction of the present book."

This book investigates how we should form ourselves in a world saturated with technologies that are profoundly intruding in the very fabric of our selfhood. New and emerging technologies, such as smart technological environments, imaging technologies and smart drugs, are increasingly shaping who and what we are and influencing who we ought to be. How should we adequately understand, evaluate and appreciate this development? Tackling this question requires going beyond the persistent and stubborn inside-outside dualism and recognizing that what we consider our "inside" self is to a great extent shaped by our "outside" world. Inspired by various philosophers - especially Nietzsche, Peirce and Lacan -this book shows how the values, goals and ideals that humans encounter in their environments not only shape their identities but also enable them to critically relate to their present state. The author argues against understanding technological self-formation in terms of making ourselves better, stronger and smarter. Rather, we should conceive it in terms of technological sublimation, which redefines the very notion of human enhancement. In this respect the author introduces an alternative, more suitable theory, namely Technological Sublimation Theory (TST). Extimate Technology will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of the self, phenomenology, pragmatism, and history of philosophy. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003139409, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

"This translation is an important research tool for all philosophers interested in Aquinas's philosophy of mind and epistemology. . . .Every library of both undergraduate and graduate philosophy programs needs this work, and all of us interested in the history of medieval philosophy of mind should have this new translation on our desks. Highly recommended."-Anthony J. Lisska, The Medieval Review

This edited volume examines aspects of the mind/consciousness that are relevant to the interpretations of quantum mechanics. In it, an international group of contributors focus on the possible connections between quantum mechanics and consciousness. They look at how consciousness can help us with quantum mechanics as well as how quantum mechanics can contribute to our understanding of consciousness. For example, what do different interpretations aimed at solving the measurement problem in quantum mechanics tell us about the nature of consciousness, such as von Neumann's interpretation? Each interpretation has, associated to it, a corresponding metaphysical framework that helps us think about possible "models" of consciousness. Alternatively, what does the nature of consciousness tell us about the role of the observer and time reversibility in the measurement process? The book features 20 papers on contemporary approaches to quanta and mind. It brings together the work of scholars from different disciplines with diverse views on the connections between quanta and mind, ranging from those who are supportive of a link between consciousness and quantum physics to those who are very skeptical of such link. Coverage includes such topics as free will in a quantum world, contextuality and causality, mind and matter interaction, quantum panpsychism, the quantum and quantum-like brain, and the role of time in brain-mind dynamics.

This book talks about the levels of consciousness and their roles in controlling our life and behaviour. The consciousness has a main role in learning human to behave and to live in all life's situation and ages. This book clarifies these situations in details and the laws that make this system work properly. It provides many solutions and suggestions to control ourselves and our minds and put them in the right way. This book explains many of our behaviours depending on the psychology and the role of the consciousness in the psychiatry, how to treat diseases and mental disorders and how to improve the mental health as well. This subject is not well discussed and detailed in literature so there is a need to give this topic its role in the psychology and in scientific literature too. This book is targeting the consciousness' levels and the role of these levels in our life and behaviours, so it divides the roles among them as appropriate and in the right way and then the humans can recognize which part is more important than the other and on what they should focus.

Is it appropriate to honour and admire people who have created great works of art, made important intellectual contributions, performed great sporting feats, or shaped the history of a nation if those people have also acted immorally? This book provides a philosophical investigation of this important and timely question. The authors draw on the latest research from ethics, value theory, philosophy of emotion, social philosophy, and social psychology to develop and substantiate arguments that have been made in the public debates about this issue. They offer a detailed analysis of the nature and ethics of honour and admiration, and present reasons both in favour and against honouring and admiring the immoral. They also take on the important matter of whether we can separate the achievements of public figures from their immoral behaviour. Ultimately, the authors reject a "onesize-fits-all" approach and argue that we must weigh up the reasons for and against honouring and admiring in each particular case. Honouring and Admiring the Immoral is written in an accessible style that shows how philosophy can engage with public debates about important ethical issues. It will be of interest to scholars and students working in moral philosophy, philosophy of emotion, and social philosophy.

What goes on in creative writers' heads when they write? What can cognitive psychology, neuroscience, literary studies and previous research in creative writing studies tell creative writers about the processes of their writing mind? Creative writers have for centuries undertaken cognitive research. Some described cognition in vivid exegetical essays, but most investigated the mind in creative writing itself, in descriptions of the thinking of characters in fiction, poetry and plays. The inner voicings and inner visualising revealed in Greek choruses, in soliloquies, in stream-of-consciousness narratives are creative writers' 'research results' from studying their own cognition, and the thinking of others. The Creative Writer's Mind is a book for creative writers: it sets out to cross the gap between creative writing and science, between the creative arts and cognitive research.

The concept of affordances is being increasingly used in fields beyond ecological psychology to reveal previously unexplored interdisciplinary relationships. These fields include engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, urban theory, architecture, computer science, and much more. As the concept is adapted for its relational meaning between an agent and the environment, or object, the meaning of the term has changed to fit the customs of the adapting field. This book maps the different shades of the term and brings insights into how it is operationalized by providing short accessible essays regardless of background. Each contribution addresses big questions around this topic such as the application of the concept on ongoing research, how to measure or identify affordances, as well as other reflective questions about the future of affordances in the field. The book is envisioned to be read by non-experts, students, and researchers from several disciplines, and fills the need for summarization across disciplines. As the many adaptations flourished from the same psychological concept, this book also aims to function as a catalyst and motivation for reinterpreting the concepts for new directions. Compared to existing books, this book aims not to span the vertical dimension of field by taking a deep dive into a niche-field-instead, this book aims to have a wide horizontal span highlighting a common concept shared by an increasing number of fields, namely affordances. As such, this book takes a different approach by attempting to summarize the different emerging applications and definitions of the concept, and make them accessible to non-experts, students, and researchers regardless of background and level.

This edited volume features the works of a group of philosophers and psychologists who share the collective goal of demonstrating the powerful utility of a form of conceptual analysis - mostly closely identified with Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy - for addressing various issues related to the coherence of scientific claim-making within contemporary psychology. In addition to a foreword written by acclaimed analytic philosopher, P. M. S. Hacker, the volume includes the works of a number of other internationally renowned experts in Wittgensteinian philosophy (e.g., Hans-Johann Glock, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Joachim Schulte, Meredith Williams), as well as contributions of psychologists and philosophers focusing in on more particular areas of application of conceptual analysis for resolving confusions within specific areas of psychological research or theory construction. As such, the work presents a nice balance between meta-level reflections on the relevance of Wittgenstein-inspired conceptual analytic methods to psychology and illustrations of concrete applications of such methods.

Phenomenology and analytic philosophy have skirmished often, but seldom in ways conducive to dialectical progress. Generally, the skirmishes seem more "political" than philosophical, as when one side ridicules the methods of the other or criticizes the viability of the other's issues and assump tions. Analytic interest in third person objectivity is often spurned by Continental philosophers as being unduly abstract. Continental interest in first person subjectivity is often criticized by analysts as being muddled and imprecise. Logical analysis confronts the power of metaphor and judges it "too ambiguous" for rigorous philosophical activity. The language of metaphor confronts the power of logical analysis and deems it "too restric tive" for describing the nature and structures of authentic human exper ience. But are the two approaches really incompatible? Perhaps because each side of the "divide" has been working at problems largely uninteresting to the "opposition" it has been easy to ignore or underestimate the importance of this issue. But now each side is being led into a common field of problems associated with the nature of mind, and there is a new urgency to the need for examining carefully the question of conceptual compatibility and the potential for dialogue. Analytic thinkers are typically in the business of concept clarification and objective certi fication. Continental philosophers employ introspection in the interest of a project of description and classification that aims to be true to the full subtlety and complexity of the human condition."

Offers a combination of a critical approach to education and psychology alongside a focus on professional dialogue, aimed at psychologists, educational professionals and those who work with them. Provides an alternative approach to the current focus in education establishments (which include instrumentalism and performativity) to support and improve relationships and mental health (particularly relating to teachers, parents and young people). This book addresses a fundamental issue for psychologists in the Western world in that it challenges the profession to uphold a moral and ethical practices.

Bringing together neuroscientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars in cross-disciplinary exploration of the topic of cultural memory, this collection moves from seminal discussions of the latest findings in neuroscience to variegated, specific case studies of social practices and artistic expressions. This volume highlights what can be gained from drawing on broad interdisciplinary contexts in pursuing scholarly projects involving cultural memory and associated topics. The collection argues that contemporary evolutionary science, in conjunction with studies interconnecting cognition, affect, and emotion, as well as research on socially mediated memory, provides innovatively interdisciplinary contexts for viewing current work on how cultural and social environments influence gene expression and neural circuitry. Building on this foundation, Cultural Memory turns to the exploration of the psychological processes and social contexts through which cultural memory is shaped, circulated, revised, and contested. It investigates how various modes of cultural expression-architecture, cuisine, poetry, film, and fiction-reconfigure shared conceptualizing patterns and affectively mediated articulations of identity and value. Each chapter showcases research from a wide range of fields and presents diverse interdisciplinary contexts for future scholarship. As cultural memory is a subject that invites interdisciplinary perspectives and is relevant to studying cultures around the world, of every era, this collection addresses an international readership comprising scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, from advanced undergraduates to senior researchers.

This systematic theological study uses the example of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) to examine and systematically develop the question of determining the relationship of theology and natural science. In the course of translating basic structures of an "objective" view of the world into categories of a linguistic-hermeneutic understanding of reality, Hamann makes possible a connection of creation as a communicative process with an understanding of nature which opens up its "grammatical" structures.

This Handbook introduces neurosemiotics, a pluralistic framework to reconsider semiosis as an emergent phenomenon at the interface of biology and culture. Across individual and interpersonal settings, meaning is influenced by external and internal processes bridging phenomenological and biological dimensions. Yet, each of these dyads has been segregated into discipline-specific topics, with attempts to chart their intersections proving preliminary at best. Bringing together perspectives from world-leading experts, this volume seeks to overcome these disciplinary divides between the social and the natural sciences at both the empirical and theoretical levels. Its various chapters chart the foundations of neurosemiotics; characterize linguistic and interpersonal dynamics as shaped by neurocognitive, bodily, situational, and societal factors; and examine other daily neurosemiotic occurrences driven by faces, music, tools, and even visceral signals. This comprehensive volume is a state-of the-art resource for students and researchers interested in how humans and other animals construe experience in such fields as cognitive neuroscience, biosemiotics, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology, neurolinguistics, and evolutionary biology.

In this book, Shay Welch expands on the contemporary cognitive thinking-in-movement framework, which has its roots in the work of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone but extends and develops within contemporary embodied cognition theory. Welch believes that dance can be used to ask questions, and this book offers a method of how critical inquiry can be embodied. First, she presents the theoretical underpinnings of what this process is and how it can work; second, she introduces the empirical method as a tool that can be used by movers for the purpose of doing embodied inquiry. Exploring the role of embodied cognition and embodied metaphors in mining the body for questions, Welch demonstrates how to utilize movement to explore embodied practices of knowing. She argues that our creative embodied movements facilitate our ability to bodily engage in critical analysis about the world.

Brain Mystery Light and Dark examines scientific models of how the brain becomes conscious and argues that the spiritual dimension of life is compatible with the main scientific theories. Keyes shows us that the belief in the unity of mind and brain does not necessarily undermine aesthetic, religious, and ethical beliefs.

Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world--with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind--one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively--is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.