What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the "hard problem" of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the "consciousness meter", the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the problems of mind, brain, consciousness, and reality.

In this volume, Kieran McGroarty provides a philosophical commentary on a section of the Enneads written by the last great Neoplatonist thinker, Plotinus. The treatise is entitled "Concerning Well-Being" and was written at a late stage in Plotinus' life when he was suffering from an illness that was shortly to kill him. Its main concern is with the good man and how he should pursue the good life. The treatise is therefore central to our understanding of Plotinus' ethical theory, and the commentary seeks to explicate and elucidate that theory. Plotinus' views on how one should live in order to fulfill oneself as a human being are as relevant now as they were in the third century AD. All Greek and Latin is translated, while short summaries introducing the content of each chapter help to make Plotinus' argument clear even to the non-specialist.

Spinoza is among the most controversial and asymmetrical thinkers in the tradition and history of modern European philosophy. Since the 17th century, his work has aroused some of the fiercest and most intense polemics in the discipline. From his expulsion from the synagogue and onwards, Spinoza has never ceased to embody the secular, heretical and self-loathing Jew. Ivan Segre, a philosopher and celebrated scholar of the Talmud, discloses the conservative underpinnings that have animated Spinoza's numerable critics and antagonists. Through a close reading of Leo Strauss and several contemporary Jewish thinkers, such as Jean-Claude Milner and Benny Levy (Sartre's last secretary), Spinoza: the Ethics of an Outlaw aptly delineates the common cause of Spinoza's contemporary censors: an explicit hatred of reason and its emancipatory potential. Spinoza's radical heresy lies in his rejection of any and all blind adherence to Biblical Law, and in his plea for the freedom and autonomy of thought. Segre reclaims Spinoza as a faithful interpreter of the revolutionary potential contained within the Old Testament.

This collection of essays aims to investigate the unique place of Jacques Ranciere in the contemporary intellectual scene. This book forms the first critical study of Jacques Ranciere's impact and contribution to contemporary theoretical and interdisciplinary studies. It showcases the work of leading scholars in fields such as political theory, history, cinema studies and literary theory; each of whom are uniquely situated to engage with the novelty of Ranciere's thinking within their respective fields. Each of the thirteen essays provides an investigation into the critical stance Ranciere takes towards his contemporaries, concentrating on the versatile application of his thought to diverse fields of study (including, cinema studies, literary studies and the 'history as fiction' and 'history from below' movements). The aim of this collection is to use the critical interventions Ranciere's writing makes on current topics and themes as a way of offering new critical perspectives on his thought. Wielding their individual expertise, each contributor assesses his perspectives and positions on thinkers and topics of contemporary importance.

This book provides a new approach to a major figure in Western Philosophy.This important new book explores the ethical theory of Friedrich Nietzsche in light of recent work done in the philosophy of mind. Craig Dove examines issues of free will, communication, the way in which we construct the self, and the implications of all these for ethics. After dismissing what he calls the 'soul hypothesis', Nietzsche is left with a problem: how do we explain the sense of unity and continuity most of us experience as our identity?Drawing on recent work in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, this study shows that Nietzsche's tentative suggestions in the late nineteenth century have been supported by late twentieth century research. Arguing that work done in the philosophy of mind by Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett helps to illuminate Nietzsche's positive ethical doctrine, "Dove" goes on to show that recent work has not adequately thought through the implications for ethics, while Nietzsche has already accomplished precisely that. This is an important and original contribution to an ongoing debate.

Meaning (significance) and nature are this book's principal topics. They seem an odd couple, like raisins and numbers, though they elide when meanings of a global sort-ideologies and religions, for example-promote ontologies that subordinate nature. Setting one against the other makes reality contentious. It signifies workmates and a coal face to miners, gluons to physicists, prayer and redemption to priests. Are there many realities, or many perspectives on one? The answer I prefer is the comprehensive naturalism anticipated by Aristotle and Spinoza: "natura naturans, natura naturata." Nature naturing is an array of mutually conditioning material processes in spacetime. Each structure or event-storm clouds forming, nature natured-is self-differentiating, self-stabilizing, and sometimes self-disassembling; each alters or transforms a pre-existing state of affairs. This surmise anticipated discoveries and analyses to which neither thinker had access, though physics and biology confirm their hypothesis beyond reasonable doubt. Hence the question this book considers: Is reality divided:nature vrs. lived experience? Or is experience, with all its meanings and values, the complex expression of natural processes?