Search results

Much has been written on Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) and his work on the history of religions, but little attention has been given to Eliade's idea of a `new humanism' for modern culture. Yet this vision, as David Cave argues in this detailed analysis, was the motivating impulse behind much of Eliade's life and work as a scholar of religion and as a writer.

This is the second of two collections of correspondence written by early modern English women philosophers. In this volume, Jacqueline Broad presents letters from three influential thinkers of the eighteenth century: Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Broad provides introductory essays for each figure and explanatory annotations to clarify unfamiliar language, content, and historical context for the modern reader. Her selections make available many letters that have n...

"How is it that the mind perceives the words of a verse as a verse and not just as a string of words? One answer to this question is that to do so the mind itself must already be unified as a simple thing without parts (and perhaps must therefore be immortal). Kant called this argument the Achilles, perhaps because of its apparent invincibility, and perhaps also because it has a fatal weak spot, or perhaps because it is the champion argument of rationalism. The argument and the problem it addres...

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of t...

Dualism argues that the mind is more than just the brain. It holds that there exists two very different realms, one mental and the other physical. Both are fundamental and one cannot be reduced to the other - there are minds and there is a physical world. This book examines and defends the most famous dualist account of the mind, the cartesian, which attributes the immaterial contents of the mind to an immaterial self. John Foster's new book exposes the inadequacies of the dominant materialist a...

What is the nature of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity? And what is the relation of brain studies to individual experience? How can we avoid the mysteries of dualism and the implausibilities of reductionism? How do Eastern and Western conceptions of mind, consciousness, and self differ? These are the kind of dizzying questions that are asked by those working in consciousness studies. They are foundational for psychological science and now, to meet the need for an authoritative r...

This book shows how the brain-mind-body is a self-organizing system that constructs our experience of reality. Drawing upon the latest brain research and highlighting the connection to quantum physics, the author traces the development of intelligence from infancy to adulthood and explores the profound biological dynamic between the heart and mind. He further analyzes the major negative forces that hamper the development of intelligence and indicates children's premature exposure to such institu...

Over the past three decades, the challenge that conscious experience poses to physicalism-the widely held view that the universe is a completely physical system-has provoked a growing debate in philosophy of mind studies and given rise to a great deal of literature on the subject. Ideal for courses in consciousness and the philosophy of mind, Consciousness and The Mind-Body Problem: A Reader presents thirty-three classic and contemporary readings, organized into five sections that cover the m...

Love-unconditional, selfless, unchanging, sincere, and totally accepting-is worshipped today as the West's only universal religion. To challenge it is one of our few remaining taboos. In this pathbreaking and superbly written book, philosopher Simon May does just that, dissecting our resilient ruling ideas of love and showing how they are the product of a long and powerful cultural heritage. Tracing over 2,500 years of human thought and history, May shows how our ideal of love developed from it...

Manifest Activity presents and critically examines Thomas Reid's doctrines about the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world. Reid is one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, but hitherto under-appreciated; through the reconstruction of his arguments, many of which have never before been discussed, Gideon Yaffe demonstrates that Reid's simple prose and direct style belie the complexity of the views...

The assumptions we make about human nature form the basis of how we ourselves live, and of how society is organized. This book deals with the ideas of ten of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western thought. Wars have been fought and revolutions begun because of some of the theories discussed. They form the basis of many important views in religion, politics and beyond, and as such cannot be ignored. The book examines the thinkers in their historical context and looks for their re...

Although generally philosophers have put a high valuation on reason, increasingly the role of emotions in motivating action is being recognized. The essays in this volume explore the emotions from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Aristotelian views of the passions to the new findings of cognitive science, and from such diverse starting points as medieval literature and psychological studies.

Steven Nadler presents the first English translation of a seminal work in the history of early modern philosophy. Geraud de Cordemoy's Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Soul and the Body (originally published in French in 1666) offers an account of the mind and the body in a human being. Cordemoy is an unorthodox Cartesian who opts for an atomist conception of body and matter. In this groundbreaking treatise, he also presents one of the earliest arguments for an occasionalist account...

Gilbert Harman presents a selection of fifteen interconnected essays on fundamental issues at the centre of analytic philosophy. The book opens with a group of four essays discussing basic principles of reasoning and rationality. The next three essays argue against the idea that certain claims are true by virtue of meaning and knowable by virtue of meaning. In the third group of essays Harman sets out his own view of meaning, arguing that it depends upon the functioning of concepts in reasoning...

The ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle have had a major influence on the work of Anthony Kenny, who has explored many aspects of the philosophy of mind in a series of books over the past twenty-five years. Modelled on the structure of Ryle's The Concept of Mind, this book forges Kenny's ideas on philosophical psychology into a systematic whole. Written in a style that avoids jargon and academic controversy, it is both accessible to the general reader and challenging for the specialist...

Service Life Prediction of Polymeric Materials: Global Perspectives combines developed content derived from topics discussed in the Fourth International Symposium on Service Life Prediction (Key Largo, Florida, December 2006). This critical examination of the existing and alternative methodologies used to assess the service life of polymeric materials presents readers with the advances in accelerated and field exposure testing protocols. Written by established experts in the service life communi...