This book contains translations of Richard Methley's treatises dating from the 1480s including a guide to contemplative prayer, a spiritual diary, and an unknown work on the discernment of spirits.

This unique book clearly explains genetic and neuroimaging research on intelligence and how neuroscience findings may lead to enhancing it.

The essays in this collection examine developments in three fundamental biological disciplines--embryology, evolutionary biology, and genetics--in conflict with each other for much of the twentieth century. They consider key methodological problems and the difficulty of overcoming them. Richard Burian interweaves historical appreciation of the settings within which scientists work, substantial knowledge of the biological problems at stake and the methodological and philosophical issues faced in integrating biological knowledge drawn from disparate sources.

Early in the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno logie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, Edmund Husserl stated concisely the significance and scope of the problem with which this present study is concerned. When we reflect on how it is that consciousness, which is itself absolute in relation to the world, can yet take on the character of transcendence, how it can become mundanized, We see straightaway that it can do that only by means of a certain participation in (...) transcendence in the first, originary sense, which is manifestly the transcendence of material Nature. Only by means of the experiential relation to the animate organism does consciousness become really human and animal (tierischen), and only thereby does it achieve a place in the space and in the time of Nature. l Consciousness can become "worldly" only by being embodied within the world as part of it. In so far as the world is material Nature, consciousness must partake of the transcendence of material Nature. That is to say, its transcendence is manifestly an embodiment in a material, corporeal body. Consciousness, thus, takes on the characteristic of being "here and now" (ecceity) by means of experiential (or, more accurately, its intentive) relation to that corporeal being which embodies it. Accordingly, that there is a world for consciousness is a conse quence in the first instance of its embodiment by 2 that corporeal body which is for it its own animate organism. (shrink)

It has been about fifty years since the topic of divine impassibility was the subject of book-length philosophical treatments in English. In recent years process and analytic philosophers have returned this issue to the forefront of professional attention. Divine Impassibility traces the issue of classical sources, relates the positions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books, and surveys the writings of contemporary British analytic philosophers such as Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny, Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and H. P. Owen, American analytic (...) philosophers such as Norman Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, Nelson Pike, Robert Adams, and Bruce Reichenbach, and process philosophers such as Charles Hartshorne and Lewis Ford. The author shows that clear, adequate analysis of the issue must distinguish four respects in which God might be passible or impassible: nature, will, knowledge, and feeling. He shows also how decisions on this topic bear on numerous others in philosophical theology such as creation, eternality, evil, and human freedom. His creative proposals on these and other topics attempt to go beyond the difficulties of both classical and process conceptions of God. (shrink)

This honest, forthright, and beautifully-written book introduces readers to the human variations on medical topics spoken of in abstract in the daily news--euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, "extreme procedures", genetic testing, experimental surgeries--and to the people who must agonize over those decisions regarding themselves and their loved ones.

This volume is a comprehensive roadmap to the burgeoning area of affective sciences, which now spans several disciplines. The Handbook brings together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of mind. In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in understanding how brain processes shape emotions and are changed by human emotion. Drawing on a wide range of neuroimaging techniques, (...) neuropsychological assessment, and clinical research, scientists are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms for emotions. As a result, researchers are gaining insight into such compelling questions as: How do people experience life emotionally? Why do people respond so differently to the same experiences? What can the face tell us about internal states? How does emotion in significant social relationships influence health? Are there basic emotions common to all humans? This volume brings together the most eminent scholars in the field to present, in sixty original chapters, the latest research and theories in the field. The book is divided into ten sections: Neuroscience; Autonomic Psychophysiology; Genetics and Development; Expression; Components of Emotion; Personality; Emotion and Social Processes; Adaptation, Culture, and Evolution; Emotion and Psychopathology; and Emotion and Health. This major new volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers that will define affective sciences for the next decade. (shrink)

A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital organisms—computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. Populations of digital organisms often evolved the ability to perform complex logic functions requiring the coordinated execution of many genomic instructions. Complex functions evolved by building on simpler functions that had evolved earlier, provided that these were also selectively favoured. However, no particular intermediate stage was essential for evolving (...) complex functions. The first genotypes able to perform complex functions differed from their non-performing parents by only one or two mutations, but differed from the ancestor by many mutations that were also crucial to the new functions. In some cases, mutations that were deleterious when they appeared served as stepping-stones in the evolution of complex features. These findings show how complex functions can originate by random mutation and natural selection. (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being. Richard Westfall's biography captures in engaging detail both his private life and scientific career, presenting a complex picture of Newton the man, and as scientist, philosopher, theologian, alchemist, public figure, President of the Royal Society, and Warden of the Royal Mint. An abridged version of his magisterial study Never at Rest, (...) this concise biography makes Westfall's highly acclaimed portrait of Newton newly accessible to general readers. (shrink)

This authoritative new introduction draws on both Richard H. Popkin's unparalleled scholarship and a wealth of historical and philosophical sources to highlight the real influences behind Spinoza's thought. Popkin reconstructs Spinoza the man, and his theories, contrasting these findings with some of the popularity held misconceptions. Locating him within the context of his family and background, the author assesses the impact on Spinoza of everything from his infamous excommunication, to his affection for Euclidian geometry and the work of Descartes. (...) With a full account of Spinoza's groundbreaking Tractatus and Ethics, and an overview of his influence on both of his contemporaries and those who were to folow, this concise survey offers a variety of new perspectives, and will be warmly welcomed by students, scholars and interested readers alike. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan theory suggests that we should shift our moral attention from the local to the global. Richard Vernon argues, however, that if we adopt cosmopolitan beliefs about justice we must re-examine our beliefs about political obligation. Far from undermining the demands of citizenship, cosmopolitanism implies more demanding political obligations than theories of the state have traditionally recognized. Using examples including humanitarian intervention, international criminal law, and international political economy, Vernon suggests we have a responsibility not to enhance risks facing (...) other societies and to assist them when their own risk-taking has failed. The central arguments in Cosmopolitan Regard are that what we owe to other societies rests on the same basis as what we owe to our own, and that a theory of cosmopolitanism must connect the responsibilities of citizens beyond their own borders with their obligations to one another"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

These challenging essays defend Romanticism against its critics. They argue that Romantic thought, interpreted as the pursuit of freedom in concrete contexts, remains a central and exemplary form of both artistic work and philosophical understanding. Marshalling a wide range of texts from literature, philosophy and criticism, Richard Eldridge traces the central themes and stylistic features of Romantic thinking in the work of Kant, Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Hardy, Wittgenstein, Cavell and Updike. Through his analysis he shows that Romanticism is neither emptily (...) literary and escapist nor dogmatically optimistic and sentimental. This is the first serious philosophical defense of the ethical ideals of Romanticism and will appeal particularly to all professionals and students in philosophy, literature and aesthetics who are interested in what, philosophically, literature can show that philosophy cannot say. (shrink)

Since economies are dynamic processes driven by creativity, social norms, and emotions as well as rational calculation, why do economists largely study them using static equilibrium models and narrow rationalistic assumptions? Economic activity is as much a function of imagination and social sentiments as of the rational optimisation of given preferences and goods. Richard Bronk argues that economists can best model and explain these creative and social aspects of markets by using new structuring assumptions and metaphors derived from the (...) poetry and philosophy of the Romantics. By bridging the divide between literature and science, and between Romanticism and narrow forms of Rationalism, economists can access grounding assumptions, models, and research methods suitable for comprehending the creativity and social dimensions of economic activity. This is a guide to how economists and other social scientists can broaden their analytical repertoire to encompass the vital role of sentiments, language, and imagination. (shrink)

Richard Cross provides the first full study of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, examining his account of the processes involved in cognition, from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. Cross places Scotus's thought clearly within the context of 13th-century study on the mind, and of his intellectual forebears.

The Cognitive Integration (henceforth CI) framework posits the existence of integrated cognitive systems (henceforth ICS). In this chapter we outline the nature of ICS and their phylogenetic history. We shall argue that phylogenetically earlier forms of cognition are built upon by more recent cultural innovations. Many of the phylogenetically earlier components are forms of sensorimotor interactions with the environment (Menary 2007a, 2010a, 2016). These sensorimotor interactions are redeployed (or retrained) to service more recent cultural innovations (Dehaene & Cohen 2007). The (...) main aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the CI framework in terms of phylogenetically ancient embodied interactions with the environment and the more recent culturally evolved practices that redeploy our primitive capacities for sensorimotor interactions and manipulations of tools, objects and, in a very recent innovation, public systems of representation. In doing so, we provide a case for the enculturation of our bodies and brains. (shrink)

The distinction between phenotype and genotype is fundamental to the understanding of heredity and development of organisms. The genotype of an organism is the class to which that organism belongs as determined by the description of the actual physical material made up of DNA that was passed to the organism by its parents at the organism's conception. For sexually reproducing organisms that physical material consists of the DNA contributed to the fertilized egg by the sperm and egg of its two (...) parents. For asexually reproducing organisms, for example bacteria, the inherited material is a direct copy of the DNA of its parent. The phenotype of an organism is the class to which that organism belongs as determined by the description of the physical and behavioral characteristics of the organism, for example its size and shape, its metabolic activities and its pattern of movement. (shrink)

Much of the material found herein originally appeared in The concept of matter, edited by E. McMullin, which consisted of rev. papers from a conference held at the University of Notre Dame, Sept. 5-9, 1961. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Understanding Elias -- Origins of Elias's synthesis -- Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim -- The civilizing process : the structure of a classic -- Involved detachment : knowledge and self-knowledge in Elias -- The symbol theory : secular humanism as a research programme -- Concluding remarks : the fourth blow to man's narcissism.

Volume 23, Issue 3, September 2020, Page 302-313.

Husserl's marginal remarks in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik clearly do not reflect the same intense effort to penetrate Heidegger's thought that we find in his marginal notes in Sein und Zeit. Merely in terms of length, Husserl's comments in the published German text occupy only one-third the number of pages.2 Pages 1-5, 43-121, and 125-1673 contain no reading marks at all-over half of the 236 pages of KPM. This suggests that Husserl either read these pages with no intention (...) of returning to the text or skipped large parts of the middle of the text altogether.4 His remarks often express frustration or a resigned recognition of the now unbridgeable, irrevocable gap between himself and Heidegger. (shrink)

Epiphenomenalism claims that all conscious events are caused immediately by brain events, and no conscious events cause brain events. In order to have a justified belief in a theory someone needs a justified belief that it or some higher-level theory predicts certain events and those events occurred. To have either of the latter beliefs we depend ultimately on the evidence of apparent experience, memory, and testimony, which is credible in the absence of defeaters; it is an undermining defeater to a (...) belief produced by apparent memory that it was not caused by a past belief, and to a belief produced by apparent testimony that it was not caused by an intention to say what the speaker believes. A justified belief in epiphenomenalism requires either evidence about when conscious events occurred or evidence about what some theory that brain events are caused solely by physical events predicts, but epiphenomenalism rules out the availability of the evidence of apparent memory and testimony on these matters. Hence only a rare individual scientist who could hold in her mind at one time the proof that a theory makes certain predictions could have a justified belief that epiphenomenalism is true. It follows that recent neurophysiological work in the tradition of Libet has no tendency whatever to provide a justified belief in epiphenomenalism. (shrink)

To become fully aware of the original and radical character of his transcendental phenomenology Edmund Husserl must be located within the historical tradition of Western philosophy. Although he was not a historian of philosophy, Husserl's his torical reflections convinced him that phenomenology is the necessary culmination of a centuries-old endeavor and the solution to the contemporary crisis in European science and European humanity itself.l This teleological viewpoint re quires the commentator to consider the tradition of Western philosophy from Husserl's own (...) perspective. Husserl maintained that the Cartesian tum to the "Cogito" represents the crucial breakthrough in the historical advance of Western thought toward philosophy as rigorous science. Hence 2 he concentrated almost exclusively on the modem era. Much has been written of Husserl's relationship to Descartes, Kant, and the neo-Kantians. His connections with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have not been examined as closely despite his fre quent allusions to these British empiricists. Among these thinkers David Hume gained from Husserl the more extensive considera tion. Commentators have pointed out correctly that Husserl always criticized unsparingly Hume's sheer empiricistic approach to the problem of cognition. Such an approach, in Husserl's view, can only result in the "naturalization of consciousness" from which stem that "psychologism" and "sensualism" which lead Hume inevitably into the contradictory impasse of solipsism 3 and skepticism. (shrink)

This is the third volume to appear in an edition that will be the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all of Nietzsche's work. Volume 2: _Unfashionable Observations_, translated by Richard T. Gray, was published in 1995; Volume 3: _Human, All Too Human _, translated by Gary Handwerk, was published in 1997. The edition is a new English translation, by various hands, of the celebrated Colli-Montinari edition, which has been acclaimed as one of the most important works (...) of scholarship in the humanities in the last half century. The present volume provides for the first time English translations of all of Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks from the summer of 1872 to the end of 1874. The major works published in this period were the first three _Unfashionable Observations_: "David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer," "On the Utility and Liability of History for Life," and "Schopenhauer as Educator." Translations of the preliminary notes for these pieces are coordinated with the translations of the published texts printed in Volume 2: _Unfashionable Observations_. The content of these notebooks goes far beyond the notes and plans for published and unpublished _Unfashionable Observations_, encompassing numerous sketches related to Nietzsche's major philological project from this period, a book on the pre-Platonic Greek philosophers. The ideas that emerged from Nietzsche's deliberations on these early Greek thinkers are absolutely central to his thought from this period and contribute in significant ways to the development of several of his major themes: the role of the philosopher vis-à-vis his age and the surrounding culture; the relationships among philosophy, art, and culture; the metaphorical nature of language and its relationship to knowledge; the unmasking of the modern drive for absolute "truth" as a palliative against the horror of existence; and Nietzsche's "unfashionable" attack on modern science and modern culture, especially on the Germany of the Bismarck Reich. These notebooks represent important transitional documents in Nietzsche's intellectual development, marking, among other things, the shift away from philological studies toward unabashed cultural criticism. (shrink)