IntroductionAlthough the topic of consciousness is both mysterious and controversial, psychedelic drugs are popularly believed to provide unique insights into the nature of consciousness despite a lack of empirical evidence.MethodsThis study addresses the question of whether psychedelics change the attribution of consciousness to a range of living and non-living entities. A survey was conducted in 1,606 respondents who endorsed a belief changing psychedelic experience.ResultsParticipants rated their attributions of consciousness to a range of living and non-living entities before and after their (...) psychedelic experience. Superstitious beliefs and belief in freewill were also assessed. From before the experience to after, there were large increases in attribution of consciousness to various entities including non-human primates, quadrupeds, insects, fungi, plants, inanimate natural objects, and inanimate manmade objects. Higher ratings of mystical experience were associated with greater increases in the attribution of consciousness. Moreover, the increased attributions of consciousness did not decrease in those who completed the survey years after the psychedelic experience. In contrast to attributions of consciousness, beliefs in freewill and superstitions did not change. Notably, all findings were similar when restricted to individuals reporting on their first psychedelic experience.DiscussionThis study demonstrates that, among people who reported belief-changing psychedelic experiences, attribution of consciousness to various entities increases. Future prospective psychedelic drug administration studies that control for expectancies are needed. (shrink)

The book follows on the heels of the acclaimed Criticism of Heaven, being the second volume of a five volume series called Criticism of Heaven and Earth.

On trouve dans l'oeuvre de saint Augustin plusieurs allusions à Sagesse 7:27b: in seipsa manens innouat omnia. Il est évident que la source principale de l'expression manens in se, fréquemment employée par l'évêque africain, est le Livre de la Sagesse. Dans les «Confessions» VII, IX, 14, Augustin affirme que l'origine de cette doctrine se trouve dans le «Libri platonicorum». L'A. montre qu'il a facilement pu extraire cette phrase des «Ennéades» de Plotin, ainsi que l'idée de l'action divine dans le monde (...) malgré le caractère immuable de Dieu. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to situate the notion of reification as a neutral foundation for the three spheres of recognition. Reification, as a negative concept, allows the possibility of recognition to take place in Axel Honneth’s three spheres of recognition; namely, love, law, and esteem. My argument is that the givenness of these positive aspects of recognition is made possible by the existence of necessary reifications to which pathologies allow a certain form of intersubjective realisations. This form brings (...) about the possibility of an “otherwise” situation. Drawing from the intersubjective theory of recognition in Georg Hegel’s and Martin Heidegger’s instrumentalist hermeneutics (i.e., Vorhandenheit) of authenticity, I aim to pursue the necessary qualification to which reification is to be considered as a neutral ground for normativity to germinate. My contention is that the neutral state of reification is made possible when it is seen as a productive discourse situation in which recognition becomes possible. (shrink)

The primary meaning of the Song would then have to do with human sexual love—the experience of it, its delights, its fidelity, and its power.

This study offers a specific interpretation of the Taiping Revolution in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not only the largest revolutionary movement in the world at the time, but also one that was inspired by Christianity. Indeed, it marks the moment when the revolutionary religious tradition arrived in China. My account of the revolution stresses the role of the Bible, its radical reinterpretation by the Taiping revolutionaries, and the role it played in their revolutionary acts and reconstruction of (...) economic and social relations. After providing this account, I raise a number of implications for Marxist approaches to religion. These involve the revolutionary religious tradition, first identified by Engels and established by Karl Kautsky, the question of political ambivalence of a religion like Christianity, and the distinction between ontological and temporal transcendence. (shrink)

Report on the workshop "Empirical Methods of Linguistics in Philosophy", which took place at TU Dortmund University, Germany, on March 13–14, 2014.

The paper explores three areas in which Avicenna had an important influence on the metaphysics of Henry of Ghent: first, in developing an argument for the existence of God in metaphysics rather than in physics; secondly, in his intentional distinction between essence and existence; and thirdly, in his arguments not merely that there is only one God, but that it is impossible for there to be many gods, his arguments which Henry clearly took from books one and eight of Avicenna’s (...) ’Metaphysics’. (shrink)

Translation exercises are useful for teaching philosophical writing in higher education, but are not commonly used for this purpose. The article details the benefits such exercises may have for the motivation of students and for the improvement of their writing skills, particularly the kind of linguistic scrutiny required in much, if not all of philosophy. By way of example, some experiences with teaching J. L. Austin’s "How to Do Things With Words" in this way are discussed.

The possibility of consistency between the basic quantum principles of quantum mechanics and wave function collapse is reexamined. A specific interpretation of environment is proposed for this aim and is applied to decoherence. When the organization of a measuring apparatus is taken into account, this approach leads also to an interpretation of wave function collapse, which would result in principle from the same interactions with environment as decoherence. This proposal is shown consistent with the non-separable character of quantum mechanics.

Philip Kitcher has advanced an epistemology of science that purports to be naturalistic. For Kitcher, this entails that his epistemology of science must explain the correctness of belief-regulating norms while endorsing a realist notion of truth. This paper concerns whether or not Kitcher's epistemology of science is naturalistic on these terms. I find that it is not but that by supplementing the account we can secure its naturalistic standing.

This present volume is the twenty-ninth in the Re-Reading the Canon series, the title of each of which volumes begins Feminist Interpretations of . . . . Surprisingly, the volume on Augustine has appeared relatively late in the series. The editor has collected eleven essays plus a poem on feminist interpretations of the bishop of Hippo, who has certainly exerted a powerful influence on the view of women in the Western Christian churches of all major denominations. Besides the essays, Stark (...) has provided a substantial introduction to the volume in which she touches upon the principal events of Augustine's life and briefly sketches the main points of each essay.The feminist interpretations of Augustine included in the volume represent a broad spectrum running from quite radical to fairly moderate or even tame approaches. In "Augustine, Sexuality, Gender, and Women," Rosemary Radford Ruether presents a call to critique the views of Augustine from which women and men have suffered for over 1500 years in Western Christianity. Anne-Marie Bowery argues in "Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ" that Augustine's portrait of Monica allows us to "reframe the masculine image of the divinity" that is. (shrink)

We prove that if $A$, $B$ are noncomputable c.e. sets, $A<_{sQ_{1}}B$ and [($B$ is not simple and $A\oplus B\leq _{sQ_{1}}B$) or $B\equiv _{sQ_{1}}B\times \omega $], then there exist infinitely many pairwise $sQ_{1}$-incomparable c.e. sets $\{C_{i}\}_{i\in \omega }$ such that $A<_{sQ_{1}}C_{i}<_{sQ_{1}}B$, for all $i\in \omega $. We also show that there exist infinite collections of $sQ_{1}$-degrees $\{\boldsymbol {a_{i}}\}_{i\in \omega }$ and $\{\boldsymbol {b_{i}}\}_{i\in \omega }$ such that for every $i, j,$ (1) $\boldsymbol {a_{i}}<_{sQ_{1}}\boldsymbol {a_{i+1}}$, $\boldsymbol {b_{j+1}}<_{sQ_{1}}\boldsymbol {b_{j}}$ and $\boldsymbol {a_{i}}<_{sQ_{1}}\boldsymbol {b_{j}}$; (...) (2) every c.e set in $\boldsymbol {a_{i}}$ is a maximal set; and (3) every c.e. set in $\boldsymbol {b_{j}}$ is a non-maximal hyperhypersimple set. We prove that a noncomputable c.e. $sQ$-degree contains either only one or infinitely many c.e. $sQ_{1}$-degrees. The $sQ_{1}$-degrees of c.e. cylinders are dense upper semilattice. (shrink)