Focusing on the question of how to be in the world, ontological religion often comes in forms that look very little like our standard expectations for religious institutions. Intuitive, experiential, and often taking a mystical bent, this direct kind of religious practice nevertheless needs guideposts for its participants. The literature of fly fishing serves as one such guidepost, offering a forum for a kind of spiritual public consciousness that can be drawn upon at will by those who seek it. This (...) article explores the parallels between fly fishing, its literature, and the kinds of spiritual statements that are regularly found among religious practitioners who are most concerned with questions about how to live. I am arguing here that fly fishing literature forms an implicit repository for a religious form of consciousness and a religious way of being in the world. (shrink)

Flow has been described as a state of optimal performance, experienced universally across a broad range of domains: from art to athletics, gaming to writing. However, its phenomenal characteristics can, at first glance, be puzzling. Firstly, individuals in flow supposedly report a loss of self-awareness, even though they perform in a manner which seems to evince their agency and skill. Secondly, flow states are felt to be effortless, despite the prerequisite complexity of the tasks that engender them. In this paper, (...) we unpick these features of flow, as well as others, through the active inference framework, which posits that action and perception are forms of active Bayesian inference directed at sustained self-organisation; i.e., the minimisation of variational free energy. We propose that the phenomenology of flow is rooted in the deployment of high precision weight over (i) the expected sensory consequences of action and (ii) beliefs about how action will sequentially unfold. This computational mechanism thus draws the embodied cognitive system to minimise the ensuing (i.e., expected) free energy through the exploitation of the pragmatic affordances at hand. Furthermore, given the challenging dynamics the flow-inducing situation presents, attention must be wholly focussed on the unfolding task whilst counterfactual planning is restricted, leading to the attested loss of the sense of self-as-object. This involves the inhibition of both the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher–order, meta-cognitive forms of self-conceptualisation. Nevertheless, we stress that self-awareness is not entirely lost in flow. Rather, it is pre-reflective and bodily. Our approach to bodily-action-centred phenomenology can be applied to similar facets of seemingly agentive experience beyond canonical flow states, providing insights into the mechanisms of so-called selfless experiences, embodied expertise and wellbeing. (shrink)

Leading scholars critically assess the pioneering environmental philosophy of J. Baird Callicott.

Griffin’s book contributes to the literature of cumulative arguments for God’s existence, revealing the deficiencies of the “God Almighty” of traditional theism (i.e., Gawd) and the strengths of a Whiteheadian process theism (i.e., God). Since the concept of omnipotence is central, it is imperative to note that there are three ideas of divine power in traditional theism, not always carefully parsed by Griffin. Evolutionary theory requires rethinking theism, but, contrary to Griffin, many of the problems posed by the theory are (...) less for belief in Gawd than for fundamentalism. Nevertheless, an interactive dipolar deity fits most naturally with evolutionary thinking to provide a concept of God All-Loving. Griffin is at his best discussing the ground of abstract truths. He does not, however, avail himself of some of the best arguments against traditional theism found in Hartshorne’s work; there is also the question whether Griffin would accept Hartshorne’s idea of the modal coincidence of God’s existence and all possibility and how this would affect his cumulative case. (shrink)

Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology, is widely recognized both as a major contributor to contemporary discussions of the relations between science and religion and as a philosopher-theologian of great originality. Although Clayton invariably couches his arguments and conclusions in fallibilist terms, this is, by any measure, an ambitious book. It is the closest thing yet to his magnum opus. Included are revisions of fifteen previously published articles that appeared between 1997 and 2008 and revisions (...) of two lectures delivered at Claremont in 2004.Following the editor's introduction, the book is divided into five parts. Part 1 could be read as a commentary on Whitehead's .. (shrink)

Strategies for dealing with problems and making decisions in a moral way.

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about community service. Ronald W. Poplau explores the major shortcomings of today's education and introduces community service as a viable means to correct them. The book is based on 11 years of a program that the State of Kansas enacted into law.

Is believing in "minds" as qualitatively distinct from "bodies" just wrong headed? Did René Descartes set us off on a four hundred year wild goose chase? How should we think about this traditional dichotomy? With Wayne Alt, Alicia Juerrero, and Daniel Robinson.

This dissertation seeks to explicate the fundamental contributions of phenomenology to the philosophy of language as it is presently conceived in the Anglo-American tradition for which John Searle serves as the representative. They are the essence of language in the later essays of Martin Heidegger and the perspicacious description of the experience of speaking in Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ;After roughly describing the subjectivistic assumptions, the questions, and the goals of the philosophy of language in the works of Searle, the study proceeds (...) to explore how phenomenology's characteristic search for essences and concern for lived-experience can set it on a more circumspect path. ;The study elicits the following conclusions. Despite significant contrasts, there is a solid complementarity between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty as phenomenologists concerned with the language phenomenon. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty make substantial contributions to the philosophy of language. Specifically, its traditional subjectivistic assumptions are phenomenologically re-thought; answers to its customary questions are formulated from a pre-subjective and pre-objective perspective; and the traditional problem of how language and speaking can be creative is resolved. Finally, some of the concerns of a complete philosophy of language left unaddressed by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are itemized. (shrink)

It is strange to write for the pages of this journal a statement which will not come under the eye of its founding editor, Sheldon Sacks. For nearly five years everything that appeared in Critical Inquiry—articles, critical responses, editorial comments—was a matter of painstaking and passionate concern to Shelly Sacks. With a flow of questions and suggestions and a talent for unabashed cajolery, he generated articles and rejoinders to those articles. He worked tirelessly in editorial consultation and correspondence with contributors, (...) especially young writers, helping them to discover the best way of giving form to their ideas. Among the essays submitted to this journal he searched eagerly, even anxiously, for those which seemed, in his words, "right for C.I." What was right for C. I. was never, for Shelly Sacks, a cut-and-dried choice. In his own intellectual life, in his teaching and writing, he delighted in arguing important general questions: theories of representation in the arts, points of possible intersection between linguistic science and literary criticism, the interplay of social forces and cultural expressions. Not surprisingly, in reconnoitering for Critical Inquiry, he found special satisfaction in identifying writers who shared his passion for reexamining fundamental topics in the intellectual disciplines. If such writers made their case forcefully, so much the better: in choosing an essay for publication he assessed its capacity to stimulate interesting counterargument. At no time, however, did Shelly Sacks confuse his own beliefs with the nature of intellectual discourse. As an editor he was hospitable to writers whose premises he questioned and whose conclusions he deplored. Nor did Shelly attempt to achieve a spurious catholicity by following a quiet quota system designed to give each major line of interpretation—deconstructionist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, what have you—an occasional airing in Critical Inquiry. For Shelly each article stood on its own ground: if its author dealt responsibly and freshly with an interesting problem, that was enough. And, along with his commitment to theoretical inquiry, he responded warmly to the personal, the offbeat, the idiosyncratic. He regarded the feature Artists on Art, for example, as a central element in our design. As an editor Sheldon Sacks was above all a shaper. He labored to find and suggest connections in the phenomena of intellectual life. Even the construction of a table of contents for a typical Critical Inquiry issue became for him an opportunity to influence the reader's experience of what we offered. The eminence of an author or the allure of a title were put to one side as Shelly sought to orchestrate, through placement, a kind of intellectual counterpoint from one essay to another. Unheard melodies, doubtless, for many of us, but for Shelly real and sustaining. In this valedictory note we have spoken of Sheldon Sacks' editorial accomplishment—in our friendly view, a very distinguished one—rather than of the personal qualities which made working alongside him an exhilarating experience. We should report, however, that for more than half the life of this journal Shelly was ill and knew that the time available to him was likely to be relatively brief. Faced with this diminishing perspective, he did not—indeed it is more accurate to say he could not—moderate his involvement with the life of this journal. At his death, as at the launching of this enterprise, he held to the high ambition that Critical Inquiry encourage comeliness, vigor, and continuity in the discourse of our time. The appropriate "critical response" to this great loss is that Sheldon Sacks’ editorial colleagues, and our publisher, the University of Chicago Press, pledge whatever talents and energies we possess to the continuing life of the journal he imagined and brought into being. (shrink)

This article describes some historical precursors that led to William James’s participation in the Hibbert Lectures and his subsequent publication of A Pluralistic Universe. William James viewed the monism–pluralism issue as the greatest issue the human mind can frame, and he returned to this issue again and again in his psychological and philosophical works. The Hibbert Lectures afforded an opportunity to explore the problem of monism and pluralism in a broadly religious or spiritual context. We describe James’s logical and experiential (...) attacks on monistic thinkers, his seemingly paradoxical introduction of Gustav Fechner’s panpsychism to English-speaking philosophers, and his spirited defense of pluralism. We conclude by discussing the relevance of James’s pluralism for current questions of unification in psychology. (shrink)

Debates about the ethical and social implications of research that aims to extend human longevity by intervening in the ageing process have paid little attention to the attitudes of members of the general public. In the absence of empirical evidence, conflicting assumptions have been made about likely public attitudes towards life-extension. In light of recent calls for greater public involvement in such discussions, this target article presents findings from focus groups and individual interviews which investigated whether members of the general (...) public identify ethical issues surrounding life-extension, and if so, what these ethical issues are? In this study, while some participants were concerned primarily with the likely personal consequences of life-extension, for others the question of whether or not to pursue interventions to extend longevity, and how they should be implemented, clearly raised important ethical issues, many of which have been prominent in debates among bioethicists. (shrink)

“Yet another book on Tocqueville!” This was the opening line of Delba Winthrop’s review of Sheldon Wolin’s Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life in 2002. In...

Andrew Wayne discusses some recent attempts to account, within a Bayesian framework, for the "common methodological adage" that "diverse evidence better confirms a hypothesis than does the same amount of similar evidence". One of the approaches considered by Wayne is that suggested by Howson and Urbach and dubbed the "correlation approach" by Wayne. This approach is, indeed, incomplete, in that it neglects the role of the hypothesis under consideration in determining what diversity in a body of evidence (...) is relevant diversity. In this paper, it is shown how this gap can be filled, resulting in a more satisfactory account of the evidential role of diversity of evidence. In addition, it is argued that Wayne's criticism of the correlation approach does not indicate a serious flaw in the approach. (shrink)

A project of the Gandhi Centennial Committee of Southern Illinois University, the book outlines the basic tenets of Gandhian philosophy as interpreted by Western thinkers, deals with problems of American education, and offers some reflec­tions on what kinds of solutions may be posed by educators, primarily at the university level. The Foreword and Epilogue are by two distinguished Indian educators, _K. L. Shrimali_, Vice-chancellor, and _N. A. Nikam_, former Vice-chancellor, University of Mysore.

Existing scholarship on the debates over expertise in mid‐nineteenth‐century Britain has demonstrated the importance of popular writings on the sciences to definitions of scientific authority. Yet while men of science might position themselves in opposition to the stereotype of the merely popular writer, the self‐identity of the popular writer remained ambiguous. This essay examines the careers of William Charles Linnaeus Martin and Thomas Milner and places them in the context of others who made their living by writing works on the (...) sciences for the general reader. Martin wrote on zoology and Milner moved between astronomy, geology, and geography. The essay unravels the close but ambivalent relationship between the professions of authorship and of science and highlights writing as another aspect of scientific practice. Both writers were moderately financially successful, but Martin’s sense of failure and Milner’s satisfaction reflect their contrasting images of their professional identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that visual attention is cognitively penetrated by intention. I present a detailed account of attention and its neural basis, drawing on a recent computational model of neural modulation during attention: divisive normalization. I argue that intention shifts computations during divisive normalization. The epistemic consequences of attentional bias are discussed.

This essay argues that current theories of action fail to explain agentive control because they have left out a psychological capacity central to control: attention. This makes it impossible to give a complete account of the mental antecedents that generate action. By investigating attention, and in particular the intention-attention nexus, we can characterize the functional role of intention in an illuminating way, explicate agentive control so that we have a uniform explanation of basic cases of causal deviance in action as (...) well as other defects of agency, explain cases of skilled agency and sharpen questions about the role of thought in agency. This provides for a different orientation in the theory of action. (shrink)

Jonathan Kvanvig's book, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Kvanvig, 2003), is a wonderful example of doing epistemology in a style that Kvanvig himself has termed "value−driven epistemology." On this approach, one takes questions about epistemic value to be central to theoretical concerns, including the concern to provide an adequate account of knowledge. This approach yields the demand that theories of knowledge must provide, not just an adequate account of the nature of knowledge, but also an account (...) of the value of knowledge. Given the near−universal assumption that knowledge has a special kind of value, this demand seems reasonable, though surprisingly hard to satisfy. Another consequence of this approach to doing epistemology is that certain assumptions about epistemic value, like what sorts of things have it and what sorts of things don't, and where such value comes from, become much more salient to the epistemic enterprise. In his book, Kvanvig challenges the assumption that knowledge has some unique store of epistemic value. And he investigates the matter by asking questions about what the bearers of epistemic value are and where they get it. He concludes, of course, that knowledge as we have come to conceive it in 21st century epistemology has no such special value. (shrink)