1st ser. An objectively impartial criticism of the life of man; or, Beelzebub's tales to his grandson. -- 2d ser. Meetings with remarkable men. -- 3d ser. Life is real only then, when "I am.".

1914 Glimpses of Truth written by one of Gurdjieff s circle in Moscow Strange events, incomprehensible from the ordinary point of view, have guided my life. ...

This richly complex book, one of the most challenging and rewarding works of twentie -century literature, is generally considered Gurdjieff's masterpiece.

An analysis of the life and teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff from the point of view of the traditional religious and metaphysical doctrines he claimed to represent. (Philosophy).

Charlatan, magician, heroic man of action, revolutionary... Gurdjieff's rich and vivid life conjures up conflicting images. But who was the real Gurdjieff? On the fiftieth anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, James Moore draws on a lifetime's contact with Gurdjieffian pupils to tell the compelling and extraordinary stow of this eclectic revolutionary: his studies with the Red Hat Tibetan Lamas at the turn of the century, his travels disguised as a dervish, and how he was shot and almost killed (...) twice. This inveterate and restless seeker of the truth coaxed from archaic sources relevant philosophy that drew tides of men and women to his cause. Through the humanity and dry humor of his writing, and through scholarship evidenced in an unprecedented note section, Moore offers the reader an entertaining and reliable introduction to one of the most remarkable men of this century. (shrink)

Introduction Tf HE ideas we shall deal with here represent only one aspect of the teaching transmitted during his life by GI Gurdjieff. ...

When The Teachers of Gurdjieff was first published some 25 years ago, it made a very considerable stir. George Gurdjieff was one of the most famous mystics before the war, a teaching master who had many fashionable and influential pupils. He had a striking appearance and manner of teaching, one that was to prove influential. The meaning of his teaching and the sources of it were a puzzle. How did he come by his knowledge? What was to become (...) of it? These were questions that engaged many seekers. This book offers, among the adventures of the search and the souks of Baghdad and Aleppo, striking and timeless advice to those interested in finding spirituality. Its appeal is far beyond that of one seeker in one era, but offers us information, today, on how to evaluate different forms of teaching, how to study, and even some tantalizing information on the role of Jesus. (shrink)

Idealist philosopher Georg Hegel defied the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and developed his own dialectical alternative. Remarkable for its breadth and profundity, this work combines aspects of psychology, logic, moral philosophy, and history to form a comprehensive view that encompasses all forms of civilization. Its three divisions consist of the subjective mind (dealing with anthropology and psychology), the objective mind (concerning philosophical issues of law and morals), and the absolute mind (covering fine arts, religion, and philosophy). Wide-ranging (...) in its influence, this survey of the evolution of consciousness is essential reading for all students of philosophy and history. (shrink)

The topic of a priori knowledge is approached through the theory of evidence. A shortcoming in traditional formulations of moderate rationalism and moderate empiricism is that they fail to explain why rational intuition and phenomenal experience count as basic sources of evidence. This explanatory gap is filled by modal reliabilism -- the theory that there is a qualified modal tie between basic sources of evidence and the truth. This tie to the truth is then explained by the theory of concept (...) possession: this tie is a consequence of what, by definition, it is to possess (i.e., to understand) one’s concepts. A corollary of the overall account is that the a priori disciplines (logic, mathematics, philosophy) can be largely autonomous from the empirical sciences. (shrink)

This important new work surveys the source and ramifications of the famed Nuremburg Code -- recognized around the world as one of the cornerstones of modern bioethics.

"This book is a sorely needed corrective. Animal Spirits is an important--maybe even a decisive--contribution at a difficult juncture in macroeconomic theory.

TRANSLATORS PREFACE THE PRESENT TRANSLATION OF GEORG SIMMEL'S Schopen- hauer und Nietzsche: Ein Vortragszyklus (1907), ...

touch 27 Thirrdly, the straining of the eye 28 The occasions which suggest distance have in their own nature no relation to it 29 A difficult case proposed by Dr. Barrow as repugnant to all the known theories 30 This case contradicts a ...

Functionalism would be mistaken if there existed a system of deviant relations (an “anti-mind”) that had the same functional roles as the standard mental relations. In this paper such a system is constructed, using “Quinean transformations” of the sort associated with Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. For example, a mapping m from particularistic propositions (e.g., that there exists a rabbit) to universalistic propositions (that rabbithood is manifested). Using m, a deviant relation thinking* is defined: x thinks* p iff (...) x thinks m(p). Such deviant relations satisfy the commonly discussed functionalist psychological principles. Finally, a more complicated system of deviant relations is constructed, one satisfying sophisticated principles dealing with the self-conscious rational mind. (shrink)

Physics underlies all complexity, including our own existence: how is this possible? How can our own lives emerge from interactions of electrons, protons, and neutrons? This book considers the interaction of physical and non-physical causation in complex systems such as living beings, and in particular in the human brain, relating this to the emergence of higher levels of complexity with real causal powers. In particular it explores the idea of top-down causation, which is the key effect allowing the emergence of (...) true complexity and also enables the causal efficacy of non-physical entities, including the value of money, social conventions, and ethical choices. (shrink)

The description for this book, Desert, will be forthcoming.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is the superstar of Irish Philosophy. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700 and became a fellow in 1707. In 1724 he resigned his Fellowship to become Dean of Derry, and in 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne. He settled in Oxford in 1752 and died the following year. The work of George Berkeley is marked by its diversity and range. His writings take in such topics as mathematics, psychology, politics, health, economics, deism and education, as (...) well as that with which he is most associated - philosophy. Whatever topic he dealt with, his grasp of the subject matter was always impressive and his criticisms of his contemporaries often acute. Among the most noteable of the British Empiricists, he took his starting point from Locke's new 'way of ideas', but he rejected abstract ideas and the possibility of real existence outside perception. It is for this doctrine that he is most known - that there is no such thing as matter, and that things are collections of ideas which can exist only in our minds and only for so long as they are perceived. This philosophy, summed up in his phrase 'to be is to be perceived', he termed 'immaterialism'. A.C. Fraser's collection includes a series of what were previously unpublished notes by Berkeley on all the main topics of his philosophy. This, the 1901 edition, was the first complete edition of his works. (shrink)

The idea of nature in medical theory and practice -- Diseases -- Health: popular concept and philosophical question -- Is a pedagogy of healing possible? -- The problem of regulation in the organism and in society.

Berkeley's Idealism both advances Berkeley scholarship and serves as a useful guide for teachers and students.

Georges Sorel's Study on Vico is a revelatory document of the depths and stakes of French social thought at the end of the 19th century. What brought Sorel to the 18th century Neapolitan theorist of history? Acute awareness of the limitations of Marxist thought in his day, a profound concern with the material underpinnings of language, law, and culture, and the imperative to understand the possibilities of revolutionary change. We find here a different Sorel, one who speaks in surprising (...) ways to the 21st century. The translation is accompanied by an introduction and by a set of notes which situate the text both in Sorel's overall intellectual trajectory and in the fin de siècle debates from which it emerged. (shrink)

What drives much of the current philosophical interest in the idea of group cognition is its appeal to the manifestation of psychological properties—understood broadly to include states, processes, and dispositions—that are in some important yet elusive sense emergent with respect to the minds of individual group members. Our goal in this paper is to address a set of related, conditional questions: If human mentality is real yet emergent in a modest metaphysical sense only, then: (i) What would it mean for (...) a group to have emergent cognitive states? (ii) Is this even a metaphysically coherent view? (iii) Relative to which notion of emergence do we have reason to believe that certain groups in fact have emergent cognitive states? We shall argue that evidence from a wide variety of social science domains makes it plausible that there are group cognitive states and processes no less metaphysically emergent than human cognitive (and other special science) states and processes. (shrink)

Darwin the writer -- Learning to see : Darwin's prophetic apprenticeship on the Beagle voyage -- The prose of On the origin of species -- Surprise and paradox : Darwin's artful legacy -- Darwinian mind and Wildean paradox -- Hardy's Woodlanders and the Darwinian grotesque -- Coda : the comic Darwin.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In the light of two unpublished letters from Carnap to Kuhn, this essay examines the relationship between Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Carnap's philosophical views. Contrary to the common wisdom that Kuhn's book refuted logical empiricism, it argues that Carnap's views of revolutionary scientific change are rather similar to those detailed by Kuhn. This serves both to explain Carnap's appreciation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and to suggest that logical empiricism, insofar as that program rested on Carnap's (...) shoulders, was not substantially upstaged by Kuhn's book. (shrink)

Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James refutes the Euro-centric myth that the origin of Western philosophy is Greek. First published in 1954, this book was seminal in leading to a radical reappraisal of a philosophical system long thought to be of European origin. It is an essential work in the syllabus for the study of Western philosophy.

Many epistemologists have been interested in justification because of its presumed close relationship to knowledge. This relationship is intended to be ...

How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been made to articulate falsehoods in certain totalitarian regimes or has been charged with vulgarity and imprecision in a mass-consumer democracy? How will language react to the increasingly urgent claims of more exact speech such as mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions Steiner addresses in this elegantly written book, first published in 1967 to international acclaim.

American healthcare -- Bioterror and bioart -- State of emergency -- Licensed to torture -- Hunger strikes -- War -- Cancer -- Drug dealing -- Toxic tinkering -- Abortion -- Culture of death -- Patient safety -- Global health -- Statue of security -- Pandemic fear -- Bioidentifiers -- Genetic genocide.

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “the good [that] men do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively” (Isaacson 2004). The ability to join with others in groups to accomplish goals collectively that would hopelessly overwhelm the time, energy, and resources of individuals is indeed one of the greatest assets of our species. In the history of humankind, groups have been among the greatest workers, builders, producers, protectors, entertainers, explorers, discoverers, planners, problem-solvers, and decision-makers. During the late 19th (...) and early 20th century, many social scientists employed the notorious “group mind” idiom to express the sensible idea that groups can function as the seats of cognition, intelligence, and agency in their own right (Allport 1968; Wilson 2004). In their quest to stress (rightly) that group phenomena are something “over and above” the sum of individual contributions, a fondness for vitalist metaphors led them to believe (wrongly) that genuine group cognition must be the result of tapping into individualistically inaccessible, “holistic” forces. Today, inspired in part by historically unparalleled forms of mass collaboration enabled by the internet, it has once again become popular to speak of collective intelligence, group agency, or even the emergence of a “global brain” (cf. the wiki-edited MIT Handbook of Collective Intelligence). -/- In this chapter, I review some contemporary developments of the idea of group cognition, defined broadly as the collaborative performance of cognitive tasks such as remembering, problem-solving, decision-making, or verbal creativity for the purpose of producing a group-level outcome. My discussion serves a two-fold purpose. First, by discussing how the idea of group cognition can be operationalized, I seek to show that we can retain some central theoretical insights of the “group mind” thesis without succumbing to its eccentric metaphysical overtones. Second, by providing a useful array of generalizable taxonomic resources, I hope to foster greater degrees of mutual awareness among insufficiently integrated areas of research on group performance. (shrink)

This book introduces the reader to the philosophy of early Christianity in the 2nd-4th centuries AD, and contextualizes the philosophical contributions of early Christians in the framework of the ancient philosophical debates. It examines the first attempts of Christian thinkers to engage with issues such as questions of cosmogony and first principles, freedom of choice, concept formation, and the body-soul relation, as well as later questions like the status of the divine persons of the Trinity. It also aims to show (...) that the philosophy of early Christianity is part of ancient philosophy as a distinct school of thought, being in constant dialogue with the ancient philosophical schools, such as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism and Scepticism. This book examines in detail the philosophical views of Christian thinkers such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa and sheds light in the distinct ways they conceptualized traditional philosophical issues and made some intriguing contributions. The book's core chapters survey the central philosophical concerns of the early Christian thinkers and examines their contributions. These range across natural philosophy, metaphysics, logic and epistemology, psychology and ethics, and include such questions as how the world came into being, how God relates to the world, what is the status of matter, how we can gain knowledge, in what sense humans have freedom of choice, what the nature of soul is and how it relates to the body, and how we can attain happiness and salvation. The Philosophy of Early Christianity is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of ancient philosophy and early Christianity, from across the disciplines of classics, history and theology. (shrink)

George GrantÑphilosopher, conservative, Canadian nationalist, ChristianÑwas one of Canada’s most significant thinkers, and the author of Lament for a Nation, Technology and Empire, and English-Speaking Justice. Admirers and critics of the author will welcome these compelling essays about society’s traditional values in a technological age.