In this new edition of his acclaimed autobiography — long out of print and rare until now — Alan Watts tracks his spiritual and philosophical evolution from a child of religious conservatives in rural England to a freewheeling spiritual teacher who challenged Westerners to defy convention and think for themselves. From early in this intellectual life, Watts shows himself to be a philosophical renegade and wide-ranging autodidact who came to Buddhism through the teachings of Christmas Humphreys and D. T. (...) Suzuki. Told in a nonlinear style, In My Own Way wonderfully combines Watts’ own brand of unconventional philosophy and often hilarious accounts of gurus, celebrities, psychedelic drug experiences, and wry observations of Western culture. A charming foreword written by Watts’ father sets the tone of this warm, funny, and beautifully written story of a compelling figure who encouraged readers to “follow your own weird” — something he always did himself, as his remarkable account of his life shows. (shrink)

The emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) describes the tendency for emotional information to be remembered better than non-emotional information (Barnacle et al., 2016; Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; T...

I revisit my 1993 paper on Putnam and mathematical realism focusing on the indispensability argument and how it has fared over the years. This argument starts from the claim that mathematics is an indispensable part of science and draws the conclusion, from holistic considerations about confirmation, that the ontology of science includes abstract objects as well as the physical entities science deals with.

In this collection of essays, Watts displays the playfulness of thought and simplicity of language that has made him one of the most popular lecturers and authors on the spiritual traditions of the East. Watts draws on a variety of religious traditions and explores the limits of language in the face of spiritual truth.

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. In addition to overall improvements and updates inspired by Chalmers's experience as a teacher, comments from his readers, and recent developments (...) in the field, this fourth edition features an extensive chapter-long postscript that draws on his research into the history of atomism to illustrate important themes in the philosophy of science. Identifying the qualitative difference between knowledge of atoms as it figures in contemporary science and metaphysical speculations about atoms common in philosophy since the time of Democritus offers a revealing and instructive way to address the question at the heart of this groundbreaking work: What is this thing called science? (shrink)

White searches for the subtler side of Nietzsche beyond his ambiguous support for violence and oppression. He looks at the `yes saying teachings' articulated with the `voice of beauty'.

Featuring the edited transcripts of eight lectures delivered by Alan Watts from 1960 to 1973. The Tao of Philosophy offers a rich introduction to the wit and wisdom of one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century.

Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read work--translated into eighteen languages--has become a classic introduction to the scientific method, known for its accessibility to beginners and its value as a resource for advanced students and scholars. -- Amazon.com.

“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever…. You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.”–from Become What You Are In this collection of writings, including nine new chapters never before available in book form, Watts displays (...) the intelligence, playfulness of thought, and simplicity of language that has made him so perennially popular as an interpreter of Eastern thought for Westerners. He draws on a variety of religious traditions, and covers topics such as the challenge of seeing one’s life “just as it is,” the Taoist approach to harmonious living, the limits of language in the face of ineffable spiritual truth, and the psychological symbolism of Christian thought. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, (...) as proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go out of your mind. Perhaps more than any other teacher in the West, this celebrated author, former Anglican priest, and self-described spiritual entertainer was responsible for igniting the passion of countless wisdom seekers to the spiritual and philosophical delights of India, China, and Japan. With Out of Your Mind, you are invited to immerse yourself in six of this legendary thinker's most engaging teachings (...) on how to break through the limits of the rational mind and expand your awareness and appreciation for the great game unfolding all around us. Distilled from Alan Watts’s pinnacle lectures, Out of Your Mind brings you an inspiring new resource that captures the true scope of this brilliant teacher in action. For those both new and familiar with Watts, this book invites us to delve into his favorite pathways out of the trap of conventional awareness, including: • The art of the “controlled accident”—what happens when you stop taking your life so seriously and start enjoying it with complete sincerity • How we come to believe “the myth of myself”—that we are skin-encapsulated egos separate from the world around us—and how to transcend that illusion • Why we must fully embrace chaos and the void to find our deepest purpose • Unconventional and refreshing insights into the deeper principles of Buddhism, Hinduism, Western philosophy, Christianity, and much more. (shrink)

This compilation offers a unique synthesis of the traditional branches of Eastern thought by drawing upon their historical connections and common foundations in mystical experience.

In his newly updated version of The Anatomy of a Constitutional Law Case, Alan F. Westin provides a documentary portrait of historically important constitutional law case, 'Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, ' from its rise in a bargaining dispute in the steel industry during 1952 to the aftermath of its decision by the United States Supreme Court. Westin has added to his classic book additional materials and personal commentaries collected since the work was first published. The new (...) information covers what went on within the Truman administration, what went on within the Supreme Court when analyzing and resolving issues that come before it. Westin includes selections from transcripts, briefs and other official proceedings, adds notes describing each phase of the constitutional process, and a section of commentary and questions relating this case to others. (shrink)

book 1. God.--book 2. Meditation.--book 3. Nothingness.--book 4. Death.--book 5. The nature of man.--book 6. Time.--book 7. Philosophical fantasies.--book 8. Ego.--book 9. The cosmic drama.

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. (shrink)

'Working Memory, Thought, and Action' is the magnum opus of one of the most influential cognitive psychologists of the past 50 years. This new volume on the model he created discusses the developments that have occurred within the model in the past twenty years, and places it within a broader context.

This paper analyzes creative practice including virtual music composition by a human and sets of computer programs, improvisation of music and dance in human-robot ensembles, and drawings produced by a human and a robotic arm. In all of these examples, the paper argues that creativity arises from a process of human-robot collaboration. Human influences on the machines involved exist at many levels, from initial creation and programming, via processes of reprogramming and setup of underlying data and parameters, to engagement throughout (...) the process of creative production. The decision to value a machine as a creative other is supported most strongly when collaborating with the machine directly, while witnessing the creative team at work, as opposed simply to seeing the result, is more likely to bring an audience to a similar understanding. The creativity of the human-machine collaborations analyzed in this paper relies on close interaction, within which there is a continual recognition of the otherness of the machine and its nonhuman abilities. Such relations can be theorized by extending Emmanuel Levinas’ conception of the face-to-face encounter within which self and other are brought into proximity, but the alterity of the other is nonetheless retained. The paper’s analysis of creative interactions between humans and robots supports the idea that machines need not be regarded as challenging human artistic practice, but rather enable new ways for creativity to arise through human-machine collaborations within which human and nonhuman creative abilities are combined. (shrink)

Situated in critiques of the “moral muteness” of technical rationality, we examine concepts of ethics and the avoidance of ethical language among Australian gas pipeline engineers. We identify the domains in which they saw ethics as operating, including public safety, environmental protection, sustainability, commercial probity, and modern slavery. Particularly with respect to ethical matters that bear on public safety, in the course of design and operational activities, engineers principally advocated for action using technical language, avoiding reference to potential consequences such (...) as death or destruction of property. Within their organizations, they saw themselves as occupying a technical “line of defense”. We argue that this focus on technical language is action-oriented. Ethics tells practitioners of unacceptable outcomes, but it does not guide them in what they need to do to avoid that outcome in practice. We observed some cases where engineers had not made the connection between their role and ethics in the sense of public safety. We argue that muteness on ethical matters can obscure the nature of the risk where technical advice is being taken on by non-technical actors, and where technical actors themselves do not have a clear sense of their public safety obligations. (shrink)

All this is tightly reasoned, the argument is packed, but the language is clear."—Christian Century "The man value of this book seems to me to be that it ...

A treatise on rhetorical tropes is attributed in manuscripts to the first-century grammarian Trypho: this article considers for the first time a fifteenth-century manuscript of this work (Leiden, BPG 74G), which turns out to be the only complete witness of its hitherto unknown original version; this version (very fragmentarily transmitted by a fifth-century papyrus scrap) is also partly found in another fifteenth-century manuscript now kept in Olomouc (M 79). Four interesting poetic fragments are quoted in this newly discovered, fuller version (...) of Ps.-Trypho'sDe Tropis: some lines from Callimachus’ fifth and fourthIambi(23–9 and 90–2 respectively: a radically new light is shed by this new witness on the parallel papyrus fragments carrying Callimachus’ text), an epigram dubiously attributed to Simonides (FGE44 Page, probably to be dated to the Hellenistic period: the text can be now restored to its complete form), and some enigmatic lines of “Hesiod”'sWedding of Keyx, which the new witness finally makes fully understandable. (shrink)

An atheist drawn to religion, Alan Soffin shows how to conceptualize a "God" who is in and of the cosmos rather than also beyond it as theists affirm. This allows Soffin and those who see value in the path he blazes to embrace and value the treasures of religion even while not being theistic" --Provided by publisher.

In this wide-ranging interview Alan Norrie discusses how he became involved with Critical Realism, his work on Dialectical Critical Realism, and responses to it amongst the Critical Realist communi...

There have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development. The Circular Economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way. This set of ideas has been adopted by China as the basis of their economic development, escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and NGOs. This paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the Circular Economy, tracing its meanings, and exploring its antecedents (...) in economics and ecology, and discusses how the Circular Economy has been operationalized in business and policy. The paper finds that while the Circular Economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials, which may contribute to more sustainable business models, it also encapsulates tensions and limitations. These include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions, and some unintended consequences. This leads us to propose a revised definition of the Circular Economy as “an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well-being”. (shrink)

The relationship between religiosity and ethical behavior at work has remained elusive. In fact, inconsistent results in observed magnitudes and direction led Hood et al. (The psychology of religion: An empirical approach, 1996 ) to describe the relationship between religiosity and ethics as “something of a roller coaster ride.” Weaver and Agle (Acad Manage Rev 27(1):77–97, 2002 ) utilizing social structural versions of symbolic interactionism theory reasoned that we should not expect religion to affect ethical outcomes for all religious individuals; (...) rather, such a relationship likely depends on specific religious attitudes including religious motivation orientation (intrinsic RMO vs. extrinsic RMO), perceived sacred qualities of work (job sanctification), and views of God (VOG, loving vs. punishing). We examined the effects of these three religious attitudes on participants’ judgments of 29 ethically questionable vignettes. Consistent with symbolic interactionism theory, intrinsic RMO and having a loving view of God were both negatively related to endorsing ethically questionable vignettes, whereas extrinsic RMO was positively related to endorsing the vignettes. Unexpectedly, job sanctification was positively related to endorsing the vignettes. However, both intrinsic and extrinsic RMO moderated this relationship such that sanctifying one’s job was related to ethical judgments only for those who were: (a) low in intrinsic RMO or (b) high in extrinsic RMO. We reasoned based on symbolic interactionism theory that intrinsically motivated participants, in contrast to extrinsically motivated participants, may have utilized their religious beliefs as a guiding framework in making ethical judgments. (shrink)