"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability.... Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the (...) Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle’s works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

بالحرف نفهم الوجود، ونكتشفُ مُعَمَّيَاتِه وملابساته.فالوجود حرف، والحرف وجود، فهما معا يتماهيان، وهما معا يتبادلان الأدوار في مرآة الحياة والذاكرة والدين والأسطورة و المخيال، وفي فضاء الترميز بالقوة القَوَوِيَّةِ والتجريد المتعالي. وإذا كانت حبة الرمل تختزن الصحراء وتؤشر عليها، وقطرةُ الماء تختزل البحرَ وتومئ إليه، ونبضةُ العِطر تحوز الأزهارَ وتدل عليها، فإن الحرف هو كذلك يمثِّل كثافة الوجود في أعالي أعاليها، فهو الشجرة الرامزة إليه أونطولوجيا. إذْ من هذه الشجرة خرج الأمر الإلهي، فصار كونا ووجودا هو عبارة عن شجرة الكون (...) التي يُجَسِّد كل جزء من أجزائها حرَكِيَّةَ الوجود، وتوهجَ اختلافاته، وتناغمَ إيقاعاته، وتشابكَ دلالاته. إن الوجود حرف لا تكون الكتابة إلا به، والخلْق كتابة، والكتابة غرْسٌ، والغرس نفْسٌ، والنفْس وجود.وهكذا تبتدئ دائرة الوجود بالحرف وتنتهي به وإليه، فخلْقُ آدم وتركيبُه له دلالة على هذا المَنْحَى، فهو وسلالته يشبهان رمزيا في حياتهما حروفَ الأبجدية في بدايتها ونهايتها، فهما يدخلان إلى هذه الحياة على شكل ألِفٍ، ويخرجان منها على شكل ياءٍ.فالعِلم بالأسماء موضوع في قلب آدم، وتصْويرُها في صدره، وتعبيرها فيما بين حلْقه إلى شفتيه، فالقلبُ طَرَفٌ للعلْم، والصدر طَرَفٌ للتصاوير، والفم طَرَفٌ للتعبير. فالعالمُ في أول ظهورٍ له كان على صورة الإنسان، وصورة الإنسان هي صورة الحق. فصورتُه التي على صورة الحق تُؤَهِّلُه لمعرفة الحق من خلال معرفته لذاته الإنسانية. (shrink)

Advaita Vedanta and Madhyamika Buddhism. Eastern Religions in Western Thought. M.A. Cherian, published by the author, Broadstairs, Kent 1988. 195 pp. No price given.

The vast majority of contributions to the literature on spirituality in nursing make extravagant claims about transcendence, eternity, the numinous, higher powers, higher levels of existence, invisible forces, cosmic unity, the essence of humanity, or other supernatural concepts. Typically, these assertions are made without the support of argument or evidence; and, as a consequence, alternative ways of theorizing ‘spirituality’ have been closed off, while the lack of consistent scholarship has turned the topic into a metaphysical backwater. In this paper, I (...) adopt a different premise, rejecting unsupported claims, and surveying the ‘spirituality’ terrain from a naturalistic and reductionist perspective. I argue that, if we rid ourselves of non‐naturalistic assumptions, we will discover theoretical and clinical resources in health psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and pharmacopsychology – resources which confirm that it is possible to conceptualize the study of existential concerns, and how health professionals might respond to them, in a properly scientific manner. In order to illustrate the potential usefulness of these resources, I will take palliative care as an example. (shrink)

Psychiatrists encounter persons from diverse cultures who profess experiences (e.g., communicating with spirits) that evoke intuitions of abnormality. This view might not be shared with the person or her/his cultural peers, raising questions concerning the justification of such intuitions. This article explores three positions relevant to the process of justification. The relativist position transfers powers of judgment to the subject’s peers yet neglects individual values and operates with a discredited holistic view of culture. The clinical-ethnographic position remedies this by suspending (...) judgment subject to understanding the individual in a sociocultural context yet finds objections with the universalist-scientific position: objective standards exist and could justify intuitions of abnormality cross-culturally. This article argues that the claim to objectivity is value-laden, reflecting instead a brand of normality and relationship to reality further upheld through epistemological utility and valued technological progress. In conclusion, it is suggested that the clinical-ethnographic position takes personal values and context seriously, both of which are crucial for responsible clinical practice. (shrink)

Metabolism is a criterion of life. Three senses are distinguished. The weakest allows strong A-Life: virtual creatures having physical existence in computer electronics, but not bodies, are classes as 'alive'. The second excludes strong A-Life but allows that some non-biochemical A-Life robots could be classed as alive. The third, which stresses the body's self-production by energy budgeting and self-equilibrating energy exchanges of some (necessary) complexity, excludes both strong A-Life and living non-biochemical robots.

This text explores how human beings construe experience: experience as a resource, as a potential for understanding, representing and acting on reality.

Two major functions of the visual system are discussed and contrasted. One function of vision is the creation of an internal model or percept of the external world. Most research in object perception has concentrated on this aspect of vision. Vision also guides the control of object-directed action. In the latter case, vision directs our actions with respect to the world by transforming visual inputs into appropriate motor outputs. We argue that separate, but interactive, visual systems have evolved for the (...) perception of objects on the one hand and the control of actions directed at those objects on the other. This 'duplex' approach to high-level vision suggests that Marrian or 'reconstructive' approaches and Gibsonian or 'purposive-animate-behaviorist' approaches need not be seen as mutually exclusive, but rather as complementary in their emphases on different aspects of visual function. (shrink)

Книга предназначена для специалистов в области философии и феноменологии религии, христианской теологии, а также для студентов и аспирантов соответствующих специальностей.

Recognized in his day as a man of letters equaling Rousseau and Voltaire in France and rivaling Samuel Johnson, David Hume passed from favor in the Victorian age--his work, it seemed, did not pursue Truth but rather indulged in popularization. Although Hume is once more considered as one of the greatest British philosophers, scholars now tend to focus on his thought rather than his writing. To round out our understanding of Hume, M. A. Box in this book charts the interrelated (...) development of Hume's literary ambitions, theories of style, and compositional practice from his Treatise in 1739 through the Enquiries. In so doing, Box makes the case for Hume's career-long concern with the presentational modes of reaching an audience for his philosophical writings. Hume reacted to the popular failure of his masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature, Box suggests, by self-consciously exploring strategies in his subsequent works for agreeably bringing his readership to participate in the act of philosophizing. Combining a sensitive grasp of the ways Restoration period and eighteenth-century writers conceived the relations between rhetoric and philosophy with sound readings of particular texts, Box shows how Hume's literary concerns went beyond matters of style to involve persona, structure, and doctrine. While this book helps explain long-standing ambiguities surrounding Hume, especially by pointing out the tension between his created persona and his own voice, it also serves as an excellent introduction to his philosophy. (shrink)

In Chinese scholarship, Xunzi is often regarded as an eclectic Confucian master who accepted some form of utilitarian thoughts (e.g. Fung Yu-lan, Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan). This characteristic was also observed by some western scholars such as Benjamin I. Schwartz. In a recent study, I argued that the basic character of Xunzi’s philosophy is utilitarianism in a broad sense based on an examination on his intellectual criticism and political criticism. Xunzi asserts that humans are innately driven by self-interested desires, (...) and he evaluates all intellectual works and political behaviours by their utility. However, he does not limit utility to only basic animal desires such as food and sex. In Xunzi’s view, humans also have innate emotions; hence, these emotions should also be accounted for in their utility. This is similar to John Stuart Mill’s redefinition of Bentham’s concept of utility. Are Xunzi’s and Mill’s concepts of utility exactly the same? This question has yet to be examined. This article is a comparative study between utilitarianism and Xunzi’s philosophy which especially explores the compatibility of these two philosophies. (shrink)