Reality is much more than the physical world before us. In Expanding Reality, Mario Beauregard examines a variety of phenomena investigated by the most open-minded and visionary scientists. These phenomena provide the evidence that mind, consciousness, and spirit cannot be simply reduced to electrical and chemical activity in the brain.

A Neuroscientist Offers Evidence of Where the Brain Ends and Consciousness Begins.

This book will undoubtedly be useful to scholars and graduate students interested in the relationships between self-consciousness, emotion, the brain, and the...

During the last decade, the study of emotional self-regulation has blossomed in a variety of sub-disciplines belonging to either psychology (developmental, clinical) or the neurosciences (cognitive and affective). Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain gives an overview of the current state of this relatively new scientific field. Several areas are examined by some of the leading theorists and researchers in this emerging domain. Most chapters seek to either present theoretical and developmental perspectives about emotional self-regulation (and dysregulation), provide cutting edge (...) information with regard to the neural basis of conscious emotional experience and emotional self-regulation, or expound theoretical models susceptible of explaining how healthy individuals are capable of consciously and voluntarily changing the neural activity underlying emotional processes and states. In addition, a few chapters consider the capacity of human consciousness to volitionally influence the brain's electrical activity or modulate the impact of emotions on the psychoneuroendocrine-immune network. This book will undoubtedly be useful to scholars and graduate students interested in the relationships between self-consciousness, emotion, the brain, and the body. (Series B). (shrink)

Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g. ‘feeling’, ‘knowing’ and ‘effort’) are not included as primary causal factors. This (...) theoretical restriction is motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classic physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act. This key development in basic physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, owing to certain structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analysing human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its classic-physics-based predecessor, is erected directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics. It is able to represent more adequately than classic concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.. (shrink)

In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in the interest taken by experimental researchers in issues that have traditionally belonged to the sphere of interest of the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognition, and even the theology of spirituality. The availability of new research methods, as well as the increase in the knowledge of the world, has opened another door to the reality in which we live. By studying the functioning of the human brain in specific laboratory (...) conditions, scientists are looking for the answers to questions that have been troubling us for centuries: what consciousness is, how do we recognize intentions, and what are spiritual experiences? This article deals with the topic of prayer as a specific religious experience in the context of neurocognitive research. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the frequency of such studies has increased significantly; for example, through the experiments of Nina Azari, Mario Beauregard, and Andrew B. Newberg. Selected experiments in the field of the neuroscience of spirituality and their results are discussed. Important philosophical questions about how we define prayer and other spiritual experiences in the context of the above research, the interdisciplinary nature of the research, as well as emerging problems and implications, e.g., the risk of reducing these phenomena to their biological base, the explanations of religious practices and experiences in cognitive science of religion have also been raised. (shrink)

Once deemed not respectable as a scientific domain, when behaviourist doctrine held sway, emotion is now an exploding subject of compelling attraction to a wide range of disciplines in psychology and neuroscience. Recent work suggests that the concept of 'affective regulation' has become a buzzword in these areas. Disciplines involved include not only affective neuroscience, but also cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, clinical psychiatric studies into syndromes of emotion dys-regulation , various psychotherapy approaches, and several others, e.g. the increasingly popular fields (...) of meditation and relaxation training. However, the overall conceptualization of emotion and its close ties to cognitive processes continues to befuddle many theorists and researchers, for various reasons. Mario Beauregard , Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain. (shrink)

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of _thymos_, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and return (...) of rage. By way of reinterpreting the _Iliad_, Alexandre Dumas's _Count of Monte Cristo_, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle. (shrink)

Mario Bunge, author of the monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy, is widely renowned as a philosopher of science. In this new and ambitious work he shifts his attention to the social sciences and the social technologies. He considers a number of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, law, history, and management science. Bunge contends that social science research has fallen prey to a postmodern fascination with irrationalism and relativism. He urges social scientists to re-examine the philosophy and the (...) methodology at the base of their discipline. Bunge calls for objective and relevant fact-finding, rigorous theorizing, and empirical testing, as well as morally sensitive and socially responsible policy design. (shrink)

El merito mayor de esta obra reside en su amplio espectro de contenidos relevantes y en su estructura inteligente, confiable y clara. De este volumen se aprende muchisimo, puede ser utilizado como columna vertebral de un curso o por una persona inteligente que desee iniciarse en cualquiera de las disciplinas que trata. Reitero: calidad y erudicion son sus principales meritos.

Deployment Realism resists Laudan’s and Lyons’ objections to the “No Miracle Argument” by arguing that a hypothesis is most probably true when it is deployed essentially in a novel prediction. However, Lyons criticized Psillos’ criterion of essentiality, maintaining that Deployment Realism should be committed to all the actually deployed assumptions. But since many actually deployed assumptions proved false, he concludes that the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism fail. I reply that the essentiality condition is required by Occam’s razor. In (...) fact, there is a simpler formulation of essentiality which escapes Lyons’ criticisms and rescues the No Miracle Argument and Deployment Realism from their purported historical counterexamples: a hypothesis is essential when it has no proper parts (in Yablo’s sense) sufficient to derive the same prediction. Although essentiality so conceived cannot be detected prospectively, this is just natural, and it is not a problem but an advantage for Deployment Realism. (shrink)

Forsyth’s (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire and Hunt et al.’s (1989) Corporate Ethical Value Questionnaire are used to examine the ethical ideologies of senior managers from organizations listed in the Australian Stock Exchange. The results indicate how corporate ethical values, religion, gender, and age are related to the idealism and relativism of senior Australian managers. After discussing the results, limitations of the study are offered. Finally, managerial implications are provided and recommendations for future research are given.

Responsible Robotics is about developing robots in ways that take their social implications into account, which includes conceptually framing robots and their role in the world accurately. We are now in the process of incorporating robots into our world and we are trying to figure out what to make of them and where to put them in our conceptual, physical, economic, legal, emotional and moral world. How humans think about robots, especially humanoid social robots, which elicit complex and sometimes disconcerting (...) reactions, is not predetermined. The animal–robot analogy is one of the most commonly used in attempting to frame interactions between humans and robots and it also tends to push in the direction of blurring the distinction between humans and machines. We argue that, despite some shared characteristics, when it comes to thinking about the moral status of humanoid robots, legal liability, and the impact of treatment of humanoid robots on how humans treat one another, analogies with animals are misleading. (shrink)

A filosofia alemã do século XIX posterior a Hegel está bastante estudada em três direções. A primeira, que surge da luta entre hegelianos de esquerda e direita, acaba por conduzir ao materialismo e ao marxismo; a segunda, que se expressa na vertente irracionalista e anti-sistemática, passa por Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard e Nietzsche; a terceira é constituída pelo neo-kantismo e suas derivações, cuja versão oficial teria suas raízes fincadas pelo famoso discurso inaugural de Zeller e pelo livro de Otto Liebmann, que deram (...) o impulso ao movimento “Zurück zu Kant”. Em tal visão de conjunto, o grande ausente é um movimento contínuo, ainda quando irregular e multifacetado, que terminará conduzindo à filosofia contemporânea. Este movimento tem em Trendelenburg uma figura chave. É com suas “Investigações Lógicas” que se inicia a reformulação das relações entre filosofia e ciência e, neste sentido, o verdadeiro retorno a Kant. O fato de sua obra principal ter exatamente o mesmo nome que a coleção de ensaios temáticos de Frege, a obra de ruptura de Husserl e as dissertações de doutorado de Cohen, Dilthey e Brentano significa algo mais que curiosas coincidências. “Zurück zu Kant” (Adolf Trendelenburg the overcoming of idealism and the roots of contemporary philosophy) Abstract Considering history of philosophy as a whole, the two main traditions of thought from the 20th century (analytic and phenomenological-hermeneutic) can be regarded as being variants of one same fundamental turn. This systematic relation is connected to a common historical root. To highlight it implies to review the ideas that are deeply in the basis of the historiography of the German thought in the 19th century. Beyond names, problems and theses that may appear to have at first sight no relationship whatsoever, we can notice a continuous unitary development that has not yet received all the attention it deserves. In this movement, Adolf Trendelenburg stands out, once the beginners of both the abovementioned traditions and of neokantianism (Frege, Brentano, Dilthey and Cohen) received a decisive impulse from his reflections. (shrink)

English summary: What is Religious Experience? For more than a hundred years the term "religious experience" has been part of the vocabulary of philosophy of religion. However, there is no common understanding of the meaning of religious experience. Mario Fischer analyzes Heidegger's early phenomenology of religious life and its background in contemporaneous theological and philosophical developments. The young Martin Heidegger developed his first autonomous phenomenological approaches by considering how the Christian experience of life is expressed in the letters of (...) the apostle Paul and in Augustine's onfessions These studies led to his later analysis of aseinin eing and Time In conclusion, Fischer examines the significance of Heidegger's understanding of religious experience for current discussions in the philosophy of religion. German description: Was ist religiose Erfahrung? Auch wenn seit etwas mehr als einem Jahrhundert der Begriff der religiosen Erfahrung aus der Religionsphilosophie nicht mehr wegzudenken ist, besteht kein einheitliches Verstandnis dessen, was unter religioser Erfahrung zu verstehen ist. Mario Fischer untersucht Heideggers fruhe Phanomenologie des religiosen Lebens vor dem Hintergrund der zeitgeschichtlichen theologischen und philosophischen Entwicklungen. Der junge Freiburger Privatdozent Martin Heidegger wollte nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg die Philosophie neu grundlegen und entwickelte seine ersten Ansatze einer eigenstandigen Phanomenologie. Dabei spielte die Auseinandersetzung mit Fragen nach der Bedeutung und Erfassung religioser Erfahrung eine wesentliche Rolle. Zunachst befasste sich Heidegger mit der Struktur religioser Erlebnisse, weitete seinen Blick dann aber auf die Struktur der Lebenserfahrung und ihre religiose Dimension. Dazu untersuchte er, wie sich diese konkret in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus und in den Confessiones Augustins ausdruckt. Spater fuhrten diese Studien zu seiner Daseinsanalyse in Sein und Zeit und stellten die Grundlage seines spateren Gesprachs mit Bultmann dar. Die Darstellung orientiert sich an Heideggers Biographie bis zu seinem Weggang aus Freiburg im Jahre 1923. Bewusst setzt sie nicht erst mit dem Beginn seiner philosophischen Lehrtatigkeit ein, sondern nimmt auch die Einflusse aus Heideggers Kindheit und Jugend sowie aus seiner Studentenzeit mit in den Blick. So entsteht ein vielgestaltiges und spannendes Bild der verschiedenen Geistesstromungen um den Ersten Weltkrieg. Abschliessend fragt Fischer nach der Bedeutung von Heideggers phanomenologischen Studien fur die gegenwartige religionsphilosophische Diskussion um religiose Erfahrung. (shrink)

A powerful critique of nudge theory and the paternalist policies of behavioral economics, and an argument for a more inclusive form of rationality.

Classical philosophical Daoism as it is expressed in the Dao-De-Jing and the Zhuang-Zi is often interpreted as lacking a capacity for critique and resistance. Since these capacities are taken to be central components of Enlightenment reason and action, it would follow that Daoism is incompatible with Enlightenment. This interpretation is being refuted by way of developing a constructive dialogue between the enlightenment traditions of critical theory and recent philosophy of action from a Daoist perspective. Daoism's normative naturalism does neither rest (...) on a primitivist call for a return to the past, nor does it suggest future-directed activism. By way of reconstructing its descriptive, explanatory and emancipatory dimensions, it is shown that Daoism constitutes an alternative form of critical theory. In contrast to future-directed purposive action or blind rule-following, Daoism's key normative concept of "wu-wei" emphasizes effortless non-calculative responsiveness in the present. Drawing on recent insights in the philosophy of action, a reconstruction of wu-wei allows to conceive of a promising form of emancipatory agency. (shrink)

"Most entries are brief and nontechnical in nature, highlighting useful philosophical terms rather than trendy ones. Placing his emphasis on living philosophy, Bunge deliberately excludes many of the archaic terms and philosophical curios of other dictionaries.

The present text reviews the treatment of psychologism after the ‘Logical Investigations’. Its aim is to fill a gap in the Husserl an research about this topic, which focusing on the above-mentioned work, provides a homogenous treatment of the later position without considering the possibility of evolution. A primary result of our investigatión is the distinction of six stages in the above-mentioned development. These are established in correlation to the development in connected themes such as the theory of psychology, of (...) the reduction and of the self-constitution of subjectivity. In this context, the Husserlian around 1927 concerning the idea of an final understanding and final overcoming of the transcendental psychologism stands out, as does the later identification in ‘Crisis’ between transcendental phenomenology and psychology. Such identification revises the presupposition present :from 1906 onwards that· included in the context of a regional ontology, which puts aside the idea, decisive in 1927 of a ‘refined’ transcendental psychologism made possible by the development of this psychology. (shrink)

The concept of living labor in Marx’s Grundrisse represents the key notion that conceptually ties his early theory of alienation with the drafts of Capital of the 1860s. Through a critique of the formalism that opened space for Marx’s economic writings, I explore living labor, not only as alienated within the capital–laborrelation, but as an absolute, metahistorical exteriority. Furthermore, the interpretive writings of Enrique Dussel on the Grundrisse are contrasted with the reading ofMichael Hardt and Antonio Negri to show how (...) living labor can be understood as ethical excess within the framework of biopolitical production. (shrink)

The aim of this collection of essays on legal positivism is to complete the already easily available English material on this subject. This is not a collection of writings by legal positivists, but about legal positivism.