The significance of consciousness in modern science is discussed by leading authorities from a variety of disciplines. Presenting a wide-ranging survey of current thinking on this important topic, the contributors address such issues as the status of different aspects of consciousness; the criteria for using the concept of consciousness and identifying instances of it; the basis of consciousness in functional brain organization; the relationship between different levels of theoretical discourse; and the functions of consciousness.

Anthony Everett gives a philosophical defence of the common-sense view that there are no such things as fictional people, places, and things. He argues that our talk and thought about such fictional objects takes place within the scope of a pretense, and that we gain little but lose much by accepting fictional realism.

Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in _Phenomenology and Mysticism _and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. _Moral Emotions _offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures of interpersonal (...) experience. By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

Anthony J. Lisska presents a new analysis of Thomas Aquinas's theory of perception. While much work has been undertaken on Aquinas's texts, little has been devoted principally to his theory of perception and less still on a discussion of inner sense. The thesis of intentionality serves as the philosophical backdrop of this analysis while incorporating insights from Brentano and from recent scholarship. The principal thrust is on the importance of inner sense, a much-overlooked area of Aquinas's philosophy of mind, (...) with special reference to the vis cogitativa. Approaching the texts of Aquinas from contemporary analytic philosophy, Lisska suggests a modest 'innate' or 'structured' interpretation for the role of this inner sense faculty. He argues that were it not for the vis cogitativa, Aquinas would be unable to account for an awareness of the principal ontological category in his metaphysics. (shrink)

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

Aquinas needs no introduction as one of the greatest minds of the middle ages. Highly influential on the development of Christian doctrine, his ideas are still of fundamental philosophical importance. This new critique of his natural law theory discusses the theory's background in Aristotle and advances new interpretations of contemporary legal issues which hark back to Aquinas.

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn Baql—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that (...) contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience. (shrink)

This major new work by Anthony J. Steinbock, a leading authority in Phenomenology and Husserl Studies, explores an interrelated set of problems in Husserl's phenomenology and provides an excellent example of phenomenology in practice, demonstrating how its methods and resources shed light on philosophical problems.

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as (...) Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated. (shrink)

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across (...) the fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity. (shrink)

Leading phenomenologist Tony Steinbock intervenes in contemporary discussion around the concept of the gift, providing a critical reading of the main figures on the problem of the gift and offering a new perspective on the gift, situating it in the emotional sphere, specifically in relation to loving and humility.

In this book, Anthony J. Parel makes the controversial argument that despite Gandhi's contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, his most significant contribution was that as a political philosopher.

The contribution that a word makes to the meaning and interpretation of a sentence depends upon access to its meaning, and to general knowledge associated with the word. Evidence is presented to support the argument that accessing lexical meaning, as with general knowledge, is a graded affair. We argue that the contribution a word makes depends upon its relevance to the context, and to focus and related variables. Extensions of the argument are made to other aspects of language processing.

Max Weber’s sociological theories of secularization have vastly influenced the study of Protestant belief. _Protestant Modernity_ offers a multifaceted understanding of secularization within the broader context of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism. Anthony J. Carroll reconstructs Weber’s original writings to highlight Protestant motifs, reviews current secularization theories, and settles debates about contested meanings of secularization in this volume that will be essential reading for students and scholars of theology and the sociology of religion.

Gittins, Anthony J By its achievements and the transformations that would not have happened without it, Alcoholics Anonymous has always impressed me, as do the people who belong to it. And yet there is little structure, few rules, and no rush to judgment involved. It is a 'fellowship' rather than an organisation, and a society of peers rather than a clash of personalities. Its success is attributed to the sharing of experiences, the moral support of the sponsors and the (...) community, the strength and determination - rather than the weakness or the history - of its members, and the sense of hope it inspires and maintains in those who refuse to give up, one day at a time. To admit or acknowledge powerlessness over alcohol or any addiction is not to identify oneself as without all power. On the contrary, those who acknowledge weakness in one area and yet show determination succeed partly because of the power of the wider group and partly because of the power of their own personal dedication and perseverance. Members of AA know that they are only a day or a drink from disaster, and yet, curiously, this is their strength; by keeping that awareness clearly before them, they are unlikely to become arrogant or independent of a support group. (shrink)

Gittins, Anthony J It is impossible for anyone to feel the pain you feel; the most people can do is to sympathise or empathise. But because there is nothing new under the sun, all of us can at least try to 'suffer with' the sufferings of others. Our experience of the all too human failings of the church today is by no means unique: ever since the beginning, times of trauma and crisis have alternated with times of peace and (...) healing. Our challenge is to keep hope alive during times of crisis, and to learn from the past in order learn its lessons and not repeat its mistakes. In this final reflection, I offer some reasons for hope and some perspectives for the next stage of our lives if it is to be marked by faithfulness and action rather than fear and reaction. (shrink)

Drawing on and developing the phenomenological work of figures such as Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, Knowing by Heart details the various feelings and feeling states that pertain to matters of the heart.

This paper has two motivations. First, I want to delineate structurally the dimensions of phenomenological method: not merely the static and genetic methods, but along with them I want to introduce the new ideas of generativity and generative method (Section 2). Second, because these dimensions cannot merely be treated structurally, I want to examine their dynamic interrelation, that is, the system of motivations obtaining between them. I will do this by elaborating the phenomenological concept of "leading clue" (Section 3). Finally, (...) I will conclude by addressing the relation of phenomenology to generativity (Section 4). (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The Translation Over eighty years ago Solomon Schechter published a second version of Abot de Rabbi Nathan1 ...

Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric (...) of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This final volume in the series systematically applies the praxeological and theoretical foundations of the personalist tradition to free-market economic theory. Unlike the previous two, this work defends economic liberty in theologically sensitive terms that reference the personalist tradition, without compromising the disciplinary integrity of either economics or social ethics. (shrink)

SummaryMuch excitement surrounded the proposal that a family of endo‐lysosomal channels, the two‐pore channels (TPCs) were the long sought after targets of the Ca2+‐mobilising messenger, nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP). However, the role of TPCs in NAADP signalling may be more complex than originally envisaged. First, NAADP may not bind directly to TPCs but via an accessory protein. Second, two papers recently challenged the notion that TPCs are NAADP‐regulated Ca2+ channels by suggesting that they are highly selective Na+ channels (...) regulated by the lipid phosphatidylinositol 3,5‐bisphosphate and by ATP. This paper aims critically to evaluate the evidence for TPCs as NAADP targets and to discuss how the new findings fit in with what we know about endo‐lysosomal Ca2+ stores. (shrink)

Anthony J Wesson; Edgley, Education and Work: a critical note, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 245–249, https://doi.o.

Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it bears on the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserl''s analyses and distinctions that mark his genetic phenomenology. I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes of attentiveness, ranging from what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment to so-called higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation, and conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as motivating a still more active mode of (...) reflective attention, i.e., philosophical attentiveness, and to this extent, even it would be subject to varying influences of affection. What role, if any, does affection play in a peculiar kind of reflective attention that is phenomenological? I conclude by briefly considering phenomenological reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection. (shrink)

It has been proposed that performance in the think – no think task represents a laboratory analogue of the voluntary form of memory repression. The central prediction of this repression hypothesis is that performance in the TNT task will be influenced by emotional characteristics of the material to be remembered. This prediction was tested in two experiments by asking participants to learn paired associates in which the first item was either emotionally positive or emotionally negative . The second word was (...) always emotionally neutral . Consistent with the repression hypothesis, significant memory suppression was observed in both experiments following ‘no think’ instructions for memories associated with emotionally negative material. No suppression was observed for memories associated with emotionally positive information. Implications of these findings for the relationship between performance in the TNT task and the controversial notion of memory repression are considered. (shrink)

We discuss the concept of spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry in super-conductors and superfluids and, in particular, the circumstances under which the absolute phase of a superfluid can be physically meaningful and experimentally relevant. We argue that the study of this question pushes us toward the frontiers of what we understand about the quantum measurement process, and underline the need for a new theoretical framework that keeps pace with modern technological capabilities.

It is often argued that the existence of qualia -- private mental objects -- shows that physicalism is false. In this paper, I argue that to think in terms of qualia is a misleading way to develop what is in itself a valid intuition about the inability of physicalism to do justice to our conscious experience. I consider arguments by Dennett and Wittgenstein which indicate what is wrong with the notion of qualia, but which by so doing, help us to (...) locate the real problem for physicalism. This is not that there may be mental as well as physical objects of which we are aware, but that the very notion of awareness is itself resistant to physicalist treatment. In the concluding sections, I draw on Wittgenstein's positive account of sensations, to suggest a way in which the apparent chasm separating objective and subjective viewpoints might be bridged in a non-reductive fashion. (shrink)

Perhaps no concept is more central to maurice merleau-ponty's philosophy than his concept of depth. not only did merleau-ponty recognize the philosophical significance of depth for articulating a phenomenology of perception, but he saw it as essential for pursuing and expressing a novel, radical ontology. depth, merleau-ponty writes, is ``the most existential dimension,'' ``the dimension of dimensions''; it is the ``sine qua non'' of the world and being. let me elucidate merleau-ponty's radical concept of depth by ``addressing'' the salient contexts (...) in which he approached this notion. in the first part of this paper, i shall examine depth in the experience of perception and schizophrenia. in the second, i shall discuss depth as descriptive of an ontology of ``flesh'' and as the guiding theme for the philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments THE GENEALOGY OF PRAGMATISM by Anthony J. Cascardi At SEVERAL POINTS in Philosophy and the Minor ofNature (1979) and in.the essays collected as Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), Richard Rorty mentions John Dewey as one of a group of "edifying" philosophers whose tutelary presence and audiority are invoked in the project which he elsewhere describes as die "circumvention" of Western metaphysics.1 Dewey joins the ranks of (...) his fellow American pragmatiste James and Peirce as well as those of two odier rather disparate groups: on die one hand, those philosophers like Davidson, Sellars, and Quine, who demonstrate from within diat analytical philosophy eventually transcends and cancels itself; and on the other, those "continental" philosophers like Foucault, Gadamer, and Derrida, who comfortably accept the image of philosophy as a subgenre of "literature" or "writing," a discourse with no privileged insights into the nature of rationality or claims to truth. Rorty's own project is a blend of all diree. Widi James he claims that truth is simply "what is good in die way of belief," not the proper or even fruitful object of theoretical speculation ("truth is not the sort of thing one should expect to have a philosophically interesting dieory about.... Pragmatiste think that the history of attempts to isolate the True or the Good, or to define die word 'true' or 'good,' supports their suspicion that there is no interesting work to be done in this area.... The history of attempts to do so, and of criticisms of such attempts, is roughly coextensive wim the history of that literary genre we call 'philosophy' — a genre founded by Plato," Consequences ofPragmatism, pp. xiii-xiv). Yet he shares widi Davidson, Sellars, and Quine the will to demonstrate the limits of analytical phdosophy while framing his own propositions in the language ofanalysis. 295 296Philosophy and Literature Foucault and Derrida in their turn complete the image of life in a "postphilosophical " culture, where the designation of "post" indicates a final refusal to regard pragmatism as yet another metanarrative ofthe history of philosophy. In this case, die historicist part of the Hegelian teaching, which is dieir common inheritance, the assimilation of logic to history, is accepted, while the assimilation of history to logic, which completes the Hegelian syndiesis, is rejected on account of its totalizing designs and its reliance on die notion of Absolute Spirit. So seen, the genealogy of pragmatism is of considerably broader scope than die initial intentions of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature would suggest. In diat book, Rorty claimed to be marshalling the various forces named above not so much in response to Platonism as in reply to a single episode in the history of philosophy — viz., that which begins in Descartes and receives its fullest expression in Kant, and considers truth as a matter of the accurate correspondence of ideas held inforo intemo to objects in the external world, and accordingly regards die world as a representation of the mind. Heidegger articulated a similar complaint when he spoke of the Cartesian age as that in which die world was first determined as a "picture" ("Die Zeit des Weltbildes") and noted diat from this time forward epistemology was determined as "first philosophy": "a dieory ofknowledge had to be erected before a theory of the world."2 Pragmatism is on mis more limited view primarily a response to the conditions of a technological age and to the conception ofreason as mathematical representation which sustains modern science. Thus Rorty should well be surprised at Dewey's claim to have applied a scientific and empirical method in die study of metaphysics, whose proper objects consist, in Dewey's description, of"die large and constant features of human sufferings, enjoyments, trials, failures, and successes together with the institutions of art, science, technology, politics, and religion,"3 for to have done so would have been to have countered the Cartesian division between science on the one hand and qualities and values ("experience") on die other. Instead, Rorty imputes a different claim to Experience and Nature and sees it as a way-station on the pam toward that hypothetical book called Nature and Culture, in which die idea of an empirical method... (shrink)

Anthony Parel affords a novel perspective on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. He explores how Gandhi connected the spiritual with the temporal. As Parel points out 'being more things than one' is a good description of Gandhi and, with these words in mind, he shows how Gandhi, drawing on the Indian time-honoured theory of the purusharthas or 'the aims of life', fitted his ethical, political, aesthetic and religious ideas together. In this way Gandhi challenged the notion which prevailed in (...) Indian society that a rift existed between the secular and the spiritual, the political and the contemplative life. Parel's revealing and insightful book shows how far-reaching were the effects of Gandhi's practical philosophy on Indian thought generally and how these have survived into the present. (shrink)

The contribution that a word makes to the meaning and interpretation of a sentence depends upon access to its (lexical) meaning, and to general knowledge associated with the word. Evidence is presented to support the argument that accessing lexical meaning, as with general knowledge, is a graded affair. We argue that the contribution a word makes depends upon its relevance to the context, and to focus and related variables. Extensions of the argument are made to other aspects of language processing.

This paper defends and develops an argument against epiphenomenalism, broadly construed. I argue first for a definition of epiphenomenalism which includes ‘non-reductive’ materialism as well as classical dualistic epiphenomenalism. I then present an argument that if epiphenomenalism were true it would be impossible to know about or even refer to our conscious states -- and therefore impossible even to formulate epiphenomenalism. David Chalmers has defended epiphenomenalism against such arguments; I consider this defence and attempt to show that it fails. I (...) conclude that an adequate account of mental causation requires us to abandon the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and attempt to rebut charges that it would be ‘unscientific’ to do so. (shrink)