A brilliant and comprehensive history of the creation of the modern Western mind. Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modernity, a time when a crisis in religious authority and the scientific revolution led to searching questions about the nature of human inner life. This is the story of how a new concept—the mind—emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine, but fully neither. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian George Makari shows how (...) writers, philosophers, physicians, and anatomists worked to construct notions of the mind as not an ethereal thing, but a natural one. From the ascent of Oliver Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon, seminal thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, and Kant worked alongside often-forgotten brain specialists, physiologists, and alienists in the hopes of mapping the inner world. Conducted in a cauldron of political turmoil, these frequently shocking, always embattled efforts would give rise to psychiatry, mind sciences such as phrenology, and radically new visions of the self. Further, they would be crucial to the establishment of secular ethics and political liberalism. Boldly original, wide-ranging, and brilliantly synthetic, Soul Machine gives us a masterful, new account of the making of the modern Western mind. (shrink)

In the context of the end of life, many authors point out how the experience of identity is crucial for the well-being of patients with advanced disease. They define this identity in terms of autonomy, control, or dependence, associating these concepts with the sense of personal dignity. From the perspective of the phenomenology of embodiment, Kay Toombs and other authors have investigated the ways disease can impact on the subjective world of patients and have stressed that a consideration of this (...) personal world can promote understanding and recognition of their experience. Based on the findings of qualitative studies of the perception of dignity and autonomy in patients at the end of life, this analysis assesses concepts such as being-in-the-world in illness, embodiment, lived body versus objective body or the gaze of the other from a Toombsian phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Studies that have explored the wish to hasten death (WTHD) in patients with advanced illness have found that the feeling of being a burden may trigger WTHD. Research suggests that both the feeling and the wish are indicators of multidimensional suffering whose meaning may depend on the patient's biographical background. Therefore, we carried out a systematic review and meta‐ethnography. Fourteen qualitative studies, reported in 16 articles, met the inclusion criteria. The analysis identified two themes: the personal and social dimensions that (...) could help to explain the feeling of being a burden in these patients. These dimensions reveal how this feeling is linked to physical, psychological/emotional, existential and social factors. The feeling of being a burden cannot be understood without considering patients’ personal interpretation of their dependency or care needs, and hence it is also necessary to understand their biographical background. Such an understanding is crucial to inform clinical policies based on the moral duty to provide all patients with humane care. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for patients with advanced disease to express a wish to hasten death. Qualitative studies of the WTHD have found that such a wish may have different meanings, none of which can be understood outside of the patient’s personal and sociocultural background, or which necessarily imply taking concrete steps to ending one’s life. The starting point for the present study was a previous systematic review of qualitative studies of the WTHD in advanced patients. Here we analyse in (...) greater detail the statements made by patients included in that review in order to examine their moral understandings and representations of illness, the dying process and death. We identify and discuss four classes of assumptions: assumptions related to patients’ moral understandings in terms of dignity, autonomy and authenticity; assumptions related to social interactions; assumptions related to the value of life; and assumptions related to medicalisation as an overarching context within which the WTHD is expressed. Our analysis shows how a philosophical perspective can add to an understanding of the WTHD by taking into account cultural and anthropological aspects of the phenomenon. We conclude that the knowledge gained through exploring patients’ experience and moral understandings in the end-of-life context may serve as the basis for care plans and interventions that can help them experience their final days as a meaningful period of life, restoring some sense of personal dignity in those patients who feel this has been lost. (shrink)

En este artículo se parte de la distinción aristotélica de cuatro formas fundamentales de acción: enérgeia-kínesis (de la Metafísica) y praxis—poiesis (de la Ética) y de las aportaciones de L. Polo en sus obras de Teoría del Conocimiento y de Ética, especialmente, de sus conceptos de operación inmanente y movimiento transitivo, para establecer una tipología con las cuatro formas fundamentales de un dinamismo: proceso (kinesis), operación (enérgeia), acción (praxis) y producción (poiesis).

Victor Hugo a soutenu : « Dieu, cela n’est pas tant que ce n’est pas en pierre / Il faut une maison pour mettre la prière. » L’histoire de l’incarnation christique suffit-elle à expliquer la place de la pierre dans l’imaginaire des sociétés culturellement issues du christianisme? En quoi l’Église – la communauté et l’institution nées de l’enseignement du Christ – poursuit-elle ce projet d’inscription de la chair dans la pierre? Dans quelle mesure la parole de Jésus à l’un de (...) ses apôtres, Pierre – « tu es Pierre et sur cette pierre je bâtirai mon Église » (Mt. xvi, 18) – est-elle fondatrice non seulement de la « pétrification » de l’Église, mais plus généralement du poids donné à l’architecture et au bâti dans les mille et une façons occidentales de penser la société et de faire communauté? (shrink)

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

A significant part of perception, especially in visual perception, is characterized by particularity (roughly, the view that in such cases the perceiver is aware of particular objects in the environment). The intuition of particularity, however, can be made precise in at least two ways. One way (proposed by Searle) is consistent with the view that the content of perception is to be thought of as existentially quantified. Another way (the “demonstrative element” view championed by Evans, Campbell and others in diverse (...) ways) is not. This paper reconstructs the argumentative context in which these views are put forward, and, after mentioning some drawbacks of both views, as these have been advanced to date, suggests a new view that may be regarded as a compromise between the contenders. (shrink)

The study of the contrast between fundamental aspects of spatial and temporal awareness offers a good opportunity to bring to light the relation between philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. In this paper we critically examine important work by Rick Grush on spatial and temporal experience, and we show that while there is a valid claim for the relevant neuroscientific model to be one that supports Gareth Evans's stance on "behavioral space", there is not at present any scientific model that (...) offers comparable support for philosophical theories of temporal experience, despite some claims by Grush that might suggest the contrary. Moreover, we argue that careful attention to the spatial case allows us to locate the point at which even relatively successful cases of neuroscientific modeling and explanation are left wanting when their aim is to show that phenomenal features of experience are a function of the representational structures produced by our neural information-processing machinery: an aim widely shared by the predominant programmatic stance in current neuroscience research. (shrink)

It has been argued that philosophical theories in the philosophy of mind necessarily require empirical theories in cognitive science or cognitive neuroscience to be validated. This is indeed an unexpected relation between philosophy and science, since it is widely assumed nowadays – quite apart from Quinean qualms – that philosophical claims are largely a priori just in that their justification proceeds along paths which are independent of empirical investigations. I will defend that the case of attention provides further confirmation of (...) a position which is similar to Davies’s, but it shows at the same time that we should subscribe to a weaker version that has to do with the possibility of an eliminativist attitude towards the philosophical theory and the entities postulated in it. However, I will try to show that the case studies concerning attention show that this possibility, though it should not be excluded, is rather remote due to the fact that philosophical theories of mental phenomena are typically related to one in a set of different possible empirical theories. I will also try to show that this relation arises in at least one rather interestingly different way, in addition to the one involved in the case studies discussed by Davies. (shrink)

Throughout The Blessed and Boundless God, he proves his doctrine by demonstrating God's incomparableness in His being, attributes, works, and words. Swinnock is a pastor-theologian who views theology as the means by which we grow in acquaintance with God and, consequently, in godliness.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption that (...) the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

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 ...

In this interview-essay, artist Rosanna Bruno talks with the author about her illustrations of The Trojan Women, a comic-book made in collaboration with Anne Carson. Bruno’s illustrations offer the reader an oblique entry into a devastated Troy: they are translation “at a slant.” The artist speaks on going against what is visually expected or plausible, in her use of surprising imagery to convey and counterpoint suffering, and touches upon the use of humor to bring the tragedy into sharp focus. Bruno (...) explains how the comic-book format can communicate radical ideas in the interdependence of word and image. She talks through creating the feeling of live theater and the emotional tenor brought about by an almost entirely non-human cast: dogs, cows, a huge wave, a turnip-like rootling, a pair of dungarees. The illustrator elucidates the collaborative process between herself and Carson, revealing the various iterations of characters before they settled on their final forms, and the materials and methodologies Bruno employed in its rendering. (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 possibility of combining powerful genetic methods with biochemical analysis has made baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae the organism of choice to study the complex process of translation initiation in eukaryotes. Several new initiation factor genes and interactions between components of the translational machinery that were not predicted by current models have been revealed by genetic analysis of extragenic suppressors of translational initiation mutants. In addition, a yeast cell‐free translation system has been developed that allows in vivo phenotypes to be correlated (...) with in vitro biochemical activities. We summarize here the current view of yeast translational initiation obtained by these approaches. (shrink)

The realities and myths of long-term care and the challenges it poses for the ethics of autonomy are analyzed in this perceptive work. The book defends the concept of autonomy, but argues that the standard view of autonomy as non-interference and independence has only a limited applicability for long term care. The treatment of actual autonomy stresses the developmental and social nature of human persons and the priority of identification over autonomous choice. The work balances analysis of the ethical concepts (...) associated with autonomy with discussion of the implications of the ethical analysis for long term care. A central chapter involves a phenomenological analysis of four general features of everyday experience (space, time, communication, and affectivity) and explores their practical implications for long term care. This work concludes with a discussion of the advantages associated with a phenomenologically-inspired treatment of actual autonomy for the ethics of long-term care. (shrink)

The ability to reason and problem‐solve in novel situations, as measured by the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), is highly predictive of both cognitive task performance and real‐world outcomes. Here we provide evidence that RAPM performance depends on the ability to reallocate attention in response to self‐generated feedback about progress. We propose that such an ability is underpinned by the basal ganglia nuclei, which are critically tied to both reward processing and cognitive control. This hypothesis was implemented in a neurocomputational (...) model of the RAPM task, which was used to derive novel predictions at the behavioral and neural levels. These predictions were then verified in one neuroimaging and two behavioral experiments. Furthermore, an effective connectivity analysis of the neuroimaging data confirmed a role for the basal ganglia in modulating attention. Taken together, these results suggest that individual differences in a neural circuit related to reward processing underpin human fluid reasoning abilities. (shrink)

But the charged personal encounter between master and disciple is precisely what interests George Steiner in this book, a sustained reflection on the infinitely ...