How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the (...) nature of human creativity in the arts. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind. (shrink)

Addressing central questions in the debate about Foucault's usefulness for politics, including his rejection of universal norms, his conception of power and power-knowledge, his seemingly contradictory position on subjectivity and his ...

This book offers an historical and critical guide to the concepts of the post-modern and the post-industrial. It brings admirable clarity and thoroughness to a discussion of the many different uses made of the term post-modern across a number of different disciplines (including literature, architecture, art history, philosophy, anthropology and geography). It also analyses the concept of the post-industrial society to which the concept of the post-modern has often been related. Dr Rose discusses the work of many theorists in the (...) area, including Hassan, Lyotard, Jameson and the architectural historian Charles Jencks, and also looks at analyses and uses of the concepts of the post-modern and post-industrial by Frampton, Portoghesi, Peter Fuller and others. (shrink)

Along the way, she calls upon us to recognize the mysteries that lie at the heart of our lives and the metaphysical reality that gives meaning to life.The ...

The topic of this chapter, the early philosophical influence of Henri Bergson (1859-1941) on Simone de Beauvoir, may surprise those who remember Beauvoir’s reference to Bergson in her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter where she denies Bergson’s importance. She writes there of her interests in 1926: “I preferred literature to philosophy, and I would not have been at all pleased if someone had prophesized that I would become a kind of Bergson; I didn’t want to speak with that abstract voice (...) which, whenever I heard it, failed to move me.” But in this case, as in so many others, Beauvoir’s diaries present a very different picture. Her unpublished 1926 diary, written when Beauvoir was eighteen years old and beginning her study of philosophy, contains several pages of quotations from Bergson’s Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889), which Beauvoir describes, in an entry dated August 16, as “a great intellectual intoxication.” The entry continues: “whereas in reading other philosophers I have the impression of witnessing more or less logical constructions, here finally I am touching palpable reality and encountering life. Not only myself, but art, the truths suggested by poets, and everything that I studied this year is magnificently explained. Simply a call to intuition…. in short the method that I spontaneously apply when I want to know myself and the most difficult problems disappear. How many things [there are] in the 180 pages of Bergson’s The immediate givens of consciousness” Intriqued by this diary passage, I began analyzing Beauvoir’s early philosophy for evidence of Bergson’s influence, focusing on Bergson’s three most important texts: Time and FreeWill (1889), Matter and Memory: An Essay on the Relation of the Body to the Mind (1896), and Creative Evolution (1907). My analysis uncovered evidence of Bergson’s influence in several of Beauvoir’s important early texts, especially She Came to Stay, Beauvoir’s metaphysical novel written from 1937 to 1941, but also Beauvoir’s essays in existential ethics and The Second Sex (1949). Indeed Bergson now seems to me to be a key to understanding the roots of Beauvoir’s philosophy. In this paper, I will narrow my focus to Bergson’s philosophical methodology, and its influence on She Came to Stay, identifying three Bergsonian elements of Beauvoir’s philosophical methodology. First of all, Beauvoir takes seriously Bergson's criticism of intellectual understanding and accepts his implicit challenge to do philosophy through the novel. Secondly, Beauvoir shares with Bergson a methodological interest in exposing distortions in perception and thinking. Finally, they both rely on a methodological turn to immediate experience, which discloses our freedom. Beauvoir did not follow Bergson completely or uncritically. She did not follow him, for example, in the vitalist system building of Creative Evolution or the mysticism of his later work, Two Sources of Morality and Religion. In Beauvoir’s short story cycle, When Things of the Spirit Come First, written from 1935-37, which Beauvoir describes as “clarifying the genesis” of her later work, (QPS, viii) she satirizes her early intellectual passions, including Paul Claudel’s morality of feminine self-sacrifice, André Breton’s Surrealism, and Bergson's philosophy. Furthermore, Beauvoir’s early work, including She Came to Stay, focuses on an aspect of reality ignored by Bergson’s early work, i.e. the problem of the opposition of self and other. (shrink)

A collected volume of essays by renowned ethicist Margaret Farley, including articles previously published in scholarly periodicals as well as unpublished lectures and spiritual writings. Essays from throughout Farley's long scholarly career, both published and unpublished, focusing on the intersection of ethics and public life. Farley's sermons as well as her essays on ecclesiology and feminism are also included, expanding this into a far-ranging summary of her interests and contributions to theology over the past four decades. The collection is (...) edited by Jamie Manson, Farley's former student from Yale and current book review editor for the National Catholic Reporter. Both an overview of and an introduction to the work of the church's leading ethicists, this book will be a valuable resource for students of public ethics, sexual ethics, and the ethics of relationships. Some of these essays had an important impact on their filed (for example, "Celibacy Under the Sign of the Cross" is still used in seminaries and theologates), while others will help round out our understanding of this important theologian whose students are professors and ministers all over the nation. (shrink)

The posthumously published diaries and letters of Beauvoir and Sartre challenge the traditional account of Beauvoir as Sartre's philosophical follower. They show Sartre drawing on Beauvoir's account of relations with the Other in her metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay, as he began writing Being and Nothingness, and point to an unexplored Beauvoirean lineage of existentialism, including Bergson as well as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger, and the African-American writer, Richard Wright.

Learn how to think beyond the theoretical in any environment. "Ethics & Issues in Contemporary Nursing, 1st Edition" examines the latest trends, principles, theories, and models in patient care to help you learn how to make ethically sound decisions in complex and often controversial situations. Written from a global perspective, examples throughout the text reflect current national and international issues inviting you to explore cases considering socio-cultural influences, personal values, and professional ethics. Historical examples demonstrate how to think critically while (...) upholding moral and professional standards, as well as the law. Key topics throughout explore advocacy and rights, diversity, nurse burnout, mass casualty events, social media, violence in the workplace, medication error prevention, opioid and other substance use, HIPAA, and healthcare reform. In addition, this new title contains supplemental case studies and review questions to further challenge and prepare you to make morally sound decisions in any healthcare setting. -- From product description. (shrink)

An essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind, "The Creative Mind" has been updated to include recent developments in artificial ...

The applications of Artificial Intelligence lie all around us; in our homes, schools and offices, in our cinemas, in art galleries and - not least - on the Internet. The results of Artificial Intelligence have been invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language from a fresh angle.As a concept, Artificial Intelligence has fuelled and sharpened the philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. (...) Margaret A. Boden reviews the philosophical and technological challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence, considering whether programs could ever be really intelligent, creative or even conscious, and shows how the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence has helped us to appreciate how human and animal minds are possible. (shrink)

In a compelling chronicle of her search to understand Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex, Margaret A. Simons offers a unique perspective on Beauvoir's wide-ranging contribution to twentieth-century thought. She details the discovery of the origins of Beauvoir's existential philosophy in her handwritten diary from 1927; uncovers evidence of the sexist exclusion of Beauvoir from the philosophical canon; reveals evidence that the African-American writer Richard Wright provided Beauvoir with the theoretical model of oppression that she used in The Second (...) Sex; shows the influence of The Second Sex in transforming Sartre's philosophy and in laying the theoretical foundations of radical feminism; and addresses feminist issues of racism, motherhood, and lesbian identity. Simons also draws on her experience as a Women's Liberation organizer as she witnessed how women used The Second Sex in defining the foundations of radical feminism. Bringing together her work as both activist and scholar, Simons offers a highly original contribution to the renaissance of Beauvoir scholarship. (shrink)

A "MIRACLE" IS AN OBSERVABLE EVENT INEXPLICABLE BY SCIENCE BUT EXPLICABLE IN TERMS OF SOME SUPERNATURAL AGENT. UNLESS ALL TALK OF SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IS MEANINGLESS, THIS CONCEPT SUCCESSFULLY DENOTES A (PERHAPS EMPTY) CLASS. DESPITE THE FALSIFIABILITY OF SCIENCE, IT MIGHT SOMETIMES BE REASONABLE TO DENY THE POSSIBILITY OF ANY FUTURE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF A GIVEN EVENT. BUT THAT EVENT COULD BE CLASSIFIED AS A "MIRACLE" ONLY IF IT ACCORDED WITH CERTAIN MORAL AND THEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE PARTICULAR SUPERNATURAL BEING SUPPOSED (...) ACTIVE. VARIOUS HYPOTHETICAL AGENTS MAY BE SUGGESTED; WHICH - IF ANY - OF THESE AGENTS MIGHT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EVENT CAN BE DECIDED ONLY BY A CONCEPTUAL COMPARISON OF THE POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES. THUS THE CLASSIFICATION OF AN EVENT AS A "MIRACLE" IS NOT A MATTER OF WHIM, BUT DEPENDS UPON THE PARTICULAR CONCEPT OF THE SUPERNATURAL CONCERNED. (shrink)

In a time of globalization, what does an inclusive feminist politics entail? This accessible volume addresses the key issues in, and most significant challenges for, contemporary transnational feminist politics and political theory. Ideal for courses in Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminism and Feminist Theory.

What is the mind? How does it work? How does it influence behavior? Some psychologists hope to answer such questions in terms of concepts drawn from computer science and artificial intelligence. They test their theories by modeling mental processes in computers. This book shows how computer models are used to study many psychological phenomena--including vision, language, reasoning, and learning. It also shows that computer modeling involves differing theoretical approaches. Computational psychologists disagree about some basic questions. For instance, should the mind (...) be modeled by digital computers, or by parallel-processing systems more like brains? Do computer programs consist of meaningless patterns, or do they embody (and explain) genuine meaning? (shrink)

This book offers an original and challenging study of Marx's contact with the visual arts, aesthetic theories, and art policies in nineteenth-century Europe. It differs from previous discussions of Marxist aesthetic theory in looking at Marx's views from an art-historical rather than from a literary perspective, and in placing those views in the context of the art practices, theories, and policies of Marx's own time. Dr Rose begins her work by discussing Marx's planned treatise on Romantic art of 1842 against (...) the background of the philosophical debates, cultural policies, and art practices of the 1840s, and looks in particular at the patronage given to the group of German artists known as the 'Nazarenes' in those years, who are discussed in relation to both the English Pre-Raphaelites, popular in the London known to Marx, and to the Russian Social Realists of the 1860s. The author goes on to consider claims of twentieth-century Marxist art theories and practices to have represented Marx's own views on art. The book the conflicting claims made on Marx's views by the Soviet avant-garde Constructivists of the 1920s and of the Socialist Realists who followed them are considered, and are related back to the aesthetic theories and practices discussed in the earlier chapters. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir’s readers who saw a heterosexual ideal in her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre must have been dismayed by the 1990 French publication of her Journal de guerre (Wartime Diary) and Lettres à Sartre (Letters to Sartre). Discovered after Beauvoir’s death in 1986 and edited for publication by her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary and Letters to Sartre recount her sexual affairs with several young women. In Deirdre Bair’s authorized biography of Beauvoir, also published (...) in 1990, Bair describes the young women in question as merely Beauvoir’s friends and reports that Beauvoir denied having sexual relationships with women (Bair 1990, 213-15, 510). With the publication of the wartime diary and letters, Beauvoir’s readers and her biographer were thus confronted with the uncomfortable revelation that Beauvoir had lied to them about her sexual relationships. -/- Given society’s attitudes towards bisexuality, Beauvoir’s lies about her relationships with women may be understandable. But evidence, first discovered in Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s wartime diaries and letters by Edward Fullbrook, that Beauvoir lied about her work in philosophy and her influence on Sartre, is more perplexing (Fullbrook and Fullbrook 1993, 97-127; Fullbrook 1999). Beauvoir earned a graduate agrégation degree in philosophy and authored numerous philosophical novels and essays. But her philosophical work, including her metaphysical novel, She Came to Stay (1943)—the story of an unconventional solipsist who, forced to recognize the existence of other minds, resorts to murder as a solution to the problem of the Other—has traditionally been dismissed as a literary application of Sartre’s philosophy in Being and Nothingness (1943), a view paradoxically encouraged by Beauvoir herself. While the evidence that Beauvoir lied about her work in philosophy may be disconcerting, it does open up new areas of research, as I’ll suggest below, raising questions about her philosophy in She Came to Stay, her philosophical relationship with Sartre, and the wartime transformation in her philosophy that were foreclosed by the traditional reading of Beauvoir as Sartre’s follower. -/- . (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of classical and contemporary readings provides a clear and comprehensive guide to the many hotly-debated philosophical issues at the heart of artificial intelligence.

Margaret Boden presents a series of essays in which she explores the nature of creativity in a wide range of art forms. Creativity is the generation of novel, surprising, and valuable ideas. Boden identifies three forms of creativity each eliciting a different form of surprise.

Thinking About Sexual Harassment aims to provide the information necessary for careful, critical thinking about the concept of sexual harassment. Part I traces the construction of the concept of sexual harassment from the first public uses of the term through its definitions in the law, in legal cases, and in empirical research. Part II analyses philosophical definitions of sexual harassment and a number of issues that have arisen in the law, including the reasonable woman standard and whether same-sex harassment should (...) be considered sex discrimination. (shrink)

Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first time in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw (...) and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical, and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir’s independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

This new volume in the acclaimed Oxford Readings in Philosophy sereis offers a selection of the most important philosophical work being done in the new and fast-growing interdisciplinary area of artificial life. Artificial life research seeks to synthesize the characteristics of life by artificial means, particularly employing computer technology. The essays here explore such fascinating themes as the nature of life, the relation between life and mind, and the limits of technology.

There are vast ethical, legal, and social differences between natural death and euthanasia. In Death Talk Margaret Somerville argues that legalizing euthanasia would cause irreparable harm to society's value of respect for human life, which in secular societies is carried primarily by the institutions of law and medicine. Death has always been a central focus of the discussion that we engage in as individuals and as a society in searching for meaning in life. Moreover, we accommodate the inevitable reality (...) of death into the living of our lives by discussing it, that is, through "death talk." Until the last twenty years this discussion occurred largely as part of the practice of organized religion. Today, in industrialized western societies, the euthanasia debate provides a context for such discussion and is part of the search for a new societal-cultural paradigm. Seeking to balance the "death talk" articulated in the euthanasia debate with "life talk," Somerville identifies the very serious harms for individuals and society that would result from accepting euthanasia. A sense of the unfolding euthanasia debate is captured through the inclusion of Somerville's responses to or commentaries on several other authors' contributions. (shrink)

In December 1924 when Simone de Beauvoir almost certainly wrote her essay analyzing Claude Bernard's "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine," a classic text in the philosophy of science, she was a 16 yr old student in a senior-level philosophy class at a private Catholic girls' school. Given the popular conception of existentialism as anti science, Beauvoir's early interest in science, reflected in her baccalaureate successes as well as her paper on Bernard, may be surprising. But her enthusiasm for (...) Bernard is unmistakable. We have identified three themes in Beauvoir's essay that reappear in her later work, including the valuing of philosophical doubt. (shrink)

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.

In a time of globalization, what does an inclusive feminist politics entail? This accessible volume addresses the key issues in, and most significant challenges for, contemporary transnational feminist politics and political theory. Ideal for courses in Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminism and Feminist Theory.

Informed by practices of women's activism in India, this book proposes a feminist social justice framework to address the wide range of issues women face globally, including economic exploitation, sexist oppression, racial, ethnic, and caste oppression, and cultural imperialism. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book argues that current frameworks for global justice, such as human rights, need to be supplemented by a relational framework that includes resistance to economic exploitation and social oppression.