A change in sense of self is an outcome commonly associated with Buddhist meditation. However, the sense of self is construed in multiple ways, and which changes in self-related processing are expected, intended, or possible through meditation is not well understood. In a qualitative study of meditation-related challenges, six discrete changes in sense of self were reported by Buddhist meditators: change in narrative self, loss of sense of ownership, loss of sense of agency, change in sense of embodiment, change in (...) self-other or self-world boundaries, and loss of sense of basic self. Changes in sense of self could be transient or enduring, positive or distressing, enhancing or impairing. These changes were also given varied appraisals, ranging from insights associated with Buddhist doctrines to psychopathologies such as depersonalization. In this study of practitioners reporting meditation-related challenges, more global changes in sense of self were associated with higher levels of impairment. These results have implications for both Buddhist meditation as well as mindfulness-based interventions. (shrink)

The paper intends to show, that W. N. Hohfeld's theory of fundamental jural relations is relevant to economic theory, and that Hohfeld's system can be reconstructed by the concepts of 'liberty space' and 'ability space', understood as an agent's Spielraum for action. The first half of the paper is devoted to an exposition of Hohfeld's system and to the question of its relation to the economic analysis of property rights. The second half concerns Spielraum theory and the reformulation of Hohfeldian (...) distinctions in terms of liberty spaces and ability spaces. It is argued that the reformulation is useful, inter alia, for describing exchange of property rights by contract. El artículo intenta mostrar: que la teoría de las relaciones jurídicas fundamentales de W. N. Hohfeld es relevante para la teoría económica y que el sistema de Hohfeld puede ser reconstruido mediante los conceptos de "espacio de libertad" y "espacio de capacidad", entendidos como el Spielraum para la acción del agente. La primera mitad del artículo está dedicada a la exposición del sistema de Hohfeld y al problema de su relación con el análisis económico de los derechos reales. La segunda mitad se refiere a la teoría del Spielraum y a la reformulación de las distinciones hohfeldianas en términos de espacio de libertad y espacio de capacidad. Se argumenta que esta reformulación es útil, inter alia, para describir el cambio de los derechos reales mediante contratos. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has undergone dramatic transformations since its emergence as a distinct discipline. This paper aims to highlight the scope, power, and future promise of evo-devo to transform and unify diverse aspects of biology. We articulate key questions at the core of eleven biological disciplines—from Evolution, Development, Paleontology, and Neurobiology to Cellular and Molecular Biology, Quantitative Genetics, Human Diseases, Ecology, Agriculture and Science Education, and lastly, Evolutionary Developmental Biology itself—and discuss why evo-devo is uniquely situated to substantially improve (...) our ability to find meaningful answers to these fundamental questions. We posit that the tools, concepts, and ways of thinking developed by evo-devo have profound potential to advance, integrate, and unify biological sciences as well as inform policy decisions and illuminate science education. We look to the next generation of evolutionary developmental biologists to help shape this process as we confront the scientific challenges of the 21st century. (shrink)

Neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing circuits work, but it has problems explaining experiences this way. For example, it hasn’t explained how colour and shape circuits bind together in visual processing, nor why colours and other qualia are experienced so differently yet processed by circuits so similarly, nor how to get from processing circuits to pictorial images spread across inner space. Some theorists turn from these circuits to their electromagnetic fields to deal with such difficulties concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, (...) and causality. They include Kohler, Libet, Popper, Lindahl, Arhem, Charman, Pockett, John, McFadden, Fingelkurts, Maxwell, and Jones. They’re classifiable as computationalist, reductionist, dualist, realist, interactionist, epiphenomenalist, globalist, and localist. However, they’ve never been analysed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology. (shrink)

A collection of Head’s previously published papers are reprinted here, often without significant change. Nevertheless, the book has a great unity of purpose. It analyzes different problems related to an important new concept in economic theory: that of public goods. Head’s merit is to review, compare, and analyze the different approaches or definitions of a public good found in the literature. Further, he relates this problem to the whole field of welfare economics and finally, compares and differentiates it from the (...) concept of merit good. Head attempts to clarify the concept of a public good by integrating it into two streams of economic thought that try to construct analytical tools for mastering the problem of market failure. He, therefore, takes up and interrelates such individualistic concepts as Pareto-optimum, consumer sovereignty, jointness of supply, indivisibility of a good, and externality; but he also pointedly refers—through his concept of merit good—to the little discussed authoritarian stream of the liberal economic tradition. To support this claim Head cites a text even from J. S. Mill. The authors that Head refers to the most are Samuelson, Musgrave, Buchanan, and Pareto. But he also incorporates Baumol, Thiebout, Olson, and Downs, among the contemporary authors, and Sidgwick, Pigou, Wicksell, and Lindahl, among the historical figures. (shrink)

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

In this bold and innovative new work, A.W. Moore poses the question of whether it is possible for ethical thinking to be grounded in pure reason. In order to understand and answer this question, he takes a refreshing and challenging look at Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. Identifying three Kantian Themes – morality, freedom and religion – and presenting variations on each of these themes in turn, Moore concedes that there are difficulties with the Kantian view that morality can be (...) governed by ‘pure’ reason. He does however defend a closely related view involving a notion of reason as socially and culturally conditioned. In the course of doing this, Moore considers in detail, ideas at the heart of Kant’s thought, such as the categorical imperative, free will, evil, hope, eternal life and God. He also makes creative use of the ideas in contemporary philosophy, both within the analytic tradition and outside it, such as ‘thick’ ethical concepts, forms of life and ‘becoming those that we are’. Throughout the book, a guiding precept is that to be rational is to make sense, and that nothing is of greater value to use than making sense. (shrink)

This third edition of The Infinite includes a new part 'Infinity Superseded' which contains two new chapters refining Moore's ideas through a re-examination of the ideas of Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Much of this is heavily influenced by the work of Deleuze. There is also a new technical appendix on still unresolved issues about different infinite sizes.

This essay is concerned with Bernard Williams’ contention in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy that, in ethics, reflection can destroy knowledge. I attempt to defend this contention from the charge of incoherence. I do this by taking seriously the idea that ethical knowledge is knowledge from an ethical point of view. There nevertheless remains an issue about whether the contention is consistent with ideas elsewhere in Williams’ own work, in particular with what he says about knowledge in Descartes. In (...) an earlier essay I argued that it is not. In a subsequent essay I indicated that I had changed my mind and gave a more sympathetic account of Williams’ contention. In this essay I set out the issues and say some more about my change of mind. (shrink)

The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A. W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised. These essays are all concerned, more or less directly, with something ineliminably anthropocentric in our systematic pursuit of a priori sense-making. Part I deals with the nature, scope, and limits of a priori sense-making in general. Parts II, III, and IV deal with what are often thought to be the three great exemplars of the systematic pursuit of (...) such sense-making: philosophy in the case of Part II, ethics in the case of Part III, and mathematics in the case of Part IV. Much of the attention throughout is devoted to the work of other philosophers: Kant and Wittgenstein feature prominently, and five of the essays take the form of reviews or critical notices of recent work in philosophy. But the interest in never purely exegetical. One of the lessons that emerges from the essays, either in opposition to the views of these other philosophers or by invocation of their views, is that we humans achieve nothing of real significance in philosophy, ethics, or mathematics except from a human point of view, and hence that all three of these pursuits can be said to betoken what may reasonably be called 'the human a priori'. (shrink)

A.W. Moore presents eighteen of his philosophical essays, written since 1986, on representing how things are. He sketches out the nature, scope, and limits of representation through language, and pays particular attention to linguistic representation, states of knowledge, the character of what is represented, and objective facts or truths.

The philosophy of mathematics was of colossal importance to Wittgenstein. Its problems had a peculiarly strong hold on him; and he seems to have thought that it was in addressing these problems that he produced his greatest work. However robust the distinction between the calculus and the surrounding prose, the prose may infect the calculus; or the prose may infect how we couch the calculus. Yet Wittgenstein's writings in the philosophy of mathematics stand in a curious relation to this self‐assessment. (...) By 1938, he had written an early version of his master‐work Philosophical Investigations, the second half of which was on the philosophy of mathematics. This material did not survive into the version of Philosophical Investigations that was eventually published after his death. Instead it appeared, modified in various ways, along with notes that he wrote during World War II, as Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, another posthumous publication, assembled by his literary executors. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction1 Was the Early Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist? Was the Later Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist?

_Talking Politics_ is a philosophical examination of some of the basic concepts of political discourse. Its primary focus is on the _ordinary_; on what is said by politicians, in newspapers and by people in pubs, rather than on the works of political theorists. This is a work _of_, but not _on_ political theory. _Talking Politics_ is: * Invaluable as a source of reference for students, and contains a detailed index * Arranged thematically, around topics such as `Nation'. Each entry has (...) copious cross-references and suggestions for further reading A. W. Sparkes is uniquely qualified to write such a book, combining some thirty years' teaching as a philosopher with wide experience of, and a life-long fascination with, politics. His attitude is that of a critical, but uncynical, observer. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

Legal and moral reasoning share much methodology, and they address similar problems. This volume charts two shared problems: the relation between theory, principles and particular judgments; and the role of facts and factual assertions in normative settings. The relation between 'theory' and 'practice' and between 'principle' and 'particular judgment' has become the subject of much debate in moral philosophy. In the ongoing debate, some moral philosophers refer to legal philosophy for a support of their views on the primacy of 'practice' (...) over 'theory'. According to them, legal philosophy should have a more balanced view in that relation. In the contributions to Part One this claim is critically analysed. The role of the facts is underestimated in discussions on legal reasoning and legal theory, as well as moral reasoning and ethical theory. Factual statements enter into moral and legal discussions not only because they link the conclusion with a rule. They also play a role as background assumptions in supporting a theory. Its focus on the role of facts in normative reasoning makes this book of special interest to scholars of legal and moral argumentation. (shrink)

Spend a year dwelling on the awesomeness of God with A. W. Tozer. He will expand your faith in a God so great that words fall short to describe Him. He will nourish you with truth. Encounter Tozer's heart and wisdom like never before in this newly revised edition.

This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take (...) the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later. (shrink)

This is an updated version of an essay originally written for a special issue of Philosophical Topics on the links between Kant and analytic philosophy. It explores these links by focusing on: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; the logical positivism endorsed by Ayer; and the (very different) variation on that theme endorsed by Quine. The claim defended is that in all three cases we see analytic philosophers trying to attain and express a general philosophical understanding of why the bounds of sense should be (...) drawn where they should—but thereby confronting the aporia, which Kant too confronted, that it is impossible to do this without transgressing those very bounds. The paper closes by suggesting that the problem is in trying to attain and express such an understanding; in other words, that such an understanding is attainable, but not expressible. (shrink)

Artikelen vanuit verschillende invalshoeken over het wezen en de oorsprong van het kwaad en de omgang ermee in verschillende culturen.