Download or read book Self written by Barry Dainton and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the third in a new series of short, provoking books of original philosophy, acclaimed thinker Barry Dainton takes us through the nature of Self When you think 'What am I?', what's actually doing the thinking? Is it a soul, or some other kind of mental entity separate from your body, or are 'you' just a collection of nerve-endings and narratives? In the third in a new series of short, provoking books of original philosophy, acclaimed thinker Barry Dainton takes us through the nature of Self and its relation to the rest of reality. Starting his journey with Descartes' claim that we are non-physical beings (even if it seems otherwise), and Locke's view that a person is self-conscious matter (though not necessarily in human form), Dainton explores how today's rapid movement of people, and information affects our understanding of self. When technology re-configures our minds, will it remake us, or kill us? If teleportation becomes possible, would it be rational to use it? Could we achieve immortality by uploading ourselves into virtual worlds? Far-reaching and witty, Self is a spirited exploration of the idea that in a constantly-changing world, we and our bodies can go their separate ways.
Download or read book Self Knowledge written by Stephen Hetherington and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2007-03-19 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-Knowledge introduces philosophical ideas about knowledge and the self. The book takes the form of a personal meditation: it is one person’s attempt to reflect philosophically upon vital aspects of his existence. It shows how profound philosophy can swiftly emerge from intense private reflection upon the details of one’s life and, thus, will help the reader take the first steps toward philosophical self-understanding. Along the way, readers will encounter moments of puzzlement, then clarity, followed by more perplexity and further insights, and then—finally—some philosophical peace of mind.
Download or read book Dream Death and the Self written by J. J. Valberg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Might this be a dream?" In this book, distinguished philosopher J. J. Valberg approaches the familiar question about dream and reality by seeking to identify its subject matter: what is it that would be the dream if "this" were a dream? It turns out to be a subject matter that contains the whole of the world, space, and time but which, like consciousness for Sartre, is nothing "in itself." This subject matter, the "personal horizon," lies at the heart of the main topics--the first person, the self, and the self in time--explored at length in the book. The personal horizon is, Valberg contends, the subject matter whose center each of us occupies, and which for each of us ceases with death. This ceasing to be presents itself solipsistically not just as the end of everything "for me" but as the end of everything absolutely. Yet since it is the same for everyone, this cannot be. Death thus confronts us with an impossible fact: something that cannot be but will be. The puzzle about death is one of several extraphilosophical puzzles about the self that Valberg discusses, puzzles that can trouble everyday consciousness without any contribution from philosophy. Nor can philosophy resolve the puzzles. Its task is to get to the bottom of them, and in this respect to understand ourselves--a task philosophy has always set itself.
Download or read book Self Confidence written by Charles Pépin and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by great figures from Emerson and Nietzsche to Madonna and Serena Williams, this engaging philosophical essay explores the workings of self-confidence and how to develop it. Where does self-confidence come from? How does it work? What makes it stronger or weaker? Why are some people more confident than others? Is it only a question of temperament or the result of conscious self-improvement? How do you get closer to those who stand out thanks entirely to their confidence in themselves? Drawing on philosophical texts, ancient wisdom, positive psychology, and a wide range of case studies that feature famous thinkers, artists, and athletes, but also unsung heroes such as a fighter pilot and an urgent-care doctor, Charles Pépin brings to light the strange alchemy that is self-confidence. In doing so, he gives us the keys to having more confidence in ourselves.
Download or read book Self Expressions written by Owen J. Flanagan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human beings have the unique ability to consciously reflect on the nature of the self. But reflection has its costs. We can ask what the self is, but as David Hume pointed out, the self, once reflected upon, may be nowhere to be found. The favored view is that we are material beings living in the material world. But if so, a host of destabilizing questions surface. If persons are just a sophisticated sort of animal, then what sense is there to the idea that we are free agents who control our own destinies? What makes the life of any animal, even one as sophisticated as Homo sapiens, worth anything? What place is there in a material world for God? And if there is no place for a God, then what hold can morality possibly have on us--why isn't everything allowed? Flanagan's collection of essays takes on these questions and more. He continues the old philosophical project of reconciling a scientific view of ourselves with a view of ourselves as agents of free will and meaning-makers. But to this project he brings the latest insights of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychiatry, exploring topics such as whether the conscious mind can be explained scientifically, whether dreams are self-expressive or just noise, the moral socialization of children, and the nature of psychological phenomena such as multiple personality disorder and false memory syndrome. What emerges from these explorations is a liberating vision which can make sense of the self, agency, character transformation, and the value and worth of human life. Flanagan concludes that nothing about a scientific view of persons must lead to nihilism.
Download or read book Self Awareness in Islamic Philosophy written by Jari Kaukua and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the emergence and development of a distinct concept of self-awareness in pre-modern Islamic philosophy.
Download or read book Becoming a Self written by Merold Westphal and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The titles in this series present well-edited basic texts to be used in courses and seminars and for teachers looking for a succinct exposition of the results of recent research. Each volume in the series presents the fundamental ideas of a great philosopher by means of a very thorough and up-to-date commentary on one important text. The edition and explanation of the text give insight into the whole of the oeuvre, of which it is an integral part.
Download or read book Ancient Philosophy of the Self written by Pauliina Remes and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pauliina Remes and Juha Sihvola In the course of history, philosophers have given an impressive variety of answers to the question, “What is self?” Some of them have even argued that there is no such thing at all. This volume explores the various ways in which selfhood was approached and conceptualised in antiquity. How did the ancients understand what it is that I am, fundamentally, as an acting and affected subject, interpreting the world around me, being distinct from others like and unlike me? The authors hi- light the attempts in ancient philosophical sources to grasp the evasive character of the specifically human presence in the world. They also describe how the ancient philosophers understood human agents as capable of causing changes and being affected in and by the world. Attention will be paid to the various ways in which the ancients conceived of human beings as subjects of reasoning and action, as well as responsible individuals in the moral sphere and in their relations to other people. The themes of persistence, identity, self-examination and self-improvement recur in many of these essays. The articles of the collection combine systematic and historical approaches to ancient sources that range from Socrates to Plotinus and Augustine.
Download or read book Self and World in Schopenhauer s Philosophy written by Christopher Janaway and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1989-03-09 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur Schopenhauer's central philosophical achievement was his account of the self and its relation to the world of objects. Embracing epistemological, metaphysical, psychological, and physiological concerns, his dynamic system of thought reveals in a unique way the serious philosophical conflicts that can arise when we think about the self. This book is the first full-length study of this theme, and Christopher Janaway's approach to it is historical, yet at the same time has a clear philosophical emphasis. He explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's often ambivalent relation to Kant, seeing him as a pertinent critic, especially on the issues of idealism and free will. He shows that, while accepting transcendental idealism and the notion of a pure knowing 'I', Schopenhauer was always concerned to establish a rival view of the self as willing: primarily active, embodied, organic, and manifesting pre-rational ends and drives. In the final part of the book Janaway highlights the influence of Schop
Download or read book Philosophy and the Return to Self knowledge written by Donald Phillip Verene and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing in particular on the traditions of some of the late Greeks and the Romans, Renaissance humanism, and the thought of Giambattista Vico, this book's concern is to revive the ancient Delphic injunction "know thyself," an idea of civil wisdom that Verene finds has been missing since Descartes. The author recovers the meaning of the vital relations that poetry, myth, and rhetoric had with philosophy in thinkers like Cicero, Quintilian, Isocrates, Pico, Vives, and Vico.
Download or read book Self and Emotional Life written by Adrian Johnston and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines—European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience—Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions. Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.
Download or read book On Myself and Other Less Important Subjects written by Caspar Hare and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-02 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author makes a case for "egocentric presentism," a view about the nature of first-person experience. A natural thought about the first-person experience is that "all and only the things of which I am aware are present to me." He goes even further and claims that the thought should instead be that "all and only the things of which I am aware are present." That there is something unique about me and the things of which I am aware. This book represents a new take on an old view, known as solipsism, which maintains that people's experiences give them grounds for believing that they have a special, distinguished place in the world--for example, believing that only they exist or that other people do not have conscious minds like their own. The author maintains that the version of solipsism he argues for is capable of resolving some seemingly intractable philosophical problems--both in metaphysics and ethics--concerning personal identity over time, as well as the tension between self-interest and the greater good.
Download or read book Philosophy of Mind written by William Jaworski and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-16 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PHILOSOPHY of MIND “Philosophy of mind is an incredibly active field thanks in part to the recent explosion of work in the sciences of the mind. Jaworski’s book is a well-written, comprehensive, and sophisticated primer on all the live positions on the mind–body problem, including various kinds of physicalism, emergentism, and his own favorite, hylomorphism. This is a serious and responsible book for philosophy students, philosophers, and mind scientists who want to understand where they stand philosophically.” Owen Flanagan, Duke University Philosophy of Mind introduces readers to one of the liveliest fields in contemporary philosophy by discussing mind–body problems and the range of solutions to them: varieties of substance dualism, physicalism, dual-attribute theory, neutral monism, idealism, and hylomorphism. It treats each position fairly, in greater depth and detail than competing texts, and is written throughout in a clear, accessible style that is easy to read, free of technical jargon, and presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy of mind. The result is a balanced overview of the entire field that enables students and instructors to grasp the essential arguments and jump immediately into current debates. William Jaworski discusses the impact of neuroscience, biology, psychology, and cognitive science on mind–body debates. Bibliographic essays at the end of each chapter bring readers up to speed on the latest literature and allow the text to be used in conjunction with primary sources. Numerous diagrams and illustrations help newcomers grasp the more complex ideas, and chapters on free will and the philosophy of persons make the book a flexible teaching tool for general philosophy courses in addition to courses in philosophy of mind.
Download or read book Hegel on Self Consciousness written by Robert B. Pippin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-06 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the most influential chapter of his most important philosophical work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel makes the central and disarming assertions that "self-consciousness is desire itself" and that it attains its "satisfaction" only in another self-consciousness. Hegel on Self-Consciousness presents a groundbreaking new interpretation of these revolutionary claims, tracing their roots to Kant's philosophy and demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary thought. As Robert Pippin shows, Hegel argues that we must understand Kant's account of the self-conscious nature of consciousness as a claim in practical philosophy, and that therefore we need radically different views of human sentience, the conditions of our knowledge of the world, and the social nature of subjectivity and normativity. Pippin explains why this chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology should be seen as the basis of much later continental philosophy and the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and critical-theory traditions. He also contrasts his own interpretation of Hegel's assertions with influential interpretations of the chapter put forward by philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom.
Download or read book Personal Identity and Self Consciousness written by Brian Garrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness is about persons and personal identity. What are we? And why does personal identity matter? Brian Garrett, using jargon-free language, addresses questions in the metaphysics of personal identity, questions in value theory, and discusses questions about the first person singular. Brian Garrett makes an important contribution to the philosophy of personal identity and mind, and to epistemology.
Download or read book Self Definition written by Teodros Kiros and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self Definition argues that sex, gender, and race are constructions by the ineffable self as it seeks to define its possibilities free of domination. The self’s embodiments are themselves performances of self definition. Teodros Kiros supports his argument by a careful reading of the literature from both the Global South and Global North that spans figures, works, and eras from antiquity to our late modern present. These readings demonstrate that race, gender, and sex are performed in the Global South radically differently from in the Global North. These three notions as markers of identity are fluid, open, and expansive, and Kiros brilliantly shows this through inquiry into thought rooted in Egypt, Ethiopia, India, and China. By the time that the Global North forges possibilities of the self in the modern period, race, gender, and sex become fixed. Biology and anatomy become understood as destinies, and the possibilities of the self are deeply constrained. This book approaches case studies of key figures and movements chronologically and thematically, and in doing so Kiros highlights the tensions between the openness of the Global South and the rigidity of the Global North through which human possibilities as exercises of self-definition become clear under conditions of freedom. Our views of self definition will forever be transformed after reading this important text.
Download or read book Kant and the Philosophy of Mind written by Anil Gomes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume explore those aspects of Kant's writings which concern issues in the philosophy of mind. These issues are central to any understanding of Kant's critical philosophy and they bear upon contemporary discussions in the philosophy of mind. Fourteen specially written essays address such questions as: What role does mental processing play in Kant's account of intuition? What kinds of empirical models can be given of these operations? In what sense, and in what ways, are intuitions object-dependent? How should we understand the nature of the imagination? What is inner sense, and what does it mean to say that time is the form of inner sense? Can we cognize ourselves through inner sense? How do we self-ascribe our beliefs and what role does self-consciousness play in our judgments? Is the will involved in judging? What kind of knowledge can we have of the self? And what kind of knowledge of the self does Kant proscribe? These essays showcase the depth of Kant's writings in the philosophy of mind, and the centrality of those writings to his wider philosophical project. Moreover, they show the continued relevance of Kant's writings to contemporary debates about the nature of mind and self.
