Download or read book The Self Beyond Itself written by Heidi M. Ravven and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Intertwines history, philosophy, and science . . . A powerful challenge to conventional notions of individual responsibility” (Publishers Weekly). Few concepts are more unshakable in our culture than free will, the idea that individuals are fundamentally in control of the decisions they make, good or bad. And yet the latest research about how the brain functions seems to point in the opposite direction . . . In a work of breathtaking intellectual sweep and erudition, Heidi M. Ravven offers a riveting and accessible review of cutting-edge neuroscientific research into the brain’s capacity for decision-making—from “mirror” neurons and “self-mapping” to surprising new understandings of group psychology. The Self Beyond Itself also introduces readers to a rich, alternative philosophical tradition of ethics, rooted in the writing of Baruch Spinoza, that finds uncanny confirmation in modern science. Illustrating the results of today’s research with real-life examples, taking readers from elementary school classrooms to Nazi concentration camps, Ravven demonstrates that it is possible to build a theory of ethics that doesn’t rely on free will yet still holds both individuals and groups responsible for the decisions that help create a good society. The Self Beyond Itself is that rare book that injects new ideas into an old debate—and “an important contribution to the development of our thinking about morality” (Washington Independent Review of Books). “An intellectual hand-grenade . . . A magisterial survey of how contemporary neuroscience supports a vision of human morality which puts it squarely on the same plane as other natural phenomena.” —William D. Casebeer, author of Natural Ethical Facts

Download or read book Beyond the Self written by Matthieu Ricard and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Buddhist monk and esteemed neuroscientist discuss their converging—and diverging—views on the mind and self, consciousness and the unconscious, free will and perception, and more. Buddhism shares with science the task of examining the mind empirically; it has pursued, for two millennia, direct investigation of the mind through penetrating introspection. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies on third-person knowledge in the form of scientific observation. In this book, Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk trained as a molecular biologist, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist—close friends, continuing an ongoing dialogue—offer their perspectives on the mind, the self, consciousness, the unconscious, free will, epistemology, meditation, and neuroplasticity. Ricard and Singer’s wide-ranging conversation stages an enlightening and engaging encounter between Buddhism’s wealth of experiential findings and neuroscience’s abundance of experimental results. They discuss, among many other things, the difference between rumination and meditation (rumination is the scourge of meditation, but psychotherapy depends on it); the distinction between pure awareness and its contents; the Buddhist idea (or lack of one) of the unconscious and neuroscience’s precise criteria for conscious and unconscious processes; and the commonalities between cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation. Their views diverge (Ricard asserts that the third-person approach will never encounter consciousness as a primary experience) and converge (Singer points out that the neuroscientific understanding of perception as reconstruction is very like the Buddhist all-discriminating wisdom) but both keep their vision trained on understanding fundamental aspects of human life.

Download or read book The Self written by Paul C. Vitz and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2006 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The Trial of Man: Christianity and Judgment in the World of Shakespeare, Craig Bernthal, a lawyer and Shakespeare scholar, shows how understanding the Elizabethan religious and legal context in which Shakespeare lived illuminates many of Shakespeare's works, including The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII, and Henry VI, Part II." ""Judgment," writes Bernthal, "is the archetypal situation for Shakespeare, the one event that every human being will have to face, on one of both sides of the grave," Bernthal's study protrays a Shakespeare heavily indebted in his notion of judgment - and in the comic and dramatic uses to which he puts it - to the doctrines of Christian theology, both Catholic and Protestant. Bernthal also shows how the legal culture and trials of Shakespeare's time, including the famous trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, influenced Shakespeare's approach to the difficulties surrounding human judgment - how to assess the truthfulness of testimony, determine the appropriate degree of punishment, and evaluate the justice of proposed remedies. Above all, Bernthal carefully attends to the ways in which Shakespeare probed the tension between justice and mercy in all its complexity." "Written for the lay reader, The Trial of Man is a captivating synthesis of literacy, historical, and legal scholarship."--Jacket.

Download or read book Nothing Personal Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self written by Nirmala and published by Endless Satsang Foundation. This book was released on 2010-01-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advaita and nondual teachings are about finding the Truth. This Truth is not a dogma that you study; it is the Truth about life †the Truth about who you really are. This Truth is discovered, not learned. It is discovered through sincerely inquiring, Who am I? What you discover is that who you are has nothing to do with self-images or roles and everything to do with what you experience when you ask this question. What you discover is that who you think of yourself as is just that †a thought! And beyond that thought is a great Mystery †an experience of nothingness, which is your true nature.Nothing Personal leads you to the experience of your true nature and helps you explore its depth. Through exposition, questions and dialogues, it brings you to a place of realization of the Truth: you are that spacious Awareness in which everything appears, including your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts and feelings do not define you but merely appear within Consciousness along with everything else. This Consciousness is who you are.Nothing Personal offers a gentle and persistent guide to seeing the underlying truth of your ultimate nature. In this concisely edited collection of satsang talks and dialogues, you are invited to honor the limitless love that is your true nature and to enjoy the sweet richness that is revealed when you give this Truth your undivided attention.From the introduction:Unlike most books, this one is not meant to add to your knowledge or understanding. It is about the Truth that cannot be spoken or written. Although the Truth cannot be contained in this or any other book, each word written here is intended to point you toward that Truth. Many of the words and ideas may seem paradoxical or contradictory because what they point to is larger than our conceptual frameworks. Many questions are asked, which are not answered anywhere in the book. Find out what the experience is like to ask yourself these questions, even if they leave you emptier of knowledge and understanding. In this emptying, you just may discover what you are looking for.The Truth is revealed when we allow ourselves to not know, so I invite you to set aside all that you know for the time being and allow yourself to look with innocent eyes at what the words are attempting to unveil. Take the time to experience the unspoken truth in each section before moving on to the next. Resist the temptation to read these words with your mind, which is likely to rush right past the Truth. Allow the words to sink into your heart and reveal the truth of who you are.

Download or read book Beyond the Self written by Raymond Hain and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: W. David Solomon sits at the very center of the revival of virtue ethics. Solomon's work extended what began with the publication of G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) by solidifying virtue ethics as a viable approach within contemporary moral philosophy. Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture comprises twelve chapters: eleven that employ Solomon's work and legacy, followed by a twelfth concluding chapter by Solomon himself. Each chapter deepens and develops virtue ethics as a rich intellectual tradition rooted in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Editor Raymond Hain divides the volume into three sections. The first addresses the historical contexts of happiness, justice, and mercy in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The second turns to recent themes in normative ethics, focusing on topics such as morality, virtue, and egoism. The third discusses broader ethical issues with significant cultural implications, such as human dignity, physician-assisted suicide, and secularization. Beyond the Self uncovers the shortcomings of contemporary moral philosophy and the depth and capacity of the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions, reminding the reader that classical virtue ethics remains the most promising framework for understanding the moral life. Contributors include: Michael Beaty, Kevin L. Flannery, Raymond Hain, John Haldane, Thomas Hibbs, Irfan Khawaja, Alasdair MacIntyre, John O'Callaghan, Bryan C. Pilkington, W. David Solomon, Christopher Toner, and Candace Vogler.

Download or read book Beyond Self Interest written by Jane J. Mansbridge and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-04-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic transformation has begun in the way scholars think about human nature. Political scientists, psychologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists are beginning to reject the view that human affairs are shaped almost exclusively by self-interest—a view that came to dominate social science in the last three decades. In Beyond Self-Interest, leading social scientists argue for a view of individuals behavior and social organization that takes into account the powerful motivations of duty, love, and malevolence. Economists who go beyond "economic man," psychologists who go beyond stimulus-response, evolutionary biologists who go beyond the "selfish gene," and political scientists who go beyond the quest for power come together in this provocative and important manifesto. The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life. They investigate the differences between self-interest and the motivations of duty and love, showing how these motivations affect behavior in "prisoners' dilemma" interactions. They generate evolutionary models that explain how altruistic motivations escape extinction. They suggest ways to model within one individual the separate motivations of public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit in citizen and legislative behavior, and demonstrate that the view of democracy in existing Constitutional interpretations is not based on self-interest. They advance both human evil and mothering as alternatives to self-interest, this last in a penetrating feminist critique of the "contract" model of human interaction.

Download or read book Beyond the Conscious Mind written by Thomas R. Blakeslee and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nobel Prize-winning work of Roger Sperry revolutionized our understanding of human consciousness by proving that separate thinking and knowledge could exist in the left and right halves of the brain. Now, popular science writer Thomas Blakeslee - author of the highly acclaimed The Right Brain - takes us to a new level of understanding based on the theory of neural Darwinism by Gerald Edelman, another Nobel Prize winner. Blakeslee explains that our neurons spontaneously organize into hundreds of groups called modules that compete to respond to every situation in our lives - from reading this paragraph to falling in love. A vast preponderance of this activity operates outside of our conscious awareness.

Download or read book The Priority of the Other written by Mark Freeman and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary psychology - as well as our own self-understanding - remains largely ego-centric in focus, with the self being seen as the primary source of meaning and value. According to Mark Freeman, this perspective is belied by much of our experience. Working from this basic premise, he proposes that we adopt a more "ex-centric" perspective, one that affirms the priority of the Other in shaping human experience. In doing so, he offers nothing less than a radical reorientation of our most basic ways of making sense of the human condition. In speaking of the "Other," Freeman refers not only to other people, but also to those non-human "others" - for instance, nature, art, God - that take us beyond the ego and bring us closer to the world. In speaking of the Other's priority, he insists that there is much in life that "comes before us." By thinking and living the priority of the Other, we can therefore become better attuned to both the world beyond us and the world within. At the heart of Freeman's perspective are two fundamental ideas. The first is that the Other is the primary source of meaning, inspiration, and existential nourishment. The second is that it is the primary source of our ethical energies, and that being responsive and responsible to the world beyond us is a defining feature of our humanity. There is a tragic side to Freeman's story, however. Enraptured though we may be by the Other, we frequently encounter it in a state of distraction and fail to receive the nourishment and inspiration it can provide. And responsive and responsible though we may be, it is perilously easy to retreat inward, to the needy ego. The challenge, therefore, is to break the spell of the "ordinary oblivion" that characterizes much of everyday life. The Priority of the Other can help us rise to the occasion.

Download or read book Beyond the Violation of the Self written by William M. Jump and published by Reality Press. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Violation of the Self: Getting Your Soul Right is an extraordinary labor of love that is the result of 20 years of case studies by William M. Jump, a clinical psychotherapist/hypnotherapist who specializes in working with individuals suffering from long-standing symptoms and manifestations as a result of childhood traumas. While treating his patients with hypnosis, the author uncovered a world of non-physical helpers who have emerged from his clients to teach and guide him through their individual healing processes. Beyond the Violation provides numerous examples as well as an in depth case study of one such patient, in addition to a ground breaking interview between the author and one of his patient's primary helpers. Through these unique experiences, the author makes a strong case for a much needed paradigm shift in the mental health field in order to combine the deepest understanding of psychological healing with the belief that healing is also done on the soul level. As we have seen medical doctors embrace alternative healing modalities to better treat their patients, so must mental health practitioners to achieve psychological healing and spiritual growth.

Download or read book Expanding the Boundaries of Self Beyond the Limit of Traditional Thought written by Oliver H. Jobson and published by Oliver H. Jobson. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 150 Word Description: "Expanding The Boundaries Of Self Beyond The Limit Of Traditional Thought."..communicates a direct perception of the self through realization, detailing a profound understanding of the laws of Karma, attraction, retribution, resonance and sin. With Oliver H. Jobson's dynamic personality, deep intellect and universal knowledge, he goes beyond traditional thought offering an autobiographical philosophical insight from research into World Faiths. He challenges readers to look within as he reveals the pertinent keys to unlocking the secret teachings behind all Religions. Jobson presents a synthesis linking religion, science, philosophy and our daily life into a reality of universal harmony, dispelling the bigotry, divisiveness and confusion that create religious separation and conflict in a fast shrinking global community. The essence of his book comprises five fundamental guiding principles, called the five E's; they are Examination of self, Expansion of mind, Edifying understanding, Eliminating erroneous thoughts and maintaining Equanimity and balance.

Download or read book Beyond Self Interest written by Krzysztof Pelc and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative retelling of the workings of self-interest in contemporary market society, which claims the world increasingly belongs to passionates, obsessives, and fanatics: those who do things for their own sake, rather than as means to other ends. In our capitalist market society, we have come to accept that the way to get ahead is through strong will, grit, and naked ambition. This belief has served us well: it has contributed to making our affluent societies affluent. But does the premise still hold? As Krzysztof Pelc argues in Beyond Self-Interest, this default assumption no longer captures reality. There is a limit to the returns of calculation, planning, and resolve, and in a growing number of settings, this limit has been reached. The true idols of market society, he contends, are those who disavow their self-interest, or at least appear to do so: eco-conscious entrepreneurs, media moguls with a mission, and modern-day artisans catering to a well-educated and ever more socially conscious population of consumers. Increasingly, those who prosper do so by spurning prosperity, or by convincing others that they are instead pursuing purpose, passion, love of craft-anything but their own self-advancement. This is the paradox of intention, and it is increasingly defining our lives. Pelc tells the story of this paradox from its unlikely emergence among a group of British thinkers in the early 19th century to its development over the next two centuries, as it was successively picked up by philosophers, novelists, social scientists, and, ultimately, capitalists themselves. All of whom arrived at a common realization: the appearance of disinterest pays, but only if it is believable-which presents the self-interested among us with a tricky problem. Drawing on three centuries of thought about commercial society and the people living in it, this richly researched account of the cycles of capitalism does not naively suggest that we should reject the market. Rather, it calls on us to treat economic growth once more as its earliest theorists did: as a formidable tool of human development, instead of an end in itself.

Download or read book Beyond Individualism written by Gordon Wheeler and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking and provocative new treatment of some of the oldest dilemmas of psychology and relationship, Gordon Wheeler challenges the most basic tenet of the West cultural tradition: the individualist self. Characteristics of this self-model are our embedded yet pervasive ideas that the individual self precedes and transcends relationship and social field conditions and that interpersonal experience is somehow secondary and even opposed to the needs of the inner self. Assumptions like these, Wheeler argues, which are taken to be inherent to human nature and development, amount to a controlling cultural paradigm that does considerable violence to both our evolutionary self-nature and our intuitive self-experience. He asserts that we are actually far more relational and intersubjective than our cultural generally allows and that these relational capacities are deeply built into our inherent evolutionary nature. His argument progresses from the origins and lineage of the Western individualist self-model, into the basis for a new model of the self, relationship, and experience out of the insights and implications of Gestalt psychology and its philosophical derivatives, deconstructivism and social constructionism. From there, in a linked series of experiential chapters, each of them a groundbreaking essay in its own right, he takes up the essential dynamic themes of self-experience and relational life: interpersonal orientation, meaning-making and adaptation, support, shame, intimacy, and finally narrative and gender, culminating in considerations of health, ethics, politics, and spirit. The result is a picture and an experience of self that is grounded in the active dynamics of attention, problem solving, imagination, interpretation, evaluation, emotion, meaning-making, narration, and, above all, relationship. By the final section, the reader comes away with a new sense of what it means to be human and a new and more usable definition of health.

Download or read book Marie Syrkin written by Carole S. Kessner and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-08 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As poet and journalist, Zionist activist and public intellectual, Syrkin's work and actions illuminate a wide range of twentieth-century literary, cultural, and political concerns. Her passions demonstrate, as Irving Howe said, "a life of commitment to values beyond the self.""--

Download or read book God and the Self in Hegel written by Paolo Diego Bubbio and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2017-06-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God and the Self in Hegel proposes a reconstruction of Hegel's conception of God and analyzes the significance of this reading for Hegel's idealistic metaphysics. Paolo Diego Bubbio argues that in Hegel's view, subjectivism—the tenet that there is no underlying "true" reality that exists independently of the activity of the cognitive agent—can be avoided, and content can be restored to religion, only to the extent that God is understood in God's relation to human beings, and human beings are understood in their relation to God. Focusing on traditional problems in theology and the philosophy of religion, such as the ontological argument for the existence of God, the Trinity, and the "death of God," Bubbio shows the relevance of Hegel's view of religion and God for his broader philosophical strategy. In this account, as a response to the fundamental Kantian challenge of how to conceive the mind-world relation without setting mind over and against the world, Hegel has found a way of overcoming subjectivism in both philosophy and religion.

Download or read book Growing Beyond Survival written by Elizabeth G. Vermilyea and published by Sidran Traumatic Stress Ins. This book was released on 2000 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beyond Vision written by Allan Jones and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique and exhilarating autobiography, Allan Jones – Canada’s first blind diplomat – vividly describes how an untreatable eye disease slowly decimated his visual world, most challengingly during his postings in Tokyo and New Delhi, and how he discovered and took to heart the revelatory Indian philosophy that changed his life. Advaita Vedanta, the most iconoclastic and liberating of the classical Indian philosophies, profoundly altered the author’s experience of self and world. He found that the true self, as distinct from the individual ego, far exceeds the boundaries of individuality. It lies beneath sightedness or blindness and is absolutely unaffected by the latter. This welcome shift of perspective was reinforced by startling discoveries in contemporary physics, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that are fully consistent with Advaitic metaphysics. As for the practical applications of metaphysics, this book demonstrates step by step how Advaitic insight and practice significantly reduce physical and psychological tension. The most telling examples have to do with adjustments compelled by extreme circumstances. Thus Jones describes how he drew upon Advaitic mindfulness techniques to maintain his white cane mobility skills in the teeth of permanent spinal, nerve, and muscle pain. The arc of Beyond Vision moves from the claustrophobically personal to the openness of the transpersonal. It begins in a dysfunctional family background, breaking out into a full life encompassing an adventurous foreign service career, spiritual exploration, and an unconventional kind of marital love.

Download or read book I AMness written by Ian Kent and published by Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill. This book was released on 1972 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: