Download or read book The Spiritual Automaton written by Eugene Marshall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eugene Marshall presents an original, systematic account of Spinoza's philosophy of mind, in which the mind is presented as an affective mechanism, one that, when rational, behaves as a spiritual automaton. The central feature of the account is a novel concept of consciousness, one that identifies consciousness with affectivity, a property of an idea paradigmatically but not exhaustively instantiated by those modes of thought Spinoza calls affects. Inadequate and adequate ideas come to consciousness, and thus impact our well-being and establish or disturb our happiness, only insofar as they become affects and, thus, conscious. And ideas become affects by entering into appropriate causal relations with the other ideas that constitute a mind. Furthermore, the topic of consciousness in Spinoza provides an eminently well-placed point of entry into his system, because it flows directly out of his central metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological commitments—and it does so in a way that allows us to see Spinoza's philosophy as a systematic whole. Further, doing so provides a thoroughly consistent yet novel way of thinking about central themes in his thought. Marshall's reading provides a novel understanding of adequacy, innateness, power, activity and passivity, the affects, the conatus, bondage, freedom, the illusion of free will, akrasia, blessedness, salvation, and the eternity of the soul. In short, by explaining the affective mechanisms of consciousness in Spinoza, The Spiritual Automaton illuminates Spinoza's systematic philosophical and ethical project as a whole, as well as in its details, in a striking new way.
Download or read book Filmosophy written by Daniel Frampton and published by Wallflower Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Filmosophy' is a manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. The book coalesces 20th century ideas of film as thought into a practical theory of 'film-thinking', arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic 'intent' about the characters, spaces, and events of film.
Download or read book The Hermetic Deleuze written by Joshua Ramey and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Joshua Ramey examines the extent to which Gilles Deleuze's ethics, metaphysics, and politics were informed by, and can only be fully understood through, this hermetic tradition.
Download or read book Cellular Automata written by Howard Gutowitz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirty four contributions in this book cover many aspects of contemporary studies on cellular automata and include reviews, research reports, and guides to recent literature and available software. Cellular automata, dynamic systems in which space and time are discrete, are yielding interesting applications in both the physical and natural sciences. The thirty four contributions in this book cover many aspects of contemporary studies on cellular automata and include reviews, research reports, and guides to recent literature and available software. Chapters cover mathematical analysis, the structure of the space of cellular automata, learning rules with specified properties: cellular automata in biology, physics, chemistry, and computation theory; and generalizations of cellular automata in neural nets, Boolean nets, and coupled map lattices.Current work on cellular automata may be viewed as revolving around two central and closely related problems: the forward problem and the inverse problem. The forward problem concerns the description of properties of given cellular automata. Properties considered include reversibility, invariants, criticality, fractal dimension, and computational power. The role of cellular automata in computation theory is seen as a particularly exciting venue for exploring parallel computers as theoretical and practical tools in mathematical physics. The inverse problem, an area of study gaining prominence particularly in the natural sciences, involves designing rules that possess specified properties or perform specified task. A long-term goal is to develop a set of techniques that can find a rule or set of rules that can reproduce quantitative observations of a physical system. Studies of the inverse problem take up the organization and structure of the set of automata, in particular the parameterization of the space of cellular automata. Optimization and learning techniques, like the genetic algorithm and adaptive stochastic cellular automata are applied to find cellular automaton rules that model such physical phenomena as crystal growth or perform such adaptive-learning tasks as balancing an inverted pole.Howard Gutowitz is Collaborateur in the Service de Physique du Solide et Résonance Magnetique, Commissariat a I'Energie Atomique, Saclay, France.
Download or read book Automaton written by C.L. Davies and published by MP Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the not too distant future, after the huge successes of role-playing games, virtual worlds and reality shows, it was only a matter of time before somebody took the next step. A remote island: a population existing only to entertain. Their lives broadcast around the clock and around the globe. Their actions dictated by their owners. It’s the world’s biggest game played by thousands. Welcome to 'Gameworld'. Dean 3012 is a good guy living on the Island. He loves his girlfriend, Lily, to pieces. With their first baby on the way, life is perfect. But when things take a sinister turn, the couple are plunged into a world of darkness and despair. Dean must somehow find a way to take control and fight for all their lives. Amelia watches the game, given the gift of a 'Gameworld' Character when she was but a small child. However, when her character’s happiness is threatened, how far will Amelia go to protect her?
Download or read book Intelligence and Spirit written by Reza Negarestani and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism that formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things. In Intelligence and Spirit Reza Negarestani formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things, a real movement capable of overcoming any state of affairs that, from the perspective of the present, may appear to be the complete totality of history. Intelligence pierces through what seems to be the totality or the inevitable outcome of its history, be it the manifest portrait of the human or technocapitalism as the alleged pilot of history. Building on Hegel's account of Geist as a multiagent conception of mind and on Kant's transcendental psychology as a functional analysis of the conditions of possibility of mind, Negarestani provides a critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism. The assumptions of the former are exposed by way of a critique of the transcendental structure of experience as a tissue of subjective or psychological dogmas; the claims of the latter regarding the ubiquity of mind or the inevitable advent of an unconstrained superintelligence are challenged as no more than ideological fixations which do not stand the test of systematic scrutiny. This remarkable fusion of continental philosophy in the form of a renewal of the speculative ambitions of German Idealism and analytic philosophy in the form of extended thought-experiments and a philosophy of artificial languages opens up new perspectives on the meaning of human intelligence and explores the real potential of posthuman intelligence and what it means for us to live in its prehistory.
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Download or read book The Age of Spiritual Machines written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence—“a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next” (The New York Times Book Review). “Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.”—BILL GATES Imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, the “restless genius” (The Wall Street Journal), “ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweil’s prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in: • Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind) • Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers • Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.
Download or read book The Brain is the Screen written by Gregory Flaxman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first broad-ranging collection on Deleuze’s essential works on cinema. In the nearly twenty years since their publication, Gilles Deleuze’s books about cinema have proven as daunting as they are enticing—a new aesthetics of film, one equally at home with Henri Bergson and Wim Wenders, Friedrich Nietzsche and Orson Welles, that also takes its place in the philosopher’s immense and difficult oeuvre. With this collection, the first to focus solely and extensively on Deleuze’s cinematic work, the nature and reach of that work finally become clear. Composed of a substantial introduction, twelve original essays produced for this volume, and a new English translation of a personal, intriguing, and little-known interview with Deleuze on his cinema books, The Brain Is the Screen is a sustained engagement with Deleuze’s cinematic philosophy that leads to a new view of the larger confrontation of philosophy with cinematic images.Contributors: Éric Alliez, U of Vienna; Dudley Andrew, U of Iowa; Peter Canning; Tom Conley, Harvard U; András Bálint Kovács, ELTE U, Budapest; Gregg Lambert, Syracuse U; Laura U. Marks, Carleton U; Jean-Clet Martin, Collége International de Philosophie, Paris; Angelo Restivo; Martin Schwab, U of Michigan; François Zourabichvili, Collége International de Philosophie.Gregory Flaxman is a doctoral student in the Program of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania.
Download or read book Deleuze and Space written by Ian Buchanan and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection takes up the challenge of thinking spatially by exploring Deleuze's spatial concepts in applied contexts: architecture, cinema, urban planning, political philosophy and metaphysics. In doing so, it brings together some of the most accomplished Deleuze scholars writing today - Reda Bensmaia, Ian Buchanan, Claire Colebrook, Tom Conley, Manuel DeLanda, Gary Genosko, Gregg Lambert and Nigel Thrift.
Download or read book The Century Dictionary The Century dictionary written by and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Importance of Spinoza for the Modern Philosophy of Science written by Nancy Brenner-Golomb and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question raised in this book is why Spinoza’s work which comes so close to the modern view of natural science is not prominent in the social sciences. The answer suggested is that this is due to the lingering influence of the Cartesian differentiation between the domain of science, dealing with material bodies in space and time, and the realm of thought to which the mind belongs. Spinoza’s rejection of this mind/body dualism was based on his conviction that the human mind was an essential part of the ‘forces’ which maintain human existence. Since this view fits so well the evolutionary view of life, the book suggests that after Darwin, when this dualism became untenable, it was replaced by a nature versus culture dichotomy. The book examines whether the history of the philosophy of science supports this explanation. The author believes that answering this question is important because of the rising influence of cultural relativism which endangers the very survival of modern science and political stability.
Download or read book Gilles Deleuze s Time Machine written by David Norman Rodowick and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to Deleuze's theory of cinema, from a leading American film theorist.
Download or read book Nihilism written by Bulent Diken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-28 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the genealogy and consequences of nihilism, attempts at 'sociologizing' the concept of nihilism by relating nihilism to capitalism, post-politics and terrorism, and considers the possibilities of overcoming nihilism.
Download or read book The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany written by and published by . This book was released on 1821 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence written by David W. Bates and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What would it mean to make a decision against the acceleration of automation and for humanity? In An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence, David W. Bates lays the groundwork for such a decision by rethinking the history of human cognition and its entanglements with technology. Tracing evolving lines of thought from the early modern period to the present, Bates confronts the intimate connection between autonomy and automaticity in how we have understood the capacities of the human mind. At the heart of this entanglement is a total mechanistic understanding of nature that began in the seventeenth century and saw the body as machine, the nervous system as control mechanism, and the brain as the center of cognition. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how new ideas and experiences reconfigured the ways in which the automaticity of the body could be linked with technical systems, while at the same time the mind could still create the space for autonomy. The result is a new theorization of the human in which the human, dependent on technology, produces itself as an artificial automation that has no "natural" origin"--
Download or read book Growing Old written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When are we actually "old"? What really happens as we age? How can we cope with old age in the best way? Growing old is an art, and aging in the best way requires spiritual understanding. In this enlightening anthology (compiled by a director of elder care homes), comprehensive cosmological perspectives alternate with detailed observations of aging. Rudolf Steiner views aging in the context of the earthly and spiritual evolution, which encompasses all forms of existence. This book therefore begins with the essential developmental significance of aging and ends by considering human beings as joint creators in cosmic processes and having the capacity to become increasingly conscious of all that this implies. These key texts by Rudolf Steiner show how spiritual knowledge can expand current studies of old age, the aging process, and problems that older people encounter. Issues concerning today's "aging population" can be seen in a broader context that recognizes the fruits of old age. One example of this is the productive relationship between childhood and old age--a theme throughout this volume. By growing old consciously, we can view aging not just as a period of physical decline but, more important, as a time for actively participating in shaping life. We can begin to find greater meaning in the process of growing old. CHAPTERS The Core Messages of Aging - Ageing as the Foundation of All Evolution - The Meaning of Ageing Fundamental Principles of Gerontology - What the Different Life Phases Signify for Old Age - Interdependency of Youth and Age Aging as a Developmental Process - Ageing throughout History - Transformation Processes in the Human Soul Aging: The Risks and Opportunities - The Art of Growing Old - Biographical Laws - Typical Age-related Infrimities: Dementia and Sclorosis - Pathological Age-related Symptoms - Changes in the Interplay of Different levels of Human Nature Old Age and Death - Why We Die - A Long Life or and Early Death - Karmic Laws - Lucifer and Ahriman - The Corpse as Ferment - Living with the Dead Growing Old: A Challenge for Education - Unbornhood: The Pre-birth Journey - Suggestions for Upbringing and Education Cosmological Dimensions of Aging - The Ageing of the Earth and the Mission of Human Beings - Becoming Ever More Human, and Knowledge of Christ Modern Gerontology, a Survey Notes Sources
