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Book Panpsychism and the Function of God

Download or read book Panpsychism and the Function of God written by Robert Clifton Whittemore and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Galileo s Error

Download or read book Galileo s Error written by Philip Goff and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2019 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness--panpsychism, an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward.ward.

Book Consciousness and the Existence of God

Download or read book Consciousness and the Existence of God written by J.P. Moreland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Consciousness and the Existence of God , JP Morelandargues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, law-like correlation with physical states) provides evidence for the existence of God. Considering Searle's contingent correlation, O'Connor's emergent necessitation, and Nagel's mysterian "naturalism," Moreland concludes that these versions of naturalism should be rejected in favor of what he calls"the Argument from Consciousness."

Book Panentheism and Panpsychism

Download or read book Panentheism and Panpsychism written by Godehard Brüntrup and published by Mentis. This book was released on 2020-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Panpsychism has become a highly attractive position in the philosophy of mind. On panpsychism, both the physical and the mental are inseparable and fundamental features of reality. Panentheism has also become immensely popular in the philosophy of religion. Panentheism strives for a higher reconciliation of an atheistic pantheism, on which the universe itself is causa sui, and the ontological dualism of necessarily existing, eternal creator and contingent, finite creation. Historically and systematically, panpsychism and panentheism often went together as essential parts of an all-embracing metaphysical theory of Being. The present collection of essays analyses the relation between panpsychism and panentheism and provides critical reflections on the significance of panpsychistic and panentheistic thinking for recent debates in philosophy and theology.

Book Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

Download or read book Consciousness and Fundamental Reality written by Philip Goff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism, the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. Unusually for an opponent of physicalism, Goff argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalismChalmers' zombie conceivability argument and Jackson's knowledge argumentand proposes significant modifications. The second half of the book explores and defends a recently rediscovered theory of fundamental realityor perhaps rather a grouping of such theoriesknown as 'Russellian monism.' Russellian monists draw inspiration from a couple of theses defended by Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Matter in 1927. Russell argued that physics, for all its virtues, gives us a radically incomplete picture of the world. It tells us only about the extrinsic, mathematical features of material entities, and leaves us in the dark about their intrinsic nature, about how they are in and of themselves. Following Russell, Russellian monists suppose that it is this 'hidden' intrinsic nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Some Russellian monists adopt panpsychism, the view that the intrinsic natures of basic material entities involve consciousness; others hold that basic material entities are proto-conscious rather than conscious. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. The penultimate chapter defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

Book Brief Peeks Beyond

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bernardo Kastrup
  • Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
  • Release : 2015-05-29
  • ISBN : 1785350196
  • Pages : 228 pages

Download or read book Brief Peeks Beyond written by Bernardo Kastrup and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a multi-faceted exploration and critique of the human condition as it is presently manifested. It addresses science and philosophy, explores the underlying nature of reality, the state of our society and culture, the influence of the mainstream media, the nature of free will and a number of other topics. Each of these examinations contributes an angle to an emerging idea gestalt that challenges present mainstream views and behaviors and offers a sane alternative. The book is organized as a series of short and self-contained essays, most of which can be read in under one hour.

Book Panpsychism in the West  revised edition

Download or read book Panpsychism in the West revised edition written by David Skrbina and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated edition of a comprehensive study of the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things. In Panpsychism in the West, the first comprehensive study of the subject, David Skrbina argues for the importance of panpsychism—the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things—in consideration of the nature of consciousness and mind. Panpsychism, with its conception of mind as a general phenomenon of nature, uniquely links being and mind. More than a theory of mind, it is a meta-theory—a statement about theories of mind rather than a theory in itself. Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things. After a brief discussion of general issues surrounding philosophy of mind, Skrbina examines the panpsychist views of philosophers from the pre-Socratics to the post-structuralists. The original edition of Panpsychism in the West helped to reinvigorate a neglected and important aspect of philosophic thinking. This revised edition offers expanded and updated material that reflects the growth of panpsychism as a subdiscipline. It covers the problem of emergence of mind from a non-mental reality and the combination problem in greater detail. It offers expanded coverage of the pre-Socratics and Plato; a new section on Augustine; expanded discussions of Continental panpsychism, scientific arguments, Nietzsche, and Whitehead; and a new section on Russellian monism. With this edition, Panpsychism in the West will be continue to be the standard work on the topic.

Book Panpsychism and the Religious Attitude

Download or read book Panpsychism and the Religious Attitude written by D. S. Clarke and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human beings have thoughts, sensations, and feelings and think that at least some of this mental life is shared with domestic and wild animals. But, are there reduced degrees of mentality found in mosquitoes, bacteria, and even more primitive natural bodies? Panpsychists think so and have defended this belief throughout the history of philosophy, beginning with the ancient Greeks and continuing into the present. In this bold, challenging book, D. S. Clarke outlines reasons for accepting panpsychism and defends the doctrine against its critics. He proposes it as an alternative to the mechanistic materialism and humanism that dominate present-day philosophy.

Book The Metaphysics of Technology

Download or read book The Metaphysics of Technology written by David Skrbina and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is technology? Why does it have such power in our lives? Why does it seemingly progress of its own accord, and without regard to social or environmental well-being? The quest for the essence of technology is an old one, with roots in the pre-Socratic philosophy of ancient Greece. It was then that certain thinkers first joined the ideas of technê and logos into a single worldview. The Greeks saw it as a kind of world-force, present in both the works of men and in nature itself. It was the very creative power of the cosmos. In the 20th century, German thinkers like Dessauer, Juenger, and Heidegger sought the metaphysical basis of technology, with varying success. French theologian Jacques Ellul argued persuasively that technology was an autonomous force of nature that determined all aspects of human existence, but he neglected the metaphysical underpinnings. Recent writers in the philosophy of technology have generally eschewed metaphysics altogether, preferring to concentrate on constructivist models or pragmatic analyses. In the present work, Skrbina returns to a classic metaphysical approach, seeking not so much an essence of technology but rather a deep and penetrating analysis of the entire technological phenomenon. Drawing on the Greeks, he argues for a teleological metaphysics in which increasing order in the universe is itself defined as a technological process. On this reading, all of reality constitutes a technical sphere, a "pantechnikon," of universal scope. This work — the first-ever book-length treatment of the topic — breaks new ground by providing an in-depth and critical study of the metaphysics of technology, as well as drawing out the practical consequences. Technology poses significant risks to humanity and the planet, risks that can be mitigated through a detailed philosophical analysis.

Book Minding God

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gregory R. Peterson
  • Publisher : Fortress Press
  • Release : 2003
  • ISBN : 9781451409116
  • Pages : 276 pages

Download or read book Minding God written by Gregory R. Peterson and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does it make sense to speak of the "mind of God"? Are humans unique? Do we have souls?Our growing explorations of the cognitive sciences pose significant challenges to and opportunities for theological reflection. Gregory Peterson introduces these sciences -- neuroscience, artificial intelligence, animal cognition, linguistics, and psychology -- that specifically contribute to the new picture and their philosophical underpinnings. He shows its implications for rethinking longstanding Western assumptions about the unity of the self, the nature of consciousness, free will, inherited sin, and religious experience. Such findings also illumine our understanding of God's own mind, the God-world relationship, new notion of divine design, and the implications of a universe of evolving minds.Peterson is gifted at explaining scientific concepts and drawing their implications for religious belief and theology. His work demonstrates how new work in cognitive sciences upends and reconfigures many popular assumptions about human uniqueness, mind-body relationship, and how we speak of divine and human intelligence.

Book Wandering in Darkness

Download or read book Wandering in Darkness written by Eleonore Stump and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only the most naïve or tendentious among us would deny the extent and intensity of suffering in the world. Can one hold, consistently with the common view of suffering in the world, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? This book argues that one can. Wandering in Darkness first presents the moral psychology and value theory within which one typical traditional theodicy, namely, that of Thomas Aquinas, is embedded. It explicates Aquinas's account of the good for human beings, including the nature of love and union among persons. Eleonore Stump also makes use of developments in neurobiology and developmental psychology to illuminate the nature of such union. Stump then turns to an examination of narratives. In a methodological section focused on epistemological issues, the book uses recent research involving autism spectrum disorder to argue that some philosophical problems are best considered in the context of narratives. Using the methodology argued for, the book gives detailed, innovative exegeses of the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham and Isaac, and Mary of Bethany. In the context of these stories and against the backdrop of Aquinas's other views, Stump presents Aquinas's own theodicy, and shows that Aquinas's theodicy gives a powerful explanation for God's allowing suffering. She concludes by arguing that this explanation constitutes a consistent and cogent defense for the problem of suffering.

Book Mental Reality

Download or read book Mental Reality written by Galen Strawson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mental Reality, Galen Strawson argues that much contemporary philosophy of mind gives undue primacy of place to publicly observable phenomena, nonmental phenomena, and behavioral phenomena (understood as publicly observable phenomena) in its account of the nature of mind. It does so at the expense of the phenomena of conscious experience. Strawson describes an alternative position, "naturalized Cartesianism," which couples the materialist view that mind is entirely natural and wholly physical with a fully realist account of the nature of conscious experience. Naturalized Cartesianism is an adductive (as opposed to reductive) form of materialism. Adductive materialists don't claim that conscious experience is anything less than we ordinarily conceive it to be, in being wholly physical. They claim instead that the physical is something more than we ordinarily conceive it to be, given that many of the wholly physical goings-on in the brain constitute -- literally are -- conscious experiences as we ordinarily conceive them.

Book Cosmologies of the Anthropocene

Download or read book Cosmologies of the Anthropocene written by Arne Johan Vetlesen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages with the classic philosophical question of mind and matter, seeking to show its altered meaning and acuteness in the era of the Anthropocene. Arguing that matter, and, more broadly, the natural world, has been misconceived since Descartes, it explores the devastating impact that this has had in practice in the West. As such, alternatives are needed, whether philosophical ones such as those offered by figures such as Whitehead and Nagel, or posthumanist ones such as those developed by Barad and Latour. Drawing on recent anthropological work ignored by philosophers and sociologists alike, the author considers a radical alternative cosmology: animism understood as panpsychism in practice. This understanding of mind and matter, of culture and nature, is then turned against present-day posthumanist critiques of what the Anthropocene amounts to, showing them up as philosophically misguided, politically mute, and ethically wanting. A ground-breaking reconceptualization of the natural world and our treatment of it, Cosmologies of the Anthropocene will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, philosophy and anthropology with interests in our understanding of and relationship with nature.

Book Panpsychism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Godehard Brüntrup
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2017
  • ISBN : 0199359946
  • Pages : 425 pages

Download or read book Panpsychism written by Godehard Brüntrup and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent debates in philosophy of mind have resulted in an impasse, which lead to a renaissance of panpsychism as a viable alternative. Panpsychism is the thesis that mental being is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. This book collects many of the most recent voices arguing for panpsychism as a genuine alternative in analytic philosophy of mind in the 21st century as well as some of the most prominent critics.

Book Arguing for Atheism

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robin Le Poidevin
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2003-09-02
  • ISBN : 1134871112
  • Pages : 192 pages

Download or read book Arguing for Atheism written by Robin Le Poidevin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. In Arguing for Atheism, Robin Le Poidevin addresses the question of whether theism-the view that there is a personal, transcendent creator of the universe - solves the deepest mysteries of existence. Philosophical defences of theism have often been based on the idea that it explains things which atheistic approaches cannot: for example, why the universe exists, and how there can be objective moral values. The main contention of Arguing for Atheism is that the reverse is true: that in fact theism fails to explain many things it claims to, while atheism can explain some of the things it supposedly leaves mysterious. It is also argued that religion need not depend on belief in God. Designed as a text for university courses in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, this book’s accessible style and numerous explanations of important philosophical concepts and positions will also make it attractive to the general reader.

Book Naturalizing God   A Critical Evaluation of Religious Naturalism

Download or read book Naturalizing God A Critical Evaluation of Religious Naturalism written by Mikael Leidenhag and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-02 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluates religious naturalists' attempts to find a middle path between supernaturalism and atheistic secularism, and explores naturalistic, theistic, and panpsychist solutions.

Book God  Purpose  and Reality

Download or read book God Purpose and Reality written by John Bishop and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What must reality be like if the God of Abrahamic theism exists? How could the worldview of Abrahamic theism be understood if not in terms of the existence of a supremely powerful, knowledgeable, and good personal being? John Bishop and Ken Perszyk argue that it is reasonable to reject what many analytic philosophers take to be the standard conception of God as the 'personal omniGod'. They argue that a version of a 'logical' Argument from Evil is still very much in play, contrary to the widely held view that this line of argument is bankrupt. This book provides a new presentation and defence of the alternative that Bishop and Perszyk have called euteleology. Its core claims are that reality is inherently purposive, and that the Universe exists ultimately because its overall end (telos), which is the supreme good, is made concretely real within it. There is no supreme agent ('standing by' while horrors take place); God is 'no-thing' in euteleology's basic ontology. Rather, talk of God-as-a-personal-being is a cognitive construction, treating ultimate reality by analogy with our ordinary ways of experiencing and talking about the world. But euteleological theism is also emphatically realist. Analogizing God-talk enables humans to align themselves with reality and is aptly deployed in prayer and worship-practices whose broad function is a human contribution to, and enjoyment of, the fulfilment of reality's inherent ultimate purpose.