In this volume the author discusses the major trends in the philosophy of religion from Kant to the beginning of the twentieth century. The work is divided into three parts dealing respectively with the methods of study of the religious phenomenon, the nature of religion, and the approach to religion from experience and the principle of immanence. In Part I the theological method, based on revelation and authority, is first discussed; and then the rationalistic method emphasizing the approach to religion (...) from natural reason and having its chief exponents in Kant, Fries, Hegel, Feuerbach and Schleiermacher. Both methods are called aprioristic in contrast with the empirical method adopted by philologists, anthropologists, sociologists and, more recently, by psychologists such as Ribot, Delacroix, Starbuck and William James. Important as it is, the empirical method cannot attain to the essence of religion, which is the chief objective of Lamanna's study. Hence a distinction must be made between science of religion characteristic of the empirical method and philosophy of religion to which the author directs his attention in the second part of his work. Taking as starting point the threefold aspect of psychic life in its dynamic activity, Lamanna groups the various trends in the study of the essence of religion under the following headings: 1) religion as a product of the cognitive function, where both the idealistic doctrines of Hegel, Caird, Vacherot and Spir and the naturalistic doctrines of Gratry, Max Müller, Wundt, and Spencer are analyzed; 2) religion as a product of practical function, where the idealistic theories of Kant, Ritschl, Herrmann, and others are contrasted with the positivistic views of Comte, Durkheim and Nietzsche; 3) religion as a product of the contemplative function, where again idealistic trends as represented by Fries and Schleiermacher are opposed to the naturalistic trends of Schopenhauer, Hartmann and Guyau. The last part of the work is devoted to the study of those theories of religion which stress the approach to God through the inner activity of the self. This may take the form of immediate experience of the divine in the consciousness of the moral ideal ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute immanent in action ; experience and affirmation of the Absolute in the intuition of becoming ; and finally, experience of the divine in the unconscious. In summarizing the results of his inquiry, the author points out the need for an Absolute Reality as the objective goal toward which the inner tendencies of the life of the spirit are directed and as the actualization of the supreme ideals of truth, goodness and beauty. Lamanna's work is a very thorough and extremely informative study that has few equals in the field of philosophy of religion.--B. M. B. (shrink)

This study attempts a systematic philosophical examination of C. G. Jung's understanding of the unconscious and, more particularly, of his understanding of das Selbst . Chapter 1 brings into focus the historical context of Jung's discussion by briefly examining the understanding of the unconscious in the work of four leading figures in late 19th century psychology: Wilhelm Wundt, Pierre Janet, Theodore Flournoy, and Sigmund Freud. Chapters 2 through 5 trace the development of Jung's thinking on the nature of the unconscious (...) and on the self; a close textual analysis is made of his writings from the earliest lectures, the Zofingia lectures , to his last major work, Mysterium Conjunctionis . ;Under philosophical scrutiny, Jung's theoretical positions are revealed to be somewhat inconsistent or simply inadequate. Jung does not offer to philosophy a rigorous, carefully worked out theoretical reflection on the nature and structure of the human being. Yet, this said, it is also true that Jung does have something to say on this issue, and it is the effort of this study to give theoretical coherence to Jung's reflections. ;Thus, as re-constructed, Jung's position may be stated as follows: The unconscious is an intelligent, transpersonal structure irreducible to consciousness. As an intelligent structure, the unconscious maintains identity-in-difference, and for this reason, Jung suggests, unconscious intellectual processes are irreducible to conscious intellectual processes which "discriminate." The supra-intelligent, transpersonal unconscious structure is a subject; the self is the supra-intelligent, transpersonal unconscious subject. While the self, the unconscious subject, is irreducible to the conscious subject , the conscious subject remains, nevertheless, a manifestation of the self. The ego and the self are mutually dependent or cor-related. ;In the conclusion of this study, I turn to the thought of Martin Heidegger to help elucidate the concerns of Jung in a more rigorously philosophical manner. (shrink)

It is the presumptive thesis of William Lyons that an examination of introspection, though more a historical than a current topic in philosophy and psychology, still has much substance for today's scholar. By introspection, he means the direct access to mental knowledge, as it has been written about over the centuries from Augustine to Descartes to the empiricists, and as it has been developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as an experimental method in psychology by Wundt, James, (...) and Titchener. Lyons is chiefly concerned with whether introspection exists as a possible form of knowing, not with its applications. Since he finds all past attempts to demonstrate the valid existence of introspection unsatisfactory, he turns to contemporary philosophy and psychology to determine whether, even if they cannot justify introspection, they can shed light on why such a long-running conceptual illusion existed in the past and, in several guises, continues to exist. Here Lyons puts us on contemporary ground with descriptions of brain scanners, Turing machines, computer-program possibilities, behaviorist tactics, and Rylean moves. The first section bears the general title "The Dethronement of Introspection," while the second section, emphasizing the computer models of Daniel Dennett, is titled "The Mechanization of Introspection." But, unhappily, all the contemporary approaches are also judged unsatisfactory in justifying introspection. We are, however, given some hints that the illusion of introspection's existence must rest in our culture's folk psychology, "which has changed little over the last thousand years or more.". (shrink)

Wundt untersucht in diesem Buch die Philosophie der einzelnen Nationen als Beitrag zum Weltkrieg. Nachdruck des Originals von 1915.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

This text explores how human beings construe experience: experience as a resource, as a potential for understanding, representing and acting on reality.

In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended by appeal (...) to a third argument based on considerations about the nature and observability of causation. This argument has not been much discussed in recent times. Here is a concise version from William James: "… the concrete perceptual flux, taken just as it comes, offers in our own activity-situations perfectly comprehensible instances of causal agency … If we took these experiences as the type of what actual causation is, we should have to ascribe to cases of causation outside of our life, to physical cases also, an inwardly experiential nature. In other words, we should have to espouse a so-called “pan-psychic” philosophy" (James 1911: 218). James here suggests that we have direct experience of causation in our own agency. He thereby directly contradicts David Hume, who famously denied that we have any experience of causation. James goes on to claim that if this experience is representative of causation in general, it follows that all causation is mental, and that panpsychism is true. This kind of argument for panpsychism can be called the argument from (experience of) causation. This chapter offers, first, a history of this argument and arguments closely related to it, and second, an analysis of the argument – is it valid, are its premises in any way defensible, and how does it relate to the other, more popular arguments for panpsychism from philosophy of mind and categorical properties? (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)