Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. Gold Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of (...) Watts’s thinking about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

Drawing on ancient and modern sources, "a lucid discussion of Taoism and the Chinese language [that's] profound, reflective, and enlightening." —Boston Globe According to Deepak Chopra, "Watts was a spiritual polymatch, the first and possibly greatest." Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic The Way of Zen. Critics agree that this last work stands as a perfect monument to the life and literature of Alan (...) Watts. "Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West,... Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit."—Los Angeles Times. (shrink)

Modern Civilization, Watts maintains, is in a state of chaos because its spiritual leadership has lost effective knowledge of man's true nature. Neither philosophy nor religion today gives us the consciousness that at the deepest center of our being exists an eternal reality, which in the West is called God. Yet only from this realization come the serenity and spiritual power necessary for a stable and creative society. One of the most influential of Alan Watts's early works, (...) The Supreme Identity examines the reality of civilization's deteriorated spiritual state and offers solutions through a rigorous theological discussion on Eastern metaphysic and the Christian religion. By examining the minute details of theological issues, Watts challenges readers to reassess the essences of religions that before seemed so familiar and to perceive Vedantic "oneness" as a meeting ground of all things – "good" and "evil." In addressing how religious institutions fail to provide the wisdom or power necessary to cope with the modern condition, Watts confidently seeks the truth of the human existence and the divine continuum. In this eye-opening account of "metaphysical blindness" in the West, Watts accents this dense exploration of religious philosophy with wry wit that will engage inquiring minds in search of spiritual power and wisdom. (shrink)

Contrasting Christian and Taoist thought, the philosopher explores the roots of man's estrangement from nature and its relationship to modern social, psychological, and sexual anxieties That human beings stand separate from a nature that ...

In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go out of your mind. Perhaps more than any other teacher in the West, this celebrated author, former Anglican priest, and self-described spiritual entertainer was responsible for igniting the passion of countless wisdom seekers to the spiritual and philosophical delights of India, China, and Japan. With Out of Your Mind, you are invited to immerse yourself in six of this legendary thinker's most engaging (...) teachings on how to break through the limits of the rational mind and expand your awareness and appreciation for the great game unfolding all around us. Distilled from Alan Watts’s pinnacle lectures, Out of Your Mind brings you an inspiring new resource that captures the true scope of this brilliant teacher in action. For those both new and familiar with Watts, this book invites us to delve into his favorite pathways out of the trap of conventional awareness, including: • The art of the “controlled accident”—what happens when you stop taking your life so seriously and start enjoying it with complete sincerity • How we come to believe “the myth of myself”—that we are skin-encapsulated egos separate from the world around us—and how to transcend that illusion • Why we must fully embrace chaos and the void to find our deepest purpose • Unconventional and refreshing insights into the deeper principles of Buddhism, Hinduism, Western philosophy, Christianity, and much more. (shrink)

“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever…. You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.”–from Become What You Are In this collection of writings, including nine new chapters never before available in book form, Watts (...) displays the intelligence, playfulness of thought, and simplicity of language that has made him so perennially popular as an interpreter of Eastern thought for Westerners. He draws on a variety of religious traditions, and covers topics such as the challenge of seeing one’s life “just as it is,” the Taoist approach to harmonious living, the limits of language in the face of ineffable spiritual truth, and the psychological symbolism of Christian thought. (shrink)

The dominant paradigm of experiments in the social and behavioral sciences views an experiment as a test of a theory, where the theory is assumed to generalize beyond the experiment's specific conditions. According to this view, which Alan Newell once characterized as “playing twenty questions with nature,” theory is advanced one experiment at a time, and the integration of disparate findings is assumed to happen via the scientific publishing process. In this article, we argue that the process of integration (...) is at best inefficient, and at worst it does not, in fact, occur. We further show that the challenge of integration cannot be adequately addressed by recently proposed reforms that focus on the reliability and replicability of individual findings, nor simply by conducting more or larger experiments. Rather, the problem arises from the imprecise nature of social and behavioral theories and, consequently, a lack of commensurability across experiments conducted under different conditions. Therefore, researchers must fundamentally rethink how they design experiments and how the experiments relate to theory. We specifically describe an alternative framework, integrative experiment design, which intrinsically promotes commensurability and continuous integration of knowledge. In this paradigm, researchers explicitly map the design space of possible experiments associated with a given research question, embracing many potentially relevant theories rather than focusing on just one. Researchers then iteratively generate theories and test them with experiments explicitly sampled from the design space, allowing results to be integrated across experiments. Given recent methodological and technological developments, we conclude that this approach is feasible and would generate more-reliable, more-cumulative empirical and theoretical knowledge than the current paradigm – and with far greater efficiency. (shrink)

According to the ethical system of eudaimonism, a philosophy that predates Aristotle, individuals have a responsibility to recognize and live in accordance with their daimon or "true self." The daimon refers to the potentialities of each person, the realization of which represents the greatest fulfillment in living of which each is capable. The daimon is an ideal in the sense of being an excellence, a perfection toward which one strives and, hence, it can give meaning and direction to one's life. (...) Eudaimonia, then, is activity in accordance with one's daimon. This is what is considered worth having in life. Since Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics is concerned with the proper ends of human functioning, he rejects the view of eudaimonia as a subjective state equivalent to, or similar to, hedonic enjoyment. But if psychologists are to be able to make productive use of the Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia, it must be rendered in a form more congenial to the field. In pursuing this goal, I have found it necessary to take several significant departures from the Aristotelian perspective, while I have endeavored to remain true to Aristotle's ethical objectives. The most important of these departures is to consider eudaimonia to have a subjective component embodying the experiences that flow from efforts to live in truth to one's daimon by striving to develop one's aptitudes and talents for purposes deemed worth having in life. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Both Constant and Spencer are moralists who want to encourage individual human perfection. But for Constant, politics has moral value even in a laissez-faire state, whereas for Spencer political participation has no moral value in itself. For Constant, from a moral perspective the historical change from an ancient to a modern conception of liberty is not absolute, and he wishes to retain, in a subordinate role, certain aspects of ancient liberty in modern societies. For Spencer, the historical evolution from (...) militant to industrial society involves the complete separation of politics from any positive moral good. In an industrial society, altruism has no connection with politics, and attempt to bring altruism into politics are not only doomed to failure but iare unjust and therefore immoral. Spencer is a leading figure in the separation of classical liberal thought from perfectionist morality that flourishes in the twentieth century. The separation between classical and modern liberalism that takes place in the fin de siècle is not just a matter of economics – as is shown by the fact that both Spencer and Constant are ardent apostles of laissez-faire – it is above all a question of different attitudes to morality. (shrink)

Psychological and philosophical perspectives are employed in an exploration of the reasons particular individuals experience an activity as personally expressive while others may find the same activity neutral or even aversive. The relationships between personal expressiveness and intrinsic motivation, flow, and self-actualization are considered. The construct of personal expressiveness is shown to have its roots in eudaimonistic philosophy. Living in a manner consistent with one's daimon or "true self" gives rise to a cognitive-affective state labeled "eudaimonia" that is distinguishable from (...) hedonic enjoyment. A personally expressive personality pattern is described integrating concepts from diverse theories including a sense of personal identity, self-actualization, an internal locus of control, and principled moral reasoning. A series of empirical investigations is proposed to test the theoretical concepts of personal expressiveness advanced. (shrink)

We introduce a notion of complexity for interpretations, which is used to prove some new results about interpretations of sequential theories. In particular, we give a new, elementary proof of Pudlák's theorem that sequential theories are connected. We also demonstrate a counterexample to the infinitary distributive law $a \vee \bigwedge_{i \in I} b_i = \bigwedge_{i \in I} (a \vee b_i)$ in the lattice of chapters, in which the chapters a and b i are compact. (Counterexamples in which a is not (...) compact have been found previously.). (shrink)

Part 1. Plan of This Commentary -- From an Epigram by Filangieri against Improvement in the Art of War -- On Encouragements for Agriculture -- On the Conversion of Rulers to Peace -- On the Salutary Revolution Which Filangieri Foresaw -- On the Union of Politics and Legislation -- On the Influence Which Filangieri Attributes to Legislation -- On the State of Nature, the Formation of Society, and the True Goal of Human Associations -- On Errors in Legislation -- Some (...) Remarks by Filangieri on the Decline of Spain -- On Filangieri's Observations about France -- On the Decline Filangieri Predicted for England -- Part 2. Object of this Second Part -- On the Black Slave Trade -- On Population -- Continuation of the Same Subject -- On Malthus's System Relating to Population -- Some Writers Who Have Exaggerated M. Malthus's System -- On a Contradiction by Filangieri -- On the Division of Properties -- On the Grain Trade -- On Agriculture as a Source of Wealth -- On the Protection Given Industry -- A New Proof of Filangieri's Fundamental Mistake -- On Guilds and Masters -- On Privileges for Industry -- On Taxation -- Part 3. On Criminal Prosecution Confided Exclusively to a Magistrate -- On Secret Indictments -- On Denunciation -- New Thoughts on the Idea of Giving Each Citizen the Right to Prosecute -- New Thoughts on the Idea of Giving Each Citizen the Right to Prosecute -- On the Right to Prosecute Given to Servants, When It Is a Question of Crimes against Society -- That the Prosecuting Magistrate Should Be Responsible, If Not for the Truth, at Least for the Legitimacy of the Accusation -- On Prisons -- On the Shortening of Legal Procedures -- On Defense Witnesses -- On Judgment by Juries -- On the Death Penalty -- On Convict Labor -- On Deportation -- Part 4. On Education -- On Religion -- Of the Growth of Polytheism -- On the Priesthood -- On the Mysteries -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Mammalian cells frequently depend on homologous recombination (HR) to repair DNA damage accurately and to help rescue stalled or collapsed replication forks. The essence of HR is an exchange of nucleotides between identical or nearly identical sequences. Although HR fulfills important biological roles, recombination between inappropriate sequence partners can lead to translocations or other deleterious rearrangements and such events must be avoided. For example, the recombination machinery must follow stringent rules to preclude recombination between the many repetitive elements in a (...) mammalian genome that share significant but imperfect homology. This paper takes a conceptual approach in addressing the homology requirements for recombination in mammalian genomes as well as the general strategy used by cells to reject recombination between similar but imperfectly matched sequences. A mechanism of heteroduplex rejection that involves the unwinding of recombination intermediates that may form between mismatched sequences is discussed. BioEssays 30:1163–1171, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In my paper I propose to explore a defensible philosophical basis for affirming the significant uniqueness of the Holocaust in relation to other similar instances of genocide and, accordingly, to contribute to efforts to better secure its place in history for future generations, especially in terms of its impact on aspects of institutionalized remembrance in law and morality. The twentieth century has been a century of democide (a state’s killing of its own people) and genocide (a state’s murder of its (...) own minorities in the general population): it ought to be or to promote a century of indelible remembrance. Perhaps the twenty-first century will be one not only of further institutionalized forms of remembrance to dissuade future genocidists, but also of the actualization of more effective internal mechanisms for preventing genocidal policies and practices. Short of prevention, however, mechanisms ought to be in place for either intervening in or stopping genocidal atrocities once they begin, and of apprehending, prosecuting, and punishing the perpetrators. Certainly the conceptual framework exists in international law and in popular moral discourse for identifying genocidal possibilities or attempts at genocide. Only a persistent global will needs to be present to make these mechanisms a reality. (shrink)

This paper details a combined graduate/undergraduate course on the Holocaust. This course was designed to cover the legal, social, political, and moral dimensions of the Holocaust, as well as to familiarize students with its significant historical details and persons. Special attention was devoted to the question of why the perpetrators of the Holocaust should be brought to justice, making connections to contemporary forms of prejudice and discrimination and emphasizing that such efforts at justice are not an issue between Jews and (...) Holocaust perpetrators but a matter of upholding the rule of law. The specifics of the legal cases brought against various Nazis in order to try them as war criminals were examined through both modern and contemporary theoretical frameworks (e.g. early legal positivism vs. decisionism), and other key philosophical themes were introduced throughout the term in order to provide frameworks for discussion and critique. The author reviews course requirements and discusses the implicit anti-Semitism expressed by students, concluding with a brief consideration of the value of such a course beyond the classroom. (shrink)

In this paper I shall defend the thesis that differing concepts of human nature (or “personhood”) lead to different ideas about what “human rights” are, about what types there are, and how rights are to be ranked according to priority. Though some correlation is obvious, as evidenced in the literature, political forums, and in case studies of many nation-states, the question that we will consider is whether this correlation is a causal relationship or whether it is merely accidental and hence, (...) not worthy of any but passing notice. But if, as I believe, some definite causal connection, perhaps in combination with other factors does exist, we are quite right in focusing attention on the disparate “personhood” concepts or foundation level which lies uncovered and central to such disagreements about human rights. (shrink)