In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohar argues that the insights of modem physics can illuminate our understanding of everyday life -- our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, (...) ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression. (shrink)

Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. IDispositions: A Debate is an extended dialogue between three distinguished philosophers - D.M. Armstrong, C.B. Martin and U.T. Place - on the many problems associated with dispositions, which reveals their own distinctive accounts of the nature of dispositions. These are then linked to other issues such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation.

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative. explanation for visual multistability - that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to the expression (...) of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non- visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non- sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention In the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION If there is one underlying implication in the following essays it is the inadequacy of the information-processing model for cognitive ...

I have argued in other work that emotion, attentional functions, and executive functions are three interpenetrant global state variables, essentially differential slices of the consciousness pie. This paper will outline the columnar architecture and connectivities of the PAG (periaqueductal gray), its role in organizing prototype states of emotion, and the re-entry of PAG with the extended reticular thalamic activating system (“ERTAS”). At the end we will outline some potential implications of these connectivities for possible functional correlates of PAG networks that (...) are just starting to be mapped. Overall, we will look at many lines of evidence that PAG should be conceptualized as a peri-reticular structure that has a foundational role in emotion, in generating the meaningful organization of behavior by the brain through prototype emotional states, and in allowing the various emotional systems to globally influence and tune both the forebrain and brainstem. Finally, we address implications of these concepts for what is currently understood about consciousness, underlining the need for somewhat more humility within consciousness studies about our current level of understanding of consciousness in the brain, combined with a deeper appreciation of the intrinsic connections between emotion and consciousness. One hopes that more concerted empirical interest in structures underneath the thalamus, combined with a deeper appreciation for the fundamental role that organismic and social value must have in bootstrapping awareness in the developing brain, would begin more widely to influence the fundamental lines of neuroscientific research in both emotion studies and consciousness studies. (shrink)

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed (...) lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. (shrink)

Un classico della teoria del diritto naturale e dell'etica, questo libro di Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio è un'opera importante per gli studenti di filosofia e di diritto. Il libro offre una visione critica del diritto naturale e una difesa dell'etica della volontà, che Taparelli considerava una base per il progresso umano. Il libro non è solo un importante lavoro di filosofia, ma anche un saggio politico e sociale che offre una visione innovativa della legge e dell'etica. This work has been selected (...) by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Onderwerp en gezegde, door D. M. Bakker.--Enkele opmerkingen over het Godsbegrip van Justinus Martyr, door J. den Boeft.--Heidegger, Descartes, Luther, door J. van der Hoeven.--"Geschichtlichkeit" bij Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, door G. Horsman.--Menselijke ontmaskering en Bijbels démasqué , door R. Huson.--Kleine geschiedenis van het begrip "niets" in de antieke wijsbegeerte (tot e met de Sofisten en Plato), door P. A. Meijer.--De structuur van opvoeden en opvoedkunde, door J. W. Mojet.--Individualiteit in de fysica, door M. D. (...) Stafleu. (shrink)

Arabic literature; history and criticism.

In diesem Band deckt Diego D'Angelo semiotische Strukturen in der Husserl’schen Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung auf. Ist es der Phänomenologie darum zu tun, die Erfahrung von Dingen in unserer Umwelt zu beschreiben, so ist dabei der Begriff des Horizontes von zentraler Bedeutung: Was wir unmittelbar wahrnehmen, verweist immer schon auf anderes, was nur „mitgegeben“ ist. Wenn wir Dinge wahrnehmen, haben wir nur eine bestimmte Perspektive, d.h. wir sehen lediglich einen Aspekt. Aber wir nehmen immer ganze Gegenstände wahr (wir sehen Tische und (...) Stühle und andere Menschen). Jeder dieser Gegenstände erscheint in einem Feld weiterer Gegenstände, und es ist der Horizontbegriff, der es erlaubt, das Verhältnis zwischen Selbstgegebenheit und Mitgegebenheit zu explizieren. Dieses Buch stellt den ersten detaillierten Versuch dar, die Ursprünge solcher horizontaler Felder in semiotischen Strukturen zu suchen. Aus der Verbindung zwischen Husserls eigener Semiotik und seiner Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung ergibt sich, dass das wahrgenommene Phänomen als Zeichen verstanden werden muss. Das Zeichen wiederum bezeichnet etwas, was in leiblicher Bewegung eingeholt werden kann. Mit der Verbindung von Leiblichkeit, Semiotik und Wahrnehmung thematisiert diese Monographie das Verhältnis zwischen folgenden phänomenologischen Forschungsgebieten: • Husserls Semiotik der Wahrnehmung in den Logischen Untersuchungen • Phänomenologische Raumanalyse – kinästhetische Indikation • Horizont und Noema • Passive Anzeige • Zeichen und Leiblichkeit als Grundlagen der Fremderfahrung • Genetische Phänomenologie und Semiotik der Erfahrung • Protentionen und teleologische Semiose • Induktion und Ursprung des menschlichen Ichs Das Buch eröffnet die Möglichkeit, Husserls Phänomenologie jenseits einer Metaphysik der Präsenz zu verstehen. Zudem leisten D'Angelos Einzeluntersuchungen einen Beitrag zu aktuellen Diskussionen in der Philosophie der leiblichen Kognition. – Eine hilfreiche Leseempfehlung für • Interessierte Themenneulinge • Bachelor- und Masterstudenten der Geisteswissenschaften • Hochschulabsolventen sowie Forschungswissenschaftler. (shrink)

Celebrated as a courtesan and poet, and as a woman of great intelligence and wit, Tullia d'Aragona entered the debate about the morality of love that engaged the best and most famous male intellects of sixteenth-century Italy. First published in Venice in 1547, but never before published in English, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love casts a woman rather than a man as the main disputant on the ethics of love. Sexually liberated and financially independent, Tullia d'Aragona dared to argue (...) that the only moral form of love between woman and man is one that recognizes both the sensual and the spiritual needs of humankind. Declaring sexual drives to be fundamentally irrepressible and blameless, she challenged the Platonic and religious orthodoxy of her time, which condemned all forms of sensual experience, denied the rationality of women, and relegated femininity to the realm of physicality and sin. Human beings, she argued, consist of body and soul, sense and intellect, and honorable love must be based on this real nature. By exposing the intrinsic misogyny of prevailing theories of love, Aragona vindicates all women, proposing a morality of love that restores them to intellectual and sexual parity with men. Through Aragona's sharp reasoning, her sense of irony and humor, and her renowned linguistic skill, a rare picture unfolds of an intelligent and thoughtful woman fighting sixteenth-century stereotypes of women and sexuality. (shrink)