Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)

Faith occupies an important place in human lives in both religious and secular contexts: faith may be directed towards God, friends, governments, political systems and football teams. It is said to help people through crises and motivate people to achieve life goals. But what is faith? Philosophers and theologians have for centuries been concerned with questions about the rationality of faith, but more recently, have focussed on what kind of psychological attitude faith is. We bring together, for the first time, (...) the different elements of this recent debate, staking out the different positions and arguments, and defend a novel 'true grit' theory of faith, from which we assess questions about the rationality of faith from a fresh perspective. The book engages with a range of questions about the nature of faith, including: Does faith require belief? How is faith expressed in language? Is faith motivational? What is the relationship between faith and cognate attitudes, such as trust and hope? What is the role of faith in our long-term plans? And, in what sense is faith steadfast, resilient or constant, as is commonly supposed? This last issue leads us to additional literature from the social sciences, and we defend a distinctive conception of faith as resistance to practical, psychological and epistemic challenges, that forms the basis of the true grit theory defended in the book. (shrink)

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and impressive versatility. His dialogues not only engage in argument but also abound in allegory, myth and paradox, with clearly characterised participants set against a particular historical context. This engrossing book shows how Plato's literary qualities are crucial to understanding his philosophy.

At War with War visualizes humanity's 5,000-year-long state of conflict, chaos, and violence on a continuous timeline. Seventy pages of stark black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings and woodcuts illustrate history's most notorious battles -- from 3300 BCE to the present day. Interspersed are contemplations on war from historic thinkers, including excerpts from "The Art of War" by Sun Tsu, "The Complaint of Peace" by Desiderius Erasmus, and "The State" by Randolph Bourne. Searing and sardonic, balancing anger and despair with wit and humanity, (...) these raw illustrations follow in the tradition of great social satirists such as Honoré Daumier, Frans Masereel, Felix Vallotton, and Otto Dix. Seymour Chwast is a design legend. As co-founder with Milton Glaser of Push Pin Studios, he led a revolution in graphic design in the 1960s and '70s, producing bold, vibrant work that pushed the limits of nearly every visual medium.Now, he turns his pen and sketchpad toward creating a new book on a subject that has been a personal obsession for nearly six decades: the fight against war, humankind's never-ending scourge. (shrink)

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the main new directions taken by ancient philosophy in the first century BC, a period in which the dominance exercised in the Hellenistic age by Stoicism, Epicureanism and Academic Scepticism gave way to a more diverse and experimental philosophical scene. Its development has been much less well understood, but here a strong international team of leading scholars of the subject reconstruct key features of the changed environment. They examine afresh the evidence for some (...) of the central Greek thinkers of the period, as well as illuminating Cicero's engagement with Plato both as translator and in his own philosophising. The intensity of renewed study of Aristotle's Categories and Plato's Timaeus is an especially striking outcome of their discussions. The volume will be indispensable for scholars and students interested in the history of Platonism and Aristotelianism. (shrink)

While the idea of crisis is prevalent in the post‐war Anglo‐American literature an higher education, it can also be argued that our higher education systems have achieved a great deal during this period. We need to ask, therefore, whether the identified crises are real or not. And, if not, we should consider why academics prefer to see crisis in so muck of what they do.

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled. Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate the human thought (...) processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along. "Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science. Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine.Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University. (shrink)

Malcolm Bull offers an entirely original perspective on political agency for the twenty-first century in which uncertainty and idleness are limned with utopian promise.

Written for advanced undergraduates, physicists, and historians and philosophers of physics, this book tells the story of the development of our understanding of quantum phenomena through the extraordinary years of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rather than following the standard axiomatic approach, this book adopts a historical perspective, explaining clearly and authoritatively how pioneers such as Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli and Dirac developed the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and merged them into a coherent theory, and why the mathematical (...) infrastructure of quantum mechanics has to be as complex as it is. The author creates a compelling narrative, providing a remarkable example of how physics and mathematics work in practice. The book encourages an enhanced appreciation of the interaction between mathematics, theory and experiment, helping the reader gain a deeper understanding of the development and content of quantum mechanics than any other text at this level. (shrink)

Resetting the agenda -- The conflict motif in historical perspective -- From conflict to concordism -- Integration under the microscope : historical perspective -- Integration : contemporary views -- Insights from n neuropsychology : an overview -- Insights from neuropsychology about spirituality -- Insights about conversion, morality, wisdom, and memory -- Insights from evolutionary psychology -- Insights about human needs and motivation -- Social psychology and faith : stories of conflict, concordism, and authentic congruence (by David G. Myers) -- The (...) way ahead for psychological science and Christian faith. (shrink)

Wittgensteins "Philosophische Untersuchungen," von N. Malcolm.--Kritische Notiz zu einigen Begriffen in Wittgensteins Philosophie, von P. F. Strawson.--Wittgenstein über die Privatsprache, von N. Garver.--Der Zugang zu Wittgensteins Spätphilsophie, von S. Cavell.--Ausgewählte Bibliographie der Schriften über Ludwig Wittgenstein, zusammengestellt von Ulrich Steinvorth (p. 157-[171]).

While the idea of crisis is prevalent in the post-war Anglo-American literature an higher education, it can also be argued that our higher education systems have achieved a great deal during this period. We need to ask, therefore, whether the identified crises are real or not. And, if not, we should consider why academics prefer to see crisis in so much of what they do.

Despite the many well-documented similarities -- genetic, cognitive, behavioral, social -- between our human selves and our evolutionary forebears, a significant gulf remains between us and them. Why is that? How did it come about? And how did we come to be the way we are? In this book fourteen distinguished scholars -- including humanist, atheist, and theist voices -- address such questions as they explore how and when human personhood emerged. Representing various disciplines, the contributors all offer significant insights (...) into new scientific research about the origins of human nature -- research that challenges some traditional views. CONTRIBUTORS Francisco J. Ayala Justin L. Barrett Roy F. Baumeister Warren S. Brown Richard W. Byrne Matthew J. Jarvinen Malcolm Jeeves Timothy O'Connor Lynn K. Paul Colin Renfrew Ian Tattersall Anthony C. Thiselton Alan J. Torrance Adam Zeman. (shrink)

By moving beyond traditional aesthetic categories (beauty, the sublime, the religious), Eco-Aesthetics takes an inter-disciplinary approach bridging the arts, humanities and social sciences and explores what aesthetics might mean in the 21st century. It is one in a series of new, radical aesthetics promoting debate, confronting convention and formulating alternative ways of thinking about art practice. There is no doubt that the social and environmental spheres are interconnected but can art and artists really make a difference to the global environmental (...) crisis? Can art practice meaningfully contribute to the development of sustainable lifestyles? Malcolm Miles explores the strands of eco-art, eco-aesthetics and contemporary aesthetic theories, offering timely critiques of consumerism and globalisation and, ultimately, offers a possible formulation of an engaged eco-aesthetic for the early 21st century. (shrink)

This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientific knowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research practices (...) and textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientific knowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction. (shrink)

This book provides strategies using mindfulness to manage stress, anxiety and depression, as well as ways to cultivate psychological wellbeing.

In Indian philosophy, a pramāṇa is an epistemic instrument or doxastic practice that results in a veridical cognition (in an event of knowing). For just about all Indian thinkers, perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna) are the foundational pramāṇas, although they debated energetically over how to characterize the content of the resultant cognitions and how to explain the basis for the authority of these pramāṇas. Debate also includes the relationship of knowledge to religious liberation, the role of scripture in knowing, and (...) the possibility of omniscience. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between education, voting and representation, and, in particular, the argument that more highly educated people should have more votes, as they should be better at judging important political decisions. In the past this issue attracted the attention of great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Newman and Mill. In the UK there is also a practical precedent, rarely recalled today, where for centuries university graduates had their own representatives in Parliament. There are also some interesting contemporary (...) arguments on the topic put forward in favour of an epistocracy (as some call it) by social scientists, but not educators. It seems that most educators would not now dare to suggest that the more highly educated might be given more votes, largely on the grounds of equity. (shrink)

First published in 1924, Memoirs of a Positivist is both an autobiography of the author and a history of the English Positivist movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It especially elaborates on the influence of the Positivist movement in the religious life of people and the manners in which scientific reasons were sought for religious beliefs. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy, religion and history.