The aim of this chapter is to discuss the moral relevance of the theory of the division of soul. Firstly, it is examined why it is impossible to reconcile this doctrine with instrumentalism. Secondly, how the desires of the three different parts of the soul may be harmonised is investigated. Thirdly, after an elaborate study of the different parts of the soul, the reasons for this tripartition of the soul are introduced. Finally, it is examined (...) whether or not the partition of the soul results in different kinds of happiness. (shrink)

To establish a tripartite division of the parts of the soul, Socrates in Plato’s Republic introduces a Principle of Opposites. The principle entails that only distinct parts of a soul can be simultaneously engaged in opposed actions directed toward the same intended object. Appealing to the principle, Socrates proposes to distinguish between rational, spirited, and appetitive parts of the soul. He describes two situations of opposed actions in a soul that both desires to drink but (...) chooses not to drink, and desires to indulge in morbid voyeurism but is angry about doing so. Without a sound basis for dividing the parts of the soul in precisely this way, Socrates cannot adequately defend the dialogue’s main conclusion that justice in both city and soul is the proper harmonious hierarchical order of their respective parts. I argue that Socrates’ efforts to prove the division of the soul into three parts are inconclusive because it is possible to interpret his illustrations as involving unopposed psychological acts directed toward different rather than identical intended objects. (shrink)

In Republic II Glaucon assigns to Socrates the task of praising justice for itself. What it means to praise justice for itself is unclear. A new interpretation is offered on the basis of an analysis of Glaucon's division of goods. A distinction is developed between criterial benefits, those valuable consequences of a thing which provide a standard for evaluating a thing as a good instance of its type, and fringe benefits, valuable consequences which do not provide such a standard. (...) Socrates is expected to praise justice by describing the benefits it constitutes as a valuable activity of soul. He may also use the criterial benefits of justice but not its fringe benefits. This account of Socrates' task is superior to those interpretations which rule out all use of valuable consequences in praising justice and to those interpretations which fail to preserve the distinction between the second and third classes of goods. (shrink)

When analyzing the structure of the soul, Aristotle distinguished three faculties: the theoretical, the practical and the technical one. The latter two are the focus of this paper. The division could be perceived as an abstract description of diverse functions and purposes of the faculties, but it does not imply factual dissociation between them if we take under consideration their functioning. On the contrary, Aristotle suggested that it would be impossible to detach the practical reasoning from the operational (...) one, for the former stipulated the goal, whereas the latter provided the means for its fulfillment. The genuine intellectual disposition, which supplements the practical reason with the proper means was referred to as ‘cleverness’. Cleverness has usually been associated with the technical faculty but it also seems to be, first and foremost, the disposition to inventiveness in a broader sense. Although Aristotle did not formulate this directly, it is plausible to view the practical and technical faculty as depending on each other, as far as their products and works are useful to pursue the practical goals and the practical reasoning determines the extent of the possibilities and limitations of their utility in the field of politics. The disposition to cleverness made the cooperation of those faculties possible. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, (...) natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 32 to 36 comprise the first five treatises in the third division of the Rasa'il, on the sciences of the soul and intellect. Combining Islamic revelation with Hellenistic philosophy, the Ikhwan delineate herein their metaphysical system. Epistles 32 and 33 present adaptations of the Pythagorean doctrines, and of Neo-Platonist leitmotifs, whereby a numerical analogy is applied to the unique and transcendent God, or the One, from whom all existence emanates. Epistle 34 takes up the pervasive theme of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, situating the human being as the central link between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In Epistle 35, we find an explanation of the intellectual faculties of the individual human soul, whose ultimate aim is ascension to the timeless reality of pure intellect. Finally, Epistle 36 presents itself as the astrological epistle par excellence of the Rasa'il; from the coming-to-be of worms, to the emergence of religions and empires, nothing in the sub-lunar sphere escapes the determining influence of the celestial cycles. (shrink)

In Proclus dianoia is the Soul's thinking activity, through which it makes itself into a divided image of Nous. This dissertation examines various aspects of Procline dianoia. Dianoia's thoughts are logoi, because in the Greek philosophical tradition, logos came to mean a division of a prior unity . Proclus' theory of dianoia rejects induction, and is a conscious development of Plato's theory of anamnesis , because induction is unable to yield a true universal . The source of (...) class='Hi'>Soul's logoi is not a pre-natal vision of reality, but rather its ontological dependence on Nous. The Soul's ousia is a fullness of logoi which are images of the eide in Nous. The Soul projects these multiple oudiodeis logoi into even greater multiplicity. In so doing, Soul makes itself into the image of Nous, and the paradigm of Body. For this reason all dianoia is metaphorical, because it either understands Nous through the image which itself is, or understands Body through itself as paradigm . Dianoia, therefore, has two parts. Dialectic is the Soul's grasp of Nous through itself as image, and mathematics is the Soul's grasp of Body through itself as paradigm . The Soul's attention to Body may cause it to cease its dianoetic activity, because it takes on Body's passivity. Philosophical discussion may rescue such a fallen soul, turning it back towards itself, away from the body. In Procline terms, philosophy restores the Soul's autokinesis, or self-motion . The particular Nous of which Soul is an image, and which dianoia divides, is the Nous which serves as a measure for Soul's dividing activity. And because Time is the measure of the Soul's motion, this particular Nous is the monad of Time . Dianoia has as its aim to leave behind all divided thinking, and to be content with the unity of Nous, and the simplicity of the One. This is accomplished through that in the Soul which is higher than dianoia, the nous of the Soul, and its own one. (shrink)

In a recent issue of The Lancet, the historian Roger Cooter predicted that the field of bioethics will soon die of self-inflicted wounds. “Conspiring against it,” he wrote, “is exposure of the funding of some of its US centres by pharmaceutical companies; exclusion of alternative perspectives from the social sciences; retention of narrow analytical notions of ethics in the face of popular expression and academic respect for the place of emotions; divisions within the discipline ; and collusion with, and appropriation (...) by, clinical medicine.” Cooter's prognosis? “Hardly wet behind the ears, bioethics seems destined for a short lifespan.”. (shrink)

This article views the Hippocratic Oath from a new perspective and draws consequences for modern health care. The Oath consists of two parts, a family-like alliance where the teacher of the “art” is equal to a father and a set of maxims how the “art” is to be practiced. Self-commitments stated before the gods tie the parts together and give the alliance trustworthiness. One might call this a proto-profession. Modern physicians form a similar alliance. Specific knowledge and skills and specific (...) action guiding rules are elements of a profession but its trustworthiness rests on a combination of professional autonomy and public control. In order to be granted autonomy the profession must show some effort in enforcing its specific rules and in order to do so its members need to be convinced of the intrinsic value of their profession. Whereas in antiquity physicians acted as single individuals the modern alliance is shaped by division of labour. Physicians use each other and other professions by mutual consent and the health care system as means in the diagnostic-therapeutic process. As any actor is reponsible for the means he uses physicians are co-responsible accordingly. Thus, professional conduct now entails care for the organisation of the alliance as detailed in the “Charter on Medical Professionalism”. The effort the profession gives to this task will confirm its trustworthiness. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that entire industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the "secular worldview." This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain argues that the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy (...) have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, Erdozain demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of "natural reason" espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and "scientific materialism" in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a secular challenge to religious faith, but a series of theological insurrections against divisive accounts of Christian orthodoxy. (shrink)

The concept of the dialogical soul proposed by Joseph Ratzinger is a contemporary attempt to describe the anthropology of humanity in terms of basic, fundamental theological concepts. Epistemological approach of the dialogic soul is not about the division, but co-existence in the concept of humanity significantly different anthropological concepts. Modern neuroscience, although following completely different paths of knowing is currently concerning an important issue "of the embodied mind". Such a holistic effort to discover the truth about the (...) man, though carried out on completely different epistemological platforms, however, have some points in common. The difficulty in finding a common language for the dialogue in this field can be overcome and lead to dialogue, which is extremely difficult but doable. We must, however, at the beginning formulate certain fundamental axioms that define class concepts used in different areas of scientific activity. The concept of dialogical soul of Ratzinger’s now exceeds the barrier of scientific paradigms axioms. It does not stop on the vision of human oneself, but recognition of one in the area of relationships and makes room for a substantial dialogue with the world of modern science. (shrink)

The main aim of this study is to explain passage 35b4-37a2 of Plato’s Timaeus which deals with three main topics: the mathematization of the world’s soul, its movement, and its binding to the world’s body. First, it is argued that the mathematical structure of the world-soul allows it to participate in and be sensitive to harmony, which is essential for the correct workings of its cognitive capacities. Second, the division of the world-soul to the circle of (...) the same and the circles of the different and its self-motion comes in. This allows it to ‘touch’ and cognize the forms and the material things, as well as rule the movement of the corporeal world and care for it. In this aspect, the world-soul continues the process that started with the original creative act of the demiurge. Third, it is argued that the description of the world-soul’s binding to the world-body entails its conception as a spatially extended entity, which, in turn, explains of the possibility of an interaction between the corporeal world and its soul. (shrink)

This article challenges the long-standing belief that Plato is an early proponent of the division of labor on account of the political proposals advanced in the Republic. In contrast, I contend that the Republic offers a radical critique—rather than any endorsement—of job specialization and its accompanying psychological orientation toward acquisitiveness. The article begins with a methodological section that attempts to explain the origin of the common misreading of Plato's works and forwards an interpretive framework for situating arguments raised in (...) the Platonic dialogues in their dramatic and dialogic contexts. Having established these hermeneutic principles, the article proceeds to analyze the shifting significance of job specialization within the imaginary cities that are considered in the Republic and concludes that the dialogue ultimately critiques job specialization insofar as it prevents individuals from harmonizing their souls and hinders their ability to philosophize. (shrink)

This paper examines the soul-turning metaphor in Book 7 of Plato’s Republic. It argues that the failure to find a consistent reading of how the metaphor is used has contributed to a number of long-standing disagreements, especially concerning the more famous metaphor with which it is intertwined, the Cave allegory. A full reading of the metaphor, as it occurs throughout Book 7, is offered, with particularly close attention to what is one of the most difficult and stubbornly divisive passages (...) in Book 7, 532b6–d1. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The present article examines the utopian and theological politics of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity). I focus on the Ikhwān’s elusive “virtuous city,” a harmonious and righteous community situated on a wondrous island, where residents work in unison toward salvation by deferring to one creed. This city’s imagery is intimately tied to principal theological dimensions of their work. Through the virtuous city, the Ikhwān utilize the imagery of estrangement to elucidate their theological position on the soul’s imprisonment in (...) the body. But there is another, subtler dimension to their utopianism. I argue that the Ikhwānian utopia serves as a juxtaposition to their Muslim society, which they thought was afflicted by credal divisions. Accordingly, their utopia seam-lessly weaves together a synthetic narrative about eschatology (i.e., the afterlife) and an empirical critique of their contemporary society. Additionally, this paper contributes to the development of scholarship on medieval Islamic utopianism. (shrink)

The essay examines the articulation of the figure of the beast in Plato’s thought on the city and soul, in the Republic and other dialogues. The constitutive correspondence or homology of the city and soul comprises Platonic psycho-politics, a space defined by the thērion: monster and animal at once. The thērion operates within the tripartite division of the soul and the tripartite division of the city. Its various figurations, from wolf to hydra, seem to constrict (...) this figure to the margins of metaphor; the trope of this liquid metaphor however guides the Platonic psycho-political project. It is a project of a metamorphosis, an open transformation, undertaken in order not merely to define, but to effectuate justice in the city and soul. (shrink)

This article probes the advisability of regulating U.S. food and drug safety according to the precautionary principle. To do so, a precautionary regulatory regime is formulated on the basis of the beliefs that motivate most proponents of this initiative. That hypothetical regime is critically analyzed on the basis of an actual instantiation of a similarly stylized initiative. It will be argued that the precautionary principle entails regulatory constraints that are apt to violate basis tenets of political legitimacy. The modifications that (...) would change this finding would also change precautionary regulation to the point that it would be indistinguishable from orthodox safety protocols. It is concluded on the basis of its impoverished content that the precautionary principle should not be taken seriously as a formal approach to the regulation of U.S. food and drug safety. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide ed. by Caleb M. CohoeAttila HangaiCaleb M. Cohoe, editor. Aristotle's On the Soul: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Hardback, $99.99.Guiding readers through Aristotle's science of the soul, this volume covers many major topics of De Anima (DA) and addresses specific questions, including perennial interpretive problems. The self-contained chapters approach the text either by illuminating its (...) context or by elucidating key psychological concepts. While some contributions refer to relevant [End Page 318] positions by Aristotle's predecessors or contemporary philosophers, connections drawn to other Aristotelian texts predominate. Throughout, the emphasis is on philosophical questions. The result is a first-rate philosophical guide through this densely written treatise, which allows experienced readers of DA to deepen their understanding of Aristotelian psychology. Since most chapters approach interpretive issues from new angles and presuppose familiarity with the existing scholarship, beginners may want to start elsewhere.In Reeve's reading (chapter 1), Aristotle pursues dialectic in DA to define the soul as the first principle for the science of life. He construes dialectic as "going through puzzles and solving them by appeal to endoxa" (21), and equates it with induction from perceptual experience to knowledge of principles and causes. Contesting this view, Carter (chapter 2) argues that the physicist's method is not dialectical because the predecessors' views, conflicting as they are, do not constitute endoxa. Through close readings of DA II.2–5, he shows that Aristotle investigates earlier theories to assess how well they explain the main functions of the soul. One pertinent theory takes the soul to be attunement (harmonia). Shields (chapter 4) elucidates Aristotle's case for hylomorphism as an advance over the harmonia theory. Although harmonia (as the proper arrangement of parts) implies normativity, it falls short of rendering the soul as a final cause with its own good, so it cannot explain the unity of the body. Frey's chapter 5 on the soul's unity deals with this latter function. The problem of unity stems from the fact that each level in the hierarchy of souls—nutritive, perceptual, rational—can be defined independently, yet a posterior soul presupposes the existence of all prior ones. The key Frey uses to understand unity is potential presence. Just as a triangle is present potentially in a quadrangle—for division of the latter yields triangles—so too is the nutritive soul present potentially in the perceptual soul, although not due to a separating act. This, however, has counterintuitive implications: animal nutrition would be the function of a perceptual soul; furthermore, the nutritive soul of the embryo (in Frey's biological example) would first be present potentially (as undeveloped) and, once actualized (when developed), would revert to potentiality (at the development of the perceptual soul). Frey's other proposal is more promising. It turns on the notion of natural continuity: having an internal cause for a characteristic change with a unitary goal. Thus, the soul's unity for Frey (despite his reservations) seems to boil down to teleology: the soul sets a goal achieved through the manifestation of species-specific life functions. Invoking the biology of animal reproduction, Gelber (chapter 6) complements the teleological unity regarding the nutritive soul-part with the unity constituted by the continuity of the processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, namely, unity by material and efficient causes.Among the three contributions on reason (nous), Scheiter (chapter 3), examining its separability, breaks with the traditional interpretation and takes Aristotle to show (in DA III.4 and I.3) that reason is independent not only of bodily organs but of any magnitude (megethos). This envisages DA III.4–8 as an investigation into how reason functions as a different kind of capacity. It turns out, according to Kelsey's insightful chapter 11, that reason's actuality—insight (noēsis)—is the same as its intelligible object (noēton), and so intelligibility depends on separation from matter by the actuality of reason, making all and only the immaterial things intelligible and intelligent. Cohoe (chapter 12) draws the conclusion: human reason for Aristotle—being the defining part of the human soul, most... (shrink)

This paper explores the moral responsibility a manager has toward a worker. The primary focus is upon those relationships whereworkers have been led to trust their managers. I argue that in such circumstances, models of the employment relationship based on rational self-interest fail to adequately describe the behavior of the actors. Rather, I show through case studies how trust operates in these environments to supercede pure, self-interested behavior. I then explore the moral implications of this finding relative to those managers (...) who lead their workers to trust them. I make the claim that these managers cannot adequately discharge their moral obligations unless they take on positive moral obligations. I cast this responsibility as one of positive care for some portion of worker welfare and briefly discuss what this might mean in practice. (shrink)

Some competition was associated with all European voyages of discovery, whether considered in an intellectual or a nautical sense, but the character of the competition became confessional as the contest between states over resources to be exploited gave way to disputation between denominations over how souls might best be saved. This happened when, in the late sixteenth century, Protestant publicists began to disparage the colonial endeavours that the Spanish and Portuguese authorities had been engaged upon for more than a century, (...) and when they resolved to start the colonial process all over again, with a view to making the Atlantic World a Protestant rather than a Catholic space. This was to be achieved both by releasing what remained of the Native American population in Central and South America from Spanish tyranny, and by establishing Protestant colonies to evangelise the native populations in extensive areas of America to which the Iberians had no more than titular claims. A comparison between French and English colonial undertakings in the West Indies, and between the literatures associated with these endeavours over the course of the seventeenth century, establishes that these Protestant ambitions proved as elusive in practice as they had been myopic in theory. The conclusion seeks to explain why colonial efforts in which Catholic religious orders were involved proved more capable of linking scientific investigations with missionary concerns than was possible in colonies that were self consciously Protestant. (shrink)

This study was developed around concerns about how indigenous knowledges have been represented and applied in environment and development education. The first phase of the study is a genealogical analysis after Michel Foucault. This probes representations and applications of plant-based indigenous knowledge in selected anthropological, botanical and environmental education texts in southern Africa. The emerging insights were deepened using a Social Realism vantage point after Margaret Archer to shed light on agential issues in environmental education and development contexts. Here her (...) morphogenetic/morphostatic analysis of social transformation or reproduction is used to trace changes in indigenous knowledge representations and applications over time . The second phase uses the same perspectives and tools to extend the analysis of power/knowledge relationships into the interface of indigenous communities and modern institutions in two case study settings in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This study reveals colonially-derived hegemonic processes of modern/Western scientific institutional representations/interpretations of the knowledges of indigenous communities. It also tracks a continuing trajectory of their dominating and prescriptive mediating control over local knowledges from the pre-colonial context through into the post-colonial period in southern Africa. The analysis reveals how this hegemony is sustained through the deployment of institutional strategies of representation that transform local knowledges into the disciplinary knowledge discourses of modern scientific institutions. These representational strategies therefore generate/reproduce and validate disciplinary discourses about the other, constructing disciplinary 'regimes of truth'. In this way modern institutions appropriate and displace indigenous/local knowledges, silence the voices of local communities and regulate individual and community agency within a continuing subjugation of indigenous knowledges. This study reveals how working within modern institutions and disciplinary knowledges in participative education and development interactions can serve to implicate indigenous researchers in these institutional hegemonic processes. The study also notes evidence of a continued resistance to hegemonic Western knowledge discourses as indigenous communities have sustained many knowledge practices alongside Western knowledge discourses. There is also evidence of a recent emergence of counter-hegemonic indigenous knowledge discourses in environmental education and development practices in southern Africa. It is noted that these have been contingent upon the changing political terrain in southern Africa as this has opened the way for alternative discourses to the dominant conventional Western knowledges in formal education and development contexts. The counterhegemonic discourses invert power/knowledge relations, decentre hegemonic discourses and reposition indigenous knowledges in formal education and development contexts. This study suggests the need to foreground indigenous knowledges as a process of knowledge decolonisation that gives contextual and epistemic relevance to environmental education and development processes. This calls for a need for new strategies to transform existing institutions by creating enabling spaces for the representational inclusion of indigenous knowledges in formal/conventional knowledge discourses and their application in social contexts. This opens up possibilities for plural knowledge representations and for their integrative and reciprocal co-engagement in situated contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of the soul requires an adequate division of the soul. However, Aristotle refuses to divide the soul spatially, and insists that it is divided only conceptually, that is ‘in being’ or ‘in account’. In this paper I explain what this division amounts to and how Aristotle executes it. Then I discuss three important advantages of such a division of the soul. First, it enables Aristotle to avoid problems that he identified in (...) Plato’s account of the soul. Second, it allows him to treat a particular capacity of the soul as itself divided into distinct parts or aspects. Third, it allows him to treat a particular capacity of the soul as a distinct part or aspect of some more comprehensive capacity. (shrink)

This article explains and criticizes several of Hume's arguments regarding British economic policy. I focus on Hume's methodology, which is essentially utilitarian but also depends heavily on his philosophical account of human psychology. I claim that the arguments examined prevail over competing 18th century approaches to economic policy. And I explain the relevance of this methodology for present day public policy debates.

Traces the development of philosophical thought from the seventeenth century to today, and explores why questions of the soul figure so little in the minds of present-day technocratic intellectuals.

Plato’s tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul’s division. The original true soul, I argue, is (...) partitioned, but in a finer manner than how we encounter it in our everyday lives. (shrink)

The present study seeks to treat in depth a relatively restricted portion of Hegel's thought but one that has not yet received intensive treatment by Hegel scholars in English. In the Hegelian system of philosophical sciences, the Anthropology directly follows the Philosophy of Nature and forms the first of the three sciences of Subjective Spirit: 1 Anthropo logy, Phenomenology, and Psychology. The section on Subjective Spirit is then followed by sections on Objective Spirit and Absolute Spirit. The three sections together (...) comprise the Philosophy of Spirit (Philosophie des Geistes 2), which constitutes the third and concluding main division of Hegel's total system as presented in the Encyclopedia of Philosophic Sciences in Outline. a Hegel intended to write a separate full-scale work on the philosophy of Subjective Spirit as he had done on Objective Spirit (the Philosophy of Right), but died before he could do so. · Thus the focus of our study is quite concentrated. Its relatively narrow scope within the vast compass of the Hegelian system may be justified, 1 Iring Fetscher (HegeUt Lehre vom Menschen, Stuttgart, 1970, p. 11) notes the lack of a modem commentary to Hegel's Encyclopedia, and in particular to the section on Subjective Spirit. Brief accounts of this section in English may be found in: Hugh A. Reyburn, The Ethical Theory of Hegel (Oxford, 1921), Chapter V; and O. R. O. Mure, A Study of Hegers Logic (Oxford, 1950), pp. 2-22. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to a conceptual model of cell patterning, based on a generalized notion of the epigenetic code of a cell determining its state. We introduce the concept of signaling depending both upon the spatial distance between cells and the distance between their cell states (s-distance); signaling can repel cells in the space of cell states (s-space) or attract them. The influence of different types of repelling signaling on the evolution of cells is considered. Stabilizing signaling, namely a (...) signaling monotonically decreasing with s-distance, causes the restoring of cell states after perturbations; destabilizing signaling, i.e., the one in which the signaling monotonically increases with s-distance, causes the appearance of pairs of cells with alternating cell states (one close to the state conventionally called “head”, and another close to the “tail” state). Non-monotonic (in s-space) signaling splits the cells into groups. The model shows that different types of signaling may provide different types of cellular patterns. General principles for applying this model to complex cellular structures are discussed. (shrink)

Is it not surprising that we look with so much pleasure and emotion at works of art that were made thousands of years ago? Works depicting people we do not know, people whose backgrounds are usually a mystery to us, who lived in a very different society and time and who, moreover, have been ‘frozen’ by the artist in a very deliberate pose. It was the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle who observed in his Poetics that people could apparently be moved (...) even by the imitation of a person or an act. And although we are usually well aware that it is a simulacrum, not a real situation, it nevertheless sometimes seems as if we ourselves are standing there on the stage or in the painting, so intense and emotional is our response, even though we are just spectators. Aristotle concludes from this that we have intellectual capacities which allow us put ourselves in another’s place and consequently to react to simulated situations as though they are actually happening to us, here and now. In this process, he contends, observation, memory, imagination and emotions are crucial elements. In the past it was not customary to invoke human mental faculties to explain our response to works of art. The Ancient Greeks, after all, knew little about the human body or brain and usually referred to the extended world of the gods in their endeavours to comprehend the ‘inner world’ of human beings. In our time the situation is completely different—such an allusion to the brain no longer surprises us. Whether it is about the mystery of the consciousness, the question of free will or accounts of bizarre psychological aberrations or disorders, we have become accustomed to references to parts of the brain, to images of brain scans, to reports about neural networks and the like. However, because there are so many factors that play a part in our appreciation of works of art we need a complex explanation for it, and it is not enough to look only at certain properties of the brain that are determined by evolution. Those properties are shared by every human being, and so are rather useless in explaining people’s different reactions to the same work of art. Evidently the brains of individuals differ so much that they make it possible for people to respond differently to one and the same artwork. This, of course, raises questions concerning the painted emotions that can be seen in this exhibition. Virtually everyone, after all, is fascinated by such paintings and usually recognizes the emotions they represent. The reactions to these painted emotions are also often similar. This is probably why artworks like this are generally highly valued, then and now, here and elsewhere: from the enigmatically smiling Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and the startled Rembrandt to a seemingly despairing African mask. Aristotle observed that in the theatre players imitate actions that are associated with emotions in a number of ways and that these emotions are shared in a particular fashion by the playwright, the actors and the audience. The audience may even be carried away by these emotions to such an extent that they are in a sense purged of them and can subsequently leave the theatre relieved. Are such emotional reactions perhaps related to the fact that emotions are universal and that brains respond similarly to them? Is this why we can so readily identify painted emotions? May we therefore also assume that the properties of the brain determined by evolution help us to explain these emotions? In answering these questions we shall discuss a number of insights into emotions in psychology and brain science and explore some theories about the possible function of emotions and their expression. (shrink)

It is well known that in the Republic, Socrates presents a view of the soul or the psyche according to which it has three distinct parts or aspects, which he calls the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts. Socrates’ clearest characterization of these parts of the soul occurs in Republic IX, where he suggests that they should be understood in terms of the various goals or ends that give rise to the particular desires that motivate our actions. In Republic (...) X, however, Socrates uses the phenomenon of cognitive conflict about matters of fact to show that the soul has only two parts, the rational and the irrational. Moreover, he characterizes these parts in terms of cognitive tendencies, such as forming beliefs on the basis of reason versus forming beliefs on the basis of perceptual appearances. In this chapter, I explain how these divergent accounts of the soul and its parts are legitimate alternative characterizations. A consequence of my argument is that we should not think of the divided soul as primarily a division of desires, but rather as a division of cognitive attitudes towards the world, each of which yields different sorts of desires. (shrink)

Focusing on the period between Albertus Magnus and Descartes, the ten contributions examine various Aristotelian theories of the soul.

The far reaching effects of the genetic revolution on our lives as a whole make it difficult to separate the secular and sacred issues involvedIn accepting this opportunity to comment on Dr Polkinghorne’s Templeton Prize lecture, I recognise that there is a significant division between those who would see religious beliefs as irrelevant in the ethical debates concerning new biotechnologies and those who, with Dr Polkinghorne, are willing to look to the major faith traditions for insight into the nature (...) of human identity and selfhood. In secular discourse, the intrusion of religious language has long been resisted on many grounds: that sound ethical principles do not need transcendent ratification; that those who presume a privileged moral discernment derived from their religion frequently fail to appreciate the complexity of genetic and medical science; and that internecine disputes within faith communities and historically rooted incommensurabilities between them seriously compromise any prospect of consensus. This problem is tacitly acknowledged by Dr Polkinghorne himself when he notes that his willingness to accept the 14 day threshold before which certain forms of experimentation on embryos are deemed permissible would not be congenial to Roman Catholic officialdom, for whom the destruction of one life cannot be condoned even if it were to make possible the creation of another.Dialogue traversing a secular/sacred divide can be thwarted for other reasons. Those sympathetic to religious voices may concede that claims for privileged discernment are unhelpful but still insist that secular ethicists too readily fail to appreciate that religious beliefs can be constructive in strengthening motivation and in deepening commitment on ethical issues. Theologians who have served on ethics committees have sometimes expressed a sense of frustration accompanying their attempts to explain that they are starting from a different point, and working from different presuppositions, than those who …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Madness of the Philosophers, Madness of the ClinicJames Phillips (bio)KeywordsPhilosophy, insanity, moral, natural, Hegel, KierkegaardDaniel Berthold's "Talking Cures: A Lacanian Reading of Hegel and Kierkegaard on Language and Madness" is an eloquent discussion of speech, silence, and the 'talking cure' in the three figures highlighted in the title. There is much to admire in this paper. The treatment of speech and silence in the thought of Hegel and Kierkegaard, (...) with many well-chosen quotations, offers much for reflection, both with respect to these philosophers and more generally with respect to the human condition. This is a paper that deserves more than one reading. I find nothing to criticize here and intend the following as further discussion of the themes Berthold has brought to us. Taking his cue from Lacan and reading back into the nineteenth-century figures from the perspective of Lacan's emphasis on language and what he (Lacan) terms the Symbolic, Berthold explores the question of madness in Hegel and Kierkegaard. In my remarks, I connect Berthold's analysis with older traditions of madness, distinguishing what I call the madness of the philosophers and the madness of the clinic.With the phrase, madness of the philosophers, I refer to a longstanding philosophic tradition that opposes reason and passion and attributes madness to an excess of the latter. In Berthold's paper, Hegel is the representative of this position, with his description of madness as a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." As Berthold puts it:For Hegel, madness is a "reversion" or "withdrawal" or "sinking back" of the rational consciousness into the primitive world of instincts and drives, or what Hegel calls "the life of feeling" (Gufühlsleben), which he locates in "the soul," where the "mind is still in the grip of nature"... The soul is "the form of the dull stirring, the inarticulate breathing of the spirit through its unconscious individuality" (in seiner besusstlosen Individualität)... The mind becomes "mastered" by the archaic, unconscious drives of the soul: "the natural self... gains mastery over the... rational consciousness."(2009, 301)Taking off from Lacan in his interpretation of Hegel, Berthold associates reason with language—or, in Lacan's terminology—the register of the Symbolic. Hegel's "life of feeling"—or of passion—is inarticulate, primitive, and vulnerable to madness.Berthold analyzes Kierkegaard in these categories. On the one hand, Kierkegaard is driven to silence, subjectivity, and inwardness as the native [End Page 313] ground of faith. On the other hand, he recognizes something maddening in his extreme solitude, and acknowledges his need to write as a form of self-therapy: "If I stop [writing] for a few days, right away I become ill.... So powerful an urge, so ample, so inexhaustible [is my need to write], subsist[ing] day after day for... years." Kierkegaard's compromise is his "indirect communication." By Berthold's account, Kierkegaard's silence does not rate very high for Hegel and Lacan. For Hegel it represents a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." For Lacan, Kierkegaard's silent inner self is "a myth—a 'shapeless vapor,' 'absolutely nothing.'" As we shall see, Kierkegaard's ambivalence toward silence and speech (or writing) does not fit neatly into the equation of silence and madness.What, however, in contrast to this madness of the philosophers, is the madness of the clinic?1 It is madness caused by disease, whether the latter be understood in ancient terminology of humors, or more modern terminology of brain disease. For a quick review of how clinical madness has played off against the madness of the philosophers, we can turn to the philosophers themselves, invoking Plato as our first guide, because he speaks of both kinds of madness. On the one hand, with his tripartite division of the soul, he is one of the inaugurators of the philosophic vision of madness as an overcoming of the rational part of the soul by the appetitive side. On the other hand, he implicitly endorses the Hippocratic, medical view of madness with a statement like this: "A man who commits one of these crimes might be suffering from insanity, or be as good as insane either because... (shrink)

Peter Lombard lamented the abandonment of Augustine’s position affirming the materiality of demons and the demonic body, since by his time (some 700 years after Augustine), under the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius, it was generally agreed within the Christian tradition that demons (and angels) are intelligible, disembodied substances. The principles that the cosmos is spatially and materially divided and stratified and that demons share ontologically in the nature of the part that they inhabit allowed figures such as Apuleius, Porphyry, and (...) Augustine to account for various aspects of demonic nature and activity that seemed to follow from reason, revelation, and practical experience. The material body of the demon and its relation to the pneuma, or vehicle of the soul, is often invoked to explain demonic agency and the extent of demonic knowledge and to distinguish between evil and good demons (or angels). The following paper weighs in on and clarifies Augustine’s demonic ontology. Although scholars generally recognise Augustine’s position maintaining that demons possess aerial bodies, nevertheless, the ambiguity surrounding Augustine’s opinion, attested to even by Peter Lombard, is overlooked, and Augustine’s conviction is often taken for granted and supported by citing the prominent City of God, the very work in which Augustine’s own views are suspect. This paper provides support to the assessment of Augustine’s doctrine of the demonic body by examining his cosmology, particularly his spatial and elemental division of the cosmos, and exhibits his adherence to the spatio-material principle according to which a creature’s bodily constitution is cognate with the elemental composition of the physical stratum of the cosmos in which they dwell. The paper concludes by indicating how Augustine’s explanations of demonic agency, far from being ambiguous on the nature of the demonic body, are in fact premised on their aerial corporeality, thereby demonstrating more definitively his conviction that demons possess material bodies. (shrink)

This book is a clear and concise history of the soul in western philosophy, from Plato to cutting-edge contemporary work in philosophy of mind. Packed with arguments for and against a range of different, historically significant philosophies of the soul Addresses the essential issues, including mind-body interaction, the causal closure of the physical world, and the philosophical implications of the brain sciences for the soul's existence Includes coverage of theories from key figures, such as Plato, Aquinas, Locke, (...) Hume, and Descartes Unique in combining the history of ideas and the development of a powerful case for a non-reductionist, non-materialist account of the soul. (shrink)

_Naturalization of the Soul_ charts the development of the concepts of soul and self in Western thought, from Plato to the present. It fills an important gap in intellectual history by being the first book to emphasize the enormous intellectual transformation in the eighteenth century, when the religious 'soul' was replaced first by a philosophical 'self' and then by a scientific 'mind'. The authors show that many supposedly contemporary theories of the self were actually discussed in the eighteenth (...) century, and recognize the status of William Hazlitt as one of the most important Personal Identity theorists of the British Enlightenment, for his direct relevance to contemporary thinking. Now available in paperback, _Naturaliazation of the Soul_ is essential reading for anyone interested in the issues at the core of the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)