Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a sample of professional philosophers (N = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other (...) populations. We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did, however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for multiple comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism; lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism. We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his work (...) with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

The late Jacob Klein’s important book is, remarkably, a lucid presentation of esoteric argument. Dealing with the famed Platonic triad, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, Klein settles the dispute about the missing dialogue, "The Philosopher," by first denying that it is missing and second showing that it is unnecessary. He argues, in short, that the triad is a dyad. That argument is reinforced by the distinction Klein strongly implies between the Socratic Theaetetus and the Eleatic Sophist and Statesman. "We can now (...) understand why the conversations of the ‘trilogy’ occur in two, not three, days and why the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher are dealt with in two, not three, dialogues". (shrink)

The _Platform Sutra_ records the teachings of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, who is revered as one of the two great figures in the founding of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. This translation is the definitive English version of the eighth-century Ch'an classic. Phillip B. Yampolsky has based his translation on the Tun-huang manuscript, the earliest extant version of the work. A critical edition of the Chinese text is given at the end of the volume. Dr. Yampolsky also furnishes a lengthy and detailed (...) historical introduction which contains much information hitherto unavailable even to scholars, and provides the context essential to an understanding of Hui-neng's work. He gives an account of the history and legends of Ch'an Buddhism, with particular attention to the traditions associated with Hui-neng, quoting or summarizing the most important narratives. He then discusses the various texts of the _Platform Sutra_, and analyzes its contents. (shrink)

This book treats Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as a work of imaginative literature, and applies modern techniques of criticism to his writings. The author's central purpose is to demonstrate the methodological and thematic coherence of The Consolation of Philosophy. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in (...) durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the WillowsSeth Lerer (bio)Writing to her husband’s first illustrator, Graham Robertson, in 1931, Elspeth Grahame thanked him for the gift of his recently published memoirs. She called them “entrancing” and goes on to note: “The touch is so light yet so sure that whatever the subject the reading of it would be full of pleasure to any lover (...) of English style.”1 Lovers of English style would have been long familiar with Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, originally published in 1908 and, by 1931, available in four different editions (a new one, illustrated by Ernest Shepard would soon appear in that year).2 A. A. Milne’s stage adaptation, Toad of Toad Hall, played to welcoming audiences in 1929, and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, perhaps that era’s greatest arbiter of English style, had ensconced Grahame with two selections in his Oxford Book of English Prose, published in 1925.3While The Wind in the Willows is about many things—the nature of friendship, the loss of English pastoral security, the temptations of fashion and fad—it is, first and foremost, an essay in aesthetics. Style governs each and every creature of its woods and mansions, from Mole’s quiet, gentlemanly domesticity to Toad’s manic, aristocratic shows. Style governs, too, the progress of its narrative, and throughout this book, Grahame explores techniques of pictorial description and devices of characterization that would come to epitomize what Elspeth could evoke as “English style.”4Though voiced decades after her husband’s major work had been completed, Elspeth’s judgment chimes with the ideals of the Edwardian aesthetic codified in Quiller-Couch’s anthology.5 Central to that aesthetic was a kind of effortless esprit, as well as an essential “Englishness” that rooted that esprit in local landscape and personal reminiscence. There remains something sweetly nostalgic about the Edwardian idiom, and Quiller-Couch makes clear that, even though his book may brim with “purple patches,” there is nonetheless a “subdued and hallowed emotion” to its selections: “a sense of wonderful history written silently in books and buildings, all [End Page 51] persuading that we are heirs of more spiritual wealth than, may be, we have surmised or hitherto begun to divine.”6 Some of those selections, he claims, hold “the core of true English gentility.” Others are, he reflects, full of “out-of-door matter.”7 He goes on to note that, when Wolfe crossed the St. Lawrence, he is reputed to have “murmured a stanza or two from Gray’s Elegy,” and Quiller-Couch himself has drawn on writers who, he claims, evoked “this imperishable land of ours revived.”8 Such sentiments could not have been far from the mind of Elspeth Grahame, who invites Graham Robertson to their home in the country in her letter of thanks:Do you ever go caring—or if by train we are within an hour of Paddington, and 5 minutes walk from the station here—in an old cottage next the church with a round village lock-up in the garden—so if you would ever propose yourself to come down & see us we should be so glad—and used as you are in Surrey to beauty-spots the river & trees are beautiful in summer-time, that is of course when there is any summer about which has not been the case this year.9The Grahames lived by what Quiller-Couch calls that “green and English country churchyard,” and in his anthology he calls attention to a selection from Charles Reade, “The English Skylark in Australia.” There, in an amazing, paragraph-long sentence, Reade epitomizes the ideals of local pastoralism, and his style—though readers today may find it overwrought—would provide a model for the criticism of Elspeth as well as the writing of her husband:Every time he checked his song to think of its theme, the green meadows, the quiet stealing streams, the clover he first soared from and the Spring he sang so well, a loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had... (shrink)

In the half-century since Kenneth Sisam characterized the Middle English Sir Orfeo as a Greek myth “almost lost in a tale of fairyland,” scholars have struggled to synthesize these two apparently disparate elements into a unified reading of the poem. The narrator has seemingly transformed the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice into a contemporary romance of a king Orfeo and his queen Heurodis. The Greek harper becomes an English minstrel, and some readers have explored the meaning of this transformation (...) through the traditions of medieval mythography and the music theory of Boethius. In Orfeo's loss of his wife and kingdom, his wandering in the wilderness, and his final successful return, other readers have seen the outlines of a specifically Christian allegory. Many of these scholars have explored the exegetical resonances between Orpheus and David and Orpheus and Christ, and, in spite of differences in emphasis and technique, they share a view of Orfeo's journey as a kind of penance or pilgrimage of the soul. Unlike his classical counterpart, however, Orfeo finds his wife not in Hell but in fairyland, and in defining the precise nature of this other world, suggestions range from a version of the Celtic world of “the dead and the taken” to associations between fairyland and the architecture of Revelation. (shrink)

Toward the middle of her evocative, deeply personal new book, Ellen Handler-Spitz reflects, “What is the purpose of keeping secrets from children? What are the effects?” Parents, she continues, often seek to protect children from challenging pasts or fearful presents. We often, too, seek to shield children from our own mistakes. “Doubtless,” she avers, “we have performed acts of which we cannot feel proud.” Keeping silent is no good. But how, she asks again, “should we talk about the past?” Professor (...) Handler-Spitz’s provocations raise important, larger questions about how we rear our children. But this is not a handbook of upbringing. It is, instead, something of a guide to the imagination. In this .. (shrink)

The paper outlines the history of the Babi-Baha'i Faith, its main doctrines and practices.

A guide for scientists who would like to contribute to the professional development of science teachers for elementary schools. Based on information from over 180 programs, describes what activities work and why, and suggests how to identify programs teachers have found to be effective and take the initial steps to become involved. Also provides vignettes illustrating the daily work of science teachers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Some researchers have concluded that nonverbal recognition is generally superior to verbal recognition memory performance. The present study involved two experiments designed to assess claims of superior nonverbal memory. Experiment 1 compared performance for letter (common words) and nonletter (meaningful line drawings) items with matched high-imagery values. Experiment 2 compared performance for matched low-imagery items consisting of letters (pseudowords) and nonletter items (geometric matrices). Performance did not differ significantly between verbal and nonverbal items in either experiment, although the expected effects (...) of presentation rate and type of retrieval task were significant. It was concluded that recognition memory performance is not necessarily dependent upon the “verbalness ” or “non-verbalness ” of stimulus items. (shrink)

A dominant strand of philosophical thought holds that natural kinds are clusters of objects with shared properties. Cluster theories of natural kinds are often taken to be a late twentieth-century development, prompted by dissatisfaction with essentialism in philosophy of biology. I will argue here, however, that a cluster theory of kinds had actually been formulated by William Whewell (1794-1866) more than a century earlier. Cluster theories of kinds can be characterized in terms of three central commitments, all of which are (...) present in Whewell’s work on classification. Like contemporary cluster theorists, Whewell claims that kinds are united by similarity, that many kinds do not have essences, and that there are “gaps” between kinds. Moreover, Whewell advises taxonomists to look for consilience (roughly, convergence) between different classificatory schemes, a recommendation that reinforces the identification of natural classes with property clusters. Thus Whewell was not only an early cluster theorist, but one with important insights into what a cluster theory of kinds means for the practice of classification. (shrink)

On September 1, 2023, Texas made important revisions to it its decades‐old statute granting legal safe harbor immunity to physicians who withhold or withdraw life‐sustaining treatment over the objection of critically ill patients’ surrogate decision‐makers. However, lawmakers left untouched glaring flaws in a key safeguard for patients—the transfer option. The transfer option is ethically important because, when no hospital is willing to accept the patient in transfer, that fact is taken as strong evidence that the surrogates’ treatment requests fall outside (...) accepted medical practice. But there are serious shortcomings in how the transfer option is carried out in Texas and many other states, which undermines the ethical usefulness of the process. We identify these shortcomings and recommend revisions to state statutes and professional guidelines to overcome them. (shrink)

Despite All Critique (2014) -- World Politics and Western Reason (1980) -- The Doubled Outsides of the Modern International (2005) -- The Subject of Security (1995) -- The Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection (2005) -- Social Movements/World Politics (1994) -- Europe is Not Where It is Supposed to Be (2000) -- They Seek it Here, They Seek it There : Looking for Politics in Clayoquot Sound (2003) -- Violence, Modernity, Silence : From Weber to International Relations (1993) (...) -- Hobbes, Origins, Limits (2011) -- War, Terror, Judgement (2002) -- International, Imperial, Exceptional (2005) -- Which Democracy for Which Demos? (2013) -- The Political Theory of Boundaries and the Boundaries of Political Theory : Interview With Raia Prokhovnik (2012). (shrink)

A particular feature of this book is substantial "Stretch and Challenge" material throughout which allows students to develop further.

While the question of free will does not figure as prominently in Buddhist writings as it does in western theology, philosophy, and psychology, it is a topic that was addressed in the earliest Buddhist writings. According to these accounts, for pragmatic and ethical reasons, the Buddha rejected both determinism and indeterminism as understood at that time. Rather than asking the metaphysical question of whether already humans have free will, Buddhist tradition takes a more pragmatic approach, exploring ways in which we (...) can acquire greater freedom to make wise choices that are truly conducive to our own and others' genuine well-being. One key to achieving such freedom is the cultivation of attentional skills so that one can deliberately focus one's attention with continuity and clarity on one's chosen object. A second theme is the cultivation of insight into the manner in which our own attitudes shape experience, allowing for the possibility of altering not only the way we experience events in the present, but also how we are influenced by our memories of the past. Finally, the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes the realization of the deepest dimension of consciousness -- pristine awareness -- which transcends the nexus of causality. This is regarded as the ultimate source of freedom and the ultimate nature of human identity. (shrink)

This article attempts to answer a question that many dancers and non-dancers may have. What is dance according to the media? Furthermore, how does the written word portray dance in the media? To answer these ques-tions, this research focuses on the role that the discourse of dance in media plays in the public sphere’s knowledge construction of dance. This is impor-tant to study because the public sphere’s meaning of dance will determine whether dance education is promoted or banned in schools (...) and in society. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature of dance in the media. One limitation of this contribution is that the research uses only newspaper articles as a source of analysis. Future research should include an analysis of visual and audio clips of dance as portrayed in the media. (shrink)