Product Description
A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY examines the nature of philosophical enterprise and philosophy's role in Western culture. Jones and Fogelin weave key passages from classic philosophy works into their comments and criticisms, giving A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY the combined advantages of a source book and textbook. The text concentrates on major figures in each historical period, combining exposition with direct quotations from the philosophers themselves. The text places philosophers in appropriate cultural context and shows how their theories reflect the concerns of their times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Excellent point to start off at
I have been reading philosophy for a long time now and occasionally, when I talk about it to my friends, I get asked where one can start when it comes to a massive subject like philosophy. Before this book, I would have a hard time pinpointing a good source for a newcomer because most books out there are either boring and dull college books or books that are way too complicated and wordy for anyone without a background to enjoy them.

This series turned out to be perfect for starting a journey in philosophy or brushing up on your ancient Greek philosophy - where it all started. It is a pity that it does not include some Eastern thought schools that are very important to explore but I suppose it had to limit itself on some scale. It is easy to comprehend, laid out rather nicely and often enough refers to former chapters so you don't lose the thread. Not only does it give paragraphs of good translations of the original texts from Plato and Aristotele etc, but it also enriches these thoughts with its own neat and current examples.

I highly recommend it. It was a very pleasant read.

A History of Western Philosophy: The Classical Mind, Volume I
This book offers an excellent summery of the basic teachings, understandings, and doctrines from Thales of the pre-socratics to the late Classical period in Rome (Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, ect).The History of Western Philosphy Series is an excellent addition to the mind and bookshelf of all scholars who maintain interest in the evolution of the human mind.This specific book goes well hand in hand with F. M. Cornfield's "From Religion to Philosophy (A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation)."

In the beginning...
This book, 'The Classical Mind', is the first volume of a five-volume series on the history of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones, professor of philosophy in California.This series is a very strong, thorough introduction to the course of Western Philosophy, beginning at the dawn of the philosophical enterprise with the pre-Socratics in ancient Greece to the modern thinkers such as Wittgenstein and Sartre.It has grown, over the three decades or so of its publication, from one to four then to five volumes.It has remained a popular text, and could serve as the basis of a one-year survey of philosophy for undergraduates or a one-semester survey for graduate students.Even advanced students in philosophy will find this valuable, all major topics and most minor topics in the course of philosophy are covered in these volumes.

Jones states that there are two possible ways for a writer to organise a history of philosophy -- either by addressing everyone who ever participated in philosophy (which could become rather cumbersome if one accepts the premise that anyone could be a philosopher), or to address the major topics and currents of thought, drawing in the key figures who address them, but leaving out the lesser thinkers for students to pursue on their own.Jones has chosen the latter tactic, making sure to provide bibliographic information for this task.

This volume, 'The Classical mind', starts and ends in ancient Greece.Plato and Aristotle are well featured, to be sure, but the pre-Socratics and the post-Aristotilean thinkers are also discussed in great detail.The first chapter deals with a number of thinkers whose names are well-known to those who study the history of science as well as to philosophers -- Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras -- showing the interconnection of disciplines that recurs again and again throughout history, but never again so closely as in these opening days of Western thought.

Jones gives a general history lesson along with the history of the development of thought so that the reader will understand the social and historical context in which ideas developed.Plato and Aristotle both came out a context in which Greece was a fairly violent place much of the time, with warring factions and city-states variously dependent upon and warring against each other.

The discussion of Plato largely deals with his theories of knowledge and metaphysics, with an additional chapter on subsequent topics such as ethics, politics, religion and art.Similiarly, Aristotle is dealt with in two chapters, with the major topics of metaphysics, logic, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and other issues addressed.At the end of each of these sections, Jones gives a general critique of the philosopher's main ideas, and in the final chapter of the book, sets the stage for further developments, particularly in terms of the decline of the Golden Age in Greece.In some regards, all subsequent Western philosophy vacilates between Plato and Aristotle, so a thorough grounding is important.

Each volume ends with a glossary of terms, and a worthwhile index.The glossary warns against short, dictionary-style definitions and answers to broad terms and questions, and thus indicates the pages index-style to the discussion within the text for further context.The one wish I would have would be a comprehesive glossary and index that covers the several volumes; as it is, each volume has only its own referents.

This is minor criticism in a generally exceptional series.It is not easy text, but it is not needlessly difficult.The print size on the direct quotes, which are sometimes lengthy, can be a strain at times, but the reading is worthwhile.

For the Truly Inquiring Mind
The history of ideas should be of interest to every person, but that is an ideal impossible to realize.But for the person who is reasonably interested in becoming acquainted with that history from someone who has told it in a comprehensive, critical, and clear manner, Dr. Jones is the best teller of that story I know of.Volume II of the first hardbound edition was an assigned text for a class I was taking at the University of California, Riverside.I immediately purchased the first volume because I found Dr. Jone's writing informative and clear.He uses original sources liberally, and his organization and elucidation of the topic at hand are superb.

I once had the privilege of meeting the author when my daughter was in his class at CAL-TECH (He was at Pomona College when I first became acquainted with his work.)He expressed an interest in talking with me further, and I was delighted with the idea of going back and purusing that conversation, but I let the opportunity slip away.At the time I had completed a master's in psychology and was pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology while serving as a clergyman in a parish and teaching two classes in psychology in a community college.I regret not being able to squeeze out the time to folow up on his invitation.

I have seen no other discussion of the history of Western Philosophy so worthwhile owning and reading.

Excellent overview
Agreed!This is by far the best general history of philosophy I know, making ample use of primary texts and thus providing much substance, but also bringing out main themes and establishing logical connections clearly for the reader.It was useful for me in college 20 years ago and is more useful now in rereading as I pursue my philosophy PhD. ... Read more

Product Description
G. W. F. Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. Philosophy of Mind is the third part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in which he summarizes his philosophical system. It is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood presents this central work to the modern reader in an intelligible and accurate new translation---the first into English since 1894---that loses nothing of the style of Hegel's thought. In his editorial introduction Inwood offers a philosophically sophisticated evaluation of Hegel's ideas which includes a survey of the whole of Hegel's thought and detailed analysis of the terminology he used. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

This is awful
This is an edition of the book translated by a robot, so there are multiple typos and unclear section divisions.You can barely read it!

Not for the casual reader.
This work is seminal.Every philosophy after Hegel is either a reaction to him or a footnote.His method has achieved scientific verification in the past century in the areas of developmental psychology (Margaret Mahler), in historicism, in embryological development, and theology (Tillich).It shows that wisdom is timeless and although written 200 years ago, Hegel's truth is valid and not subject to fashions as they so often are in philosophy.

This said, I have to say it is not rewarding to read this book unless you have familiarity with German idealism through Kant.Also, a thorough reading of Hegel's Logic is a prerequiste.Few people will understand this book without reading it in the original German as Hegel himself reframes the German language into a new way of thinking. I think all great philosophies shape the language they speak in profound ways. That is why it is so difficult to understand Hegel in English translation.You would have to create a whole new philosophy along Hegelian lines made for the English thinker. This is the daunting task of all translators. There obviously are concepts in Western thought that are portable across "platforms" and this is why translating Hegel happens at all in English.However the way concepts are used, the "process" of the concepts -- the "syntagms" -- is not entirely the same in both languages.

I wrote my master's thesis in philosophy on this work.At that time I could think Hegelian with the best of them but have lost the skill.Now I can't even understand what I wrote 20 years after the fact without going back to school.I have not been speaking Hegelian since then. A pity.

So, to get the most out of it, read this book in a structured environment where one has easy access to help. It will change your life as it has mine.

Developing dialectical, historical thought
An advanced course in Hegel is probably the course which shuttled me forward toward a career in philosophy (and, eventually, theology).It is partly the responsibility of Hegel's thought and part my teacher (look up books by DG Leahy if you are interested in the first real new philosophy of the 21st century).Anyway, back to Hegel's "Mind."In this work, Hegel has created a tour-de-force in systematic philosophy following Kant.

though Kant has adopted the dualism of Plato, Hegel's synthesizing of Kant's ideas has resulted in an amazingly complex but understandable and brilliant work.Hegel proposes that the Mind is the second moment in a three-fold syllogism, following Nature but preceeding Logic (Reason).Here, Hegel explores the nuances of the Mind.Though the other two volumes of the three volume set are important, it seems Mind contains all the ideas of the other two.

If you enjoy hard German philosophy and have a penchant for the absolute idea, read Hegel as soon as possible!

The Development of Absolute Spirit
G.W.F. Hegel is surely one of the most notable figures in German Philosophy. His 'Philosophy of Mind' (also known as 'The Philosophy of Spirit') is the third part of an encyclopaedia work showing, in essence,the dialectical 'nature' of the world as a Notion.In his earlier works inthis triad (The 'Logic' and 'The Philosophy of Nature') Hegel dealt with,first, the logically necessary principle of explanation for the world andthen, secondly, the essence of nature as prior to the development of theMind. This work deals with the nature of Mind as it goes from subjectivityto objectivity through the stages Anthropological, Phenomenological andPsychological, producing Absolute Spirit, a notion that is then used byHegel to explain the moral and legal.This is not an easier book to read;the language is convoluted and it may take several readings to gleamanything useful from it. This is partially due to the difficulty oftranslating German terms to the English and also partially due to thewriting style of Hegel himself. However I do recommend that the readerpersevere, as it is a very rewarding book to read. You need not agreeentirely with what Hegel says to appreciate his philosophy and see theimport of what he is trying to do; explain everything from a position oflogical necessity. The accompanying Zusatz is also of great use, as itgives more concrete examples used in the actual lectures Hegel based thiswork upon. All in all, a momentuous book in the history of Philosophyitself and worth reading for the depth and breadth of ideas containedwithin it. ... Read more

Product Description
Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible.Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out.Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Vast perplexities
Generally speaking, there is no charm in certainty. Riddles amuse because they take some dull, every day word and, by shrouding it in mystery, transform it into a stimulating challenge. Paradoxes do something similar: they defy our notion of logic and show us conundrums where we only had rock-solid truths. A paradox enriches our reality by undermining it. Roy Sorensen, Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth, has written a dazzling book that traces the evolution of some of this conundrums throughout (western) history. As the topic itself, this book can be frustrating at times, but it always remains strangely compelling.

Starting with the Presocratics and ending with W.V. Quine, the chapters are ordered chronologically and they tend to focus on a specific author, a paradox he may have discovered or worked on, and several possible solutions to it by an array of philosophers from different ages and schools of thought. The historical context provided usually takes a life of its own, though, and Sorensen is likely to spend more time gossiping about, say, Aristotle possibly being a Macedonian spy or Kant's ailing mental faculties than delving into the paradox at hand.

Since the book is mainly aimed at armchair philosophers, I suppose some academicians may only see lack of depth in Sorensen's jovial writing style. And, to be honest, he does sometimes seem to be overly interested in retelling memorable anecdotes and witticisms rather than in meticulously analyzing arguments and pinpointing logical fallacies. But I do not think this makes his work any less worthwhile. He is not trying to be the Copleston of paradox, a go-to historian. Sorensen is just offering his readers a delightful look on a few great men, a few great questions. As himself admits in his preface: "I am interested in the developmental and antiquarian aspects of paradoxes. Consequently, my approach is more leisurely. Although I have my own theory of paradoxes, my general intent is to have paradoxes enter at their own initiative (...) The deepest paradoxes are extroverts, naturally good at introducing themselves."

However, I will not deny that the pace gets too "leisurely" at times. Mischievously dragging the Lewinski scandal into Parmenides' Theory of the One and Bette Middler into Pascal's vacuum experiments may be fun for a while, but when one thinks about the number of things Sorensen left out, one starts wondering if he could have used his space more wisely. For example, Eastern philosophy - so rich in riddles and devilish contradictions - has been almost completely neglected; and so has Quantum mechanics, with the million bewildering and hotly controversial paradoxes it has lead to. It should also be noted that while Sorensen dedicates whole pages to talk about the already well-known lives of Socrates and Hume, for example, he rushes the explanation of certain paradoxes and solutions (e.g. Carter's Doomsday argument and Cantor's answer to Zeno) that should be explained in more detail.

Nevertheless, all in all, this small book is rich in revelations, in thought-provoking fun; it is, in a way, also a brief history of philosophy looked through the lenses of doubt. Its charms are more hedonistic than academic; yet Sorensen's vast knowledge is always commanding and most chapters (specially the ones on Thomas Reid, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine) do more than just entertain: they shed some kind light on an intrinsically obscure topic. Personally, I have read and re-read this book, underlined several passages, and admonished some of its pages with grumpy handwritten notes. I know of no better compliment to pay a book.

More than just paradoxes
As the title states, this is a HISTORY of paradoxes. The focus is on the development of thinking about these problems from ancient Greek times to the present. But to a great extent Sorensen's book is also a history of philosophy (which shows just how important paradoxes have been in philosophy). The topics covered include such things as the nature of God and of time, fatalism, Hume's skepticism, and many other things.

Sorensen makes it all relatively easy to follow and includes many interesting asides (e.g., when Pascal tried to convince Descartes that vacuums exist, Descartes quipped that Pascal had too much vacuum in his head).

There are other books out there that concentrate more on the resolutions, or attempted resolutions, to paradoxes. But what this book offers is just as valuable.

Primarily historical
On the cover of this book, "history" is in small print, and "paradox" is in large print.When I obtained this book, I hoped it would focus almost exclusively upon presenting and resolving paradoxes, but, instead, much of the book is devoted to the history of philosophy.The author frequently attacks others' definitions of "paradox," without, however, developing a clear definition of his own.The book is often interesting when it concentrates on paradoxes.I wish it had demonstrated in detail its contention that Zeno's paradoxes have been solved.This book contains, to its credit, the most concise and clear explanation of McTaggart's philosophy of time (and its refutation) that I have ever found.

Most paradoxes aren't
This survey by a Dartmouth Professor of Philosophy promises "a narrative history of paradoxes [extending] from the ancient Greeks ... and into the twentieth century." Although a small-format book, it's a bulky one, using its 370 pages to comprise 24 chronologically-ordered chapters. Each chapter pivots around one philosopher and a paradox associated with that thinker. Examples are: "Aristotle on Fatalism", "Aquinas: Can God Have a Biography", and "The Common Sense of Thomas Reid". Author Roy Sorenson writes with a smooth but playful authority, conveying an encyclopedic grasp of the somewhat cloudy subject matter.

The book begins with "Anaximander and the Riddle of Origin". Author Sorenson states therein that "I take paradoxes to be a species of riddle." Here and elsewhere he hints that he is developing for us a taxonomy of paradoxes, but he never fulfills this promise in any explicit fashion. (Only in the final chapter, when the author quotes W. V. O. Quine as defining a paradox as "just any conclusion that sounds absurd but that has an argument to sustain it", do we have a definition most of us could identify and work with.) The same holds true for explanation or resolution of most of the paradoxes he covers. Seldom does the author present a clear explication of how to resolve out the paradox under discussion.

At the same time, he treats almost all with a significance they may -- but too often do not -- deserve. In presenting Parmenides' belief that "there is only one thing", Sorenson discusses the origins, implications, and stubborn persistence of this contention with erudition but also with some subtle lack of clarity.Later when the author (finally) enlists the rejoinder that the truth of Parmenides' contention depends on the inherent ambiguity in a cognate of the verb "to be", the reader may feel that too much has been wasted before admitting the superficiality of this non-paradox.

In fact, after following the author through a number of these paradoxes easily resolved by revealing their semantic underpinnings, the reader may feel that this book's primary goal is to convince us that Wittengenstein was right in warning that "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."

Despite the rigor of the book's organizational structure, the discussions themselves are elusive and elliptical, but usually entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking. For this reader, most of "A Brief History of the Paradox" disappointed as a solid treatment of its subject matter. It gained strength though as it left behind the semantic games only posing as paradoxes, and took up thinkers like Russell, Wittengenstein, and Quine who strove to find the true "depth" in such questions. But perhaps we should keep in mind another Wittengenstein quote (cited by Sorenson): "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." ... Read more

Product Description
What, if anything, do dreams tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between types of sleep and types of dreams? Does dreaming serve any purpose? Or are dreams simply meaningless mental noise--"unmusical fingers wandering over the piano keys"?
With expertise in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Owen Flanagan is uniquely qualified to answer these questions. And in Dreaming Souls he provides both an accessible survey of the latest research on sleep and dreams and a compelling new theory about the nature and function of dreaming. Flanagan argues that while sleep has a clear biological function and adaptive value, dreams are merely side effects, "free riders," irrelevant from an evolutionary point of view. But dreams are hardly unimportant. Indeed, Flanagan argues that dreams are self-expressive, the result of our need to find or to create meaning, even when we're sleeping.Rejecting Freud's theory of manifest and latent content--of repressed wishes appearing in disguised form--Flanagan shows how brainstem activity during sleep generates a jumbled profusion of memories, images, thoughts, emotions, and desires, which the cerebral cortex then attempts to shape into a more or less coherent story. Such dream-narratives range from the relatively mundane worries of non REM sleep to the fantastic confabulations of deep REM that resemble psychotic episodes in their strangeness. But however bizarre these narratives may be, they can shed light on our mental life, our well being, and our sense of self.
Written with clarity, lively wit, and remarkable insight, Dreaming Souls offers a fascinating new way of apprehending one of the oldest mysteries of mental life.Amazon.com Review
It is a long-held notion of evolutionary theory that everyaspect of behavior has an adaptive purpose, making the organism thatexhibits it more fit for survival. That view hits a wall when it isbrought to bear on dreaming, an act that seems to have no discernibleadaptive advantage.

What good does it do us to dream? Cognitivescientist Owen Flanagan addresses this and related questions inDreaming Souls, an endlessly interesting excursion into thephilosophy of mind. He proposes, first, that dreaming is simply aby-product of the ordinary awareness that allows us to live asconscious beings, an unintended rejoinder to our waking states.Nature selected mammals to have rigid skeletons in a calcium-richenvironment, Flanagan notes, but "cared not one bit about theircolor"; in the same way, he suggests, dreaming may simply be "anexpectable side effect of selection for creatures designed to have andutilize experiences while they are awake, and which continue to haveexperiences after the lights go off." All this is not to say thatdreams are unimportant, Flanagan adds, even though they may not beespecially trustworthy; dreams may be a useful means of mind reading,something we constantly do while we are awake, interrogating ourselvesconstantly in order to gauge our thoughts and responses to the worldaround us. Dreams enable us, too, to mine below the narrative self ofdaily life, the person we present to others, a mask that may be quitedifferent from who we really are. ("The self," Flanagan observes,"trades in fiction rather than fact.")

Flanagan proposes nodefinitive answers to the question of why we dream, but his ideas arestimulating and well-argued, and they open the door to furtherinvestigation. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The title is very misleading!
The book is well written and the thesis is very basic: dreams are noise organized by your brain in a desperate attempt to bring chaos to order but some insights can be gleaned from the noise and how your brain organizes it. What I find disturbing is that, as far as I can discern, Flanagan does not believe in souls. He does not subscribe to the homunculus theory of something other than the human brain that gives us consciousness. He vacillates on the issue of God etc. and has a tendency to use the word "robust" a little too often but his style is accessible to the reader. So, why the title? Maybe a trivial consideration but I think it is important to convey to a potential reader through the title an incredibly compacted summation of the contents of the book. I like that he shoots Freud out of the water to a large extent because it is time to dispense with the psychoanalytical drivel that seems to have permeated so much of the average persons concept of the mind. All this having been said, I enjoyed the book and I would recommend it.

LIKE AN NREM DREAM -- NOT GOOD
Reading this book, you want to like Owen Flanagan.He starts out proving he's conversational.He brings his own personal experience or that of his friends to the table when discussing dreams and thought.He transitions from one topic to another in a manner that initially hints that some surprise or awesome entertainment is just around the corner of your reading, titillating you, -- but then he doesn't deliver.He overintellectualizes his subject; he stretches a topic as if it is important and central to the entire original conception he's propounding about the nature of dreams, only to let you discover that it isn't that important, it isn't that central, in the very end.There had been plenty of "talk" (or writing) one could have done well without, one discovers.

The book lacks scientific and philosophical clout. Not that the whole thing is a complete wash, no.There is some useful information.You learn that dolphins sleep with only half of their brain; you learn dreams are generally unpleasant and that adult dreams rarely contain sex.Finally, we learn there are no dreams where whole works of art come to the dreamer completely intact, though they can inspire one artistically.But the philosophizing on difference, on how we can cognitively know we're dreaming from how we know we're awake, was jejeune and illogical.I found one common fallacy in his argument -- begging the question -- which astounded me since in that very same context he had pointed out to his readers another common fallacy that people often use when thinking about dreams and awakeness.To find (even) one common fallacy in his work was a huge disappointment.It confirmed my perspective that Owen Flanagan's on-the-surface personable, conversational writing style was more important to him than the logical flow of his own ideas as a philosopher.

One undergraduate of psychology reviewing this book on Amazon stated he thought Flanagan's 195-page book could be reduced to a 10-page pamphlet.I agree.The style of writing for this work is an odd admixture of conversation and highly technical jargon where words like "pleiotropic" and "PGO waves" are tossed into the discussion without definition, context, or purpose.Reading this book felt like the NREM dreams Flanagan vividly describes in his text:longer-than-the-actual spent time, repetitive, and compulsively nattering on small or insignificant details or events.I think the book could be improved by having more signal and less noise.

Focus on the physiological
"Dreaming Souls" clearly lays out an anti-Freudian way of viewing dream content.Flanagan's focus on dreams as "free-riders" that coincidentally join us each night when we sleep is a fascinating way to interpret the latest in sleep science.

He offers his Laws of Dream Science to help explain the bizarre nature of our dreams without giving them undeserved (in his opinion) importance to our everyday lives.His IUD scale measures the incongruity, uncertainty, and discontinuity found in most dreams.The descriptions of our physiological processes during sleep are presented in easy-to-understand language, with diagrams and an occasional photograph to help discuss these complex ideas.

A Duke University professor, Flanagan adroitly explains difficult concepts in simple terms that even a C-student freshman could understand (which may or may not be a good thing for you).Despite this small complaint about style, the substance of this book is so overwhelmingly important that anyone the least bit interested in sleeping, dreaming, Freud, or consciousness should read it.

Leslie Halpern, author of Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science and Reel Romance: The Lovers' Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies.

a seminal work on dreams i would give it a 4.5 if i could
owen flanagan does it once again in a great naturalistic work that sketches a controversial but logical theory in a controversial field.With experience in the philosophic, neuroscientific, and psychological fields owen is more than capable of proving his theory that dreams are not spandrels of sleep, they are fitness enhancing and although a biproduct of evolution are self expressive.He tackles all the neccessary and interesting questions from all his fields and creates an overal complex but clear and illuminating work that is a extreme pleasure to read

Interesting new information about the subject.
I really had mixed feelings about Owen Flanagan's book Dreaming Souls.Certainly anyone who expected the operant word to be "Souls" would definitely be disappointed.The focus of the book, as the subtitle "Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind" suggests, is the evolutionary function of sleep and dreams.In general he seems to feel that sleep and its stages probably has a vital evolutionary purpose, but dreaming is simply an emergent property, or spandrel--a Gouldism--that humans have put to various purposes throughout history and across cultures.I could certainly agree with that possibility.

Although the author has a very intimate and conversational style--indeed he seems a pleasant individual and one feels he is talking right to the reader face to face--at times it becomes a bit too much.For instance there was a tendency to repeat key words to the point that one felt brain washed!I counted the use of "dreams" some 14 times on a single page (p. 53)--and least you feel I'm a little picky, the next page continued the pattern, using "dreams" or "dreaming" another 14 times.While the following page only exhibited 10 repeats, 9 of them were in the first paragraph of 11 lines.This gets a little burdensome. I also felt that Professor Flanagan tended to overuse the technique of rephrasing his statements for emphasis a little too frequently.Usually with the first colorful simile or metaphor I've gotten the picture and enjoy the cleverness.By the second I've definitely gotten the idea, but by the third I've skipped on to the next paragraph!

I was impressed with the author's very broad background in the social sciences.He seemed particularly well read among the philosophers.He was also quite current on some of the newer research on dreaming and the physiology of sleep.For instance, he mentions the possibility that dolphins and some birds may sleep with half the brain--something we might all find useful at times.This would definitely have survival value by virtue of an awareness of the approach of predators.The author's suggestion that it might have arisen among dolphins because the breathing process may be fully under voluntary control and a heavily sleeping dolphin might stop breathing seemed unlikely to me.It would be more so that a fully sleeping dolphin might simply sink and drown!

I found the newer information on REM and NREM sleep interesting.I, like many who have studied the subject in the past, believed that all dreaming occurred during REM.I also didn't realize that there were different types of dreams during REM and NREM.Most particularly the physiological data on the brain site activity during the two phases was a surprise to me.The location of the REM site in the brainstem would have suggested to me that this was the older, more primitive form of sleep, since this area of the brain is considered the older portion of the nervous system.This is apparently not the case, as studies of various animals with different levels of nervous function indicate.

The author's footnotes were very informative.I don't always read end of chapter notes, but one of them caught my eye about mid-point in the book, and I actually went back and read those from the earlier chapters.The bibliography is quite good, with volumes ranging in date from 1910 to 1998.There were a number I added to my own wish list for the future. Journal articles included were from "Philosophical Review,""Journal of Neuroscience," "Science," "Psychological Review," "Brain," "Trends in Neuroscience," "Nature," "Behavioral Brain Research," and so on, mostly from the 1990s.Many of these might be a little more intimidating for the average reader--many may simply be unavailable unless the reader has access to a university library--but for anyone doing a school research paper they might make an additional source for study and follow-up. ... Read more

Product Description

InNeuroscience and Philosophy three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience. The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker'sPhilosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, two philosophers who have written extensively on the subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond.

Their impassioned debate encompasses a wide range of central themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of the notion of an intentional stance, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness.

In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University) explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature into the framework of science itself. In Robinson's estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting and challenging,Neuroscience and Philosophy is an exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems raised by cognitive neuroscience.

Customer Reviews (3)

Not long enough!
What happens when you put a neuroscientist, a Wittgenstein scholar, a self-described teleofuctionalist and a qualiaphile in the same ring? Well, for one thing, there's barely enough space for neutral corners but the arguments, rebuttals and discourse among these four erudite persons couldn't be more entertaining. Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, arguing for the existence of a human consciousness residing in the whole person, are taken on by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, who argue that the locus and milieu of consciousness lies solely in the brain. With an introduction and arguably biased conclusion by Daniel Robinson, this concise but informative book must be admired for its detail and descriptive character. Debates between weak and strong emergence abound: are we reducible to our component parts, or is there a complex confluence at work that produces consciousness? What causes it all: firing neurons and chemical combinations, or a mysterious alliance of constituent parts, brain/mind/body/environment? Are qualia simply qualities of objects or interpersonal properties of phenomenological experience?

All this and more, it's confrontational, it's accessible and it's neuroscience, cognition, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics all rolled together for the sake of consideration and understanding. This book, more than anything, serves as the impetus to further explore themes in neuroscience and consciousness. All four contributors offer their own insights in a wide range of independent publications.

Not impartial enough
Granted, Bennett and Hacker were the impetus behind this book's creation, but I feel they could have allowed more back-and-forth with Dennett and Searle, their two primary interlocutors.Instead, they republish sections of their own original arguments to give some context to Dennett and Searles' responses, which don't differ except in tone from their positions at the conference from which the book came.Then the book grants Bennett and Hacker another answer (composed, so far as I could tell, of almost willful misreadings of Searle's and Dennetts' criticisms), then a conclusion from a "referee" who, naturally, mostly judges them to have come out ahead in the argument.I expected more interlocution, but instead it seems to be a vehicle for Hacker and Bennett's position.

Conceptual confusions
That philosophy should unravel conceptual confusions in neuroscience or other sciences is a principal theme of the authors of Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, which book is in the presently reviewed one discussed by those authors, Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, and defended by them in response to criticisms by Daniel Dennett and John Searle.

However, major conceptual confusion characterizes the arguments of authors Bennett and Hacker themselves.

Let me begin by noting that all of these authors appear to subscribe to physicalism, describable as holding that all reality is reducible to physical phenomena. Consequently it is understandable that they will aim to fit their arguments into that straightjacket. A well-known expression of this attitude is the intense opposition to Cartesian dualism, the view by Descartes that mind and body, or mind and matter, are two distinct substances.

How derided this view is by the authors can be seen from the manner in which they speak of it: "crippling Cartesianism" (p.75, Dennett), "find themselves in bed with Descartes" (p.100, Searle), "the long, dark shadow of Descartes" (p.159, Bennett and Hacker). Only the commentator in the book, Daniel Robinson, expresses (pp.192-3) reservations about "how many kinds of different sorts of 'stuff' might be constitutive of all reality", but he considers such questions "best to leave unanswered".

They need not be left unanswered in philosophy, which with the aid of logic is here to try to resolve them. I may immodestly note that I deal with such questions in my On Proof for Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries, but now I wish to point out confusions by the principal reviewed authors, whose object is to prevent confusion.

In their arguments they contend (p.208, note 6) that "the idea that the mind is a SUBSTANCE [I capitalized italics] of any kind is not coherent", i.e. that it makes no "sense" to speak of mind as contrasted with the body. But the authors are confused by words. "Substance" is usually defined by the likes of "essential nature", and the main issue, regardless of words used, is whether there is an entity customarily termed "mind" which is distinct from the body. The entity in question is obviously, in Descartes' and other discussions of interaction between mind and body, consciousness--leaving aside particulars like recent propounding of an unconscious. And it certainly makes sense to inquire about the relation between conscious and bodily occurrences.

But the most prominent area of confusion by the authors is in their primary contention of a "mereological fallacy" (e.g. p.22), regarding "the logic of part/whole relations". The authors repeatedly contend such as: "psychological predicates are ascribable to the whole animal, not to its constituent parts". The underlying dispute is with neuroscientists who ascribe "psychological predicates" to the brain, and the presently discussed authors insist: "Human beings, but not their brains, can be said to be thoughtful or to be thoughtless; animals, but not their brains..., can be said to see, hear, smell and taste things..." And the authors repeat: "psychological predicates apply paradigmatically to the HUMAN BEING (OR ANIMAL) AS A WHOLE, and NOT to the body or its parts".

It should be noted that the shift to the brain by neuroscientists is done from the traditional "mind" or consciousness, since the latter does not lend itself to their physical scrutiny. And the turn by the discussed authors to the "whole" of the animal is evidently born of the like physicalist presupposition that one cannot speak of a mind separate from the body. Ironically, their phrase "psychological predicates" itself relies on the word "psyche" for "soul", and it is easy to see that their arguments correspondingly confuse the concepts involved.

It is not the "whole" of the human or animal that thinks, sees, hears, smells and tastes things. The arm does not take part in thinking, or the leg in seeing. It is indeed a truism that it is the conscious part in us that performs those tasks, enlisting in cases some of the body. Try as they may, thinkers cannot dismiss the role of consciousness in our lives.
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Product Description
"Ming Design II is a welcome update of its predecessor, itself auseful compendium on the philosophy of cognitive science. This newvolume retains the intellectual foundations, and some discussions ofclassical AI built on them, while adding connectionism, situated AI, anddynamic systems theory as extra storeys. Which of these is the moststable, and whether the foundations need to be re-worked, are questionsreaders will be eager to explore." -- Margaret A. Boden, Professor ofPhilosophy and Psychology, University of Sussex, UK "Haugeland's MindDesign II brings together nearly all the essential philosophicalperspectives in Cognitive Science. If you want to understand currentopinion on the philosophy of mind, you should make sure you are familiarwith the contents of this book." -- James L. McClelland, Carnegie MellonUniversity and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition

Mind design is the endeavor to understand mind (thinking, intellect) interms of its design (how it is built, how it works). Unlike traditionalempirical psychology, it is more oriented toward the "how" than the"what." An experiment in mind design is more likely to be an attempt tobuild something and make it work--as in artificial intelligence--than toobserve or analyze what already exists. Mind design is psychology byreverse engineering. When Mind Design was first published in1981, it became a classic in the then-nascent fields of cognitivescience and AI. This second edition retains four landmark essays fromthe first, adding to them one earlier milestone (Turing's "ComputingMachinery and Intelligence") and eleven more recent articles aboutconnectionism, dynamical systems, and symbolic versus nonsymbolicmodels. The contributors are divided about evenly between philosophersand scientists. Yet all are "philosophical" in that they addressfundamental issues and concepts; and all are "scientific" in that theyare technically sophisticated and concerned with concrete empiricalresearch. Contributors: Rodney A. Brooks, Paul M. Churchland, AndyClark, Daniel C. Dennett, Hubert L. Dreyfus, Jerry A. Fodor, JosephGaron, John Haugeland, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Zenon W. Pylyshyn,William Ramsey, Jay F. Rosenberg, David E. Rumelhart, John R. Searle,Herbert A. Simon, Paul Smolensky, Stephen Stich, A. M. Turing, Timothyvan Gelder ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Essays on A.I.
Mind Design II was my first serious introduction to artificial intelligence and the issues surrounding work in this multi-disciplinary area.I found it both accessible and enlightening.That being said, it is by no means a completely light read for newcomers, and it is important to invest time into thinking about the key discussion points of the book (connectionism (NFAI) vs. GOFAI, symbolism, representation, etc.).My only complaint with the book is that it is hard to tell the difference between what is current and what isn't (Turing's essay, for instance), and the fact that it was published in 1997 doesn't make it any easier.Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the philosophy and science of "mind design."

The best compendium of papers on artificial intelligence
This is the best compendium of papers in artificial intelligence that I've seen (at least on the same level of "the artificial intelligence debate" -- which is also excellent).

However, some of these ideasare getting outdated. If you want to see some true innovation in AI youshould check out Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and CreativeAnalogies. ... Read more

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The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects, writes John Searle, "in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false." One of the world's most eminent thinkers, Searle dismantles these theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind. He begins with a look at the twelve problems of philosophy of mind--which he calls "Descartes and Other Disasters"--problems which he returns to throughout the volume, as he illuminates such topics as materialism, consciousness, the mind-body problem, intentionality, mental causation, free will, and the self. The book offers a refreshingly direct and engaging introduction to one of the most intriguing areas of philosophy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Classic Searle - Clear, Entertaining and Provocative
Published in 2004 John Searle's `Mind' is an instalment in the Oxford University Press Fundamentals of Philosophy Series.Searle, a long time UC Berkley professor is a leading contemporary analytic philosopher with numerous publications in the philosophy of the mind, philosophy of language and social philosophy.I read this text in conjunction with Searle's Philosophy of the Mind course available thru itunes/itunesu/UC Berkley. The lectures are a tremendous complement to the text.

The first part of the book provides an introduction to the modern philosophy of the mind tradition, its key thinkers and ideas. While brief, this overview is outstanding, with his characteristic flair and confidence Searle succinctly dissects the various views, identifying their antecedents, postulates and challenges. For readers new to this subject (this is tagged as an introduction), it is important when approaching a work such as this to be mindful of the author's perspective.While he is an outstanding scholar, Searle, like all commentators, approaches his work with certain presuppositions.These assumptions in turn determine what arguments and evidence are deemed credible and which are dismissed as unconvincing.In this respect, Searle like many analytic philosophers of his generation is a committed naturalist; as a consequence non-naturalistic approaches (idealism, theism, etc.) are not considered to be live options.

In the latter part of the book Searle addresses a range of issues such as, the mind body problem, mental causation and free will.In attempting to dissolve the mind-body problem Searle's propounds a view that he calls `biological naturalism'.A view which despite his denials seems best described as a form of emergent property dualism, wherein, while, reality is a closed physical system higher level/emergent phenomena (e.g. the mental) are not amenable to explanation in reductive physical terms. While such views are popular in contemporary philosophy they are not particularly satisfying, in that it names a phenomenon without providing a viable explanatory mechanism for the phenomenon.That is, how does one state of being (the mental) emerge out of and entirely separate order of being (the material)?Indeed, it could be argued that notions such as emergence appear to be motivated, as much as anything, by the desire to avoid substance dualism and supernaturalism.These small criticisms aside, the text is an engaging read.Many of Searle's asides, such as his critiques of Hume's views on causation and the self are outstanding.

Overall, Mind is an excellent resource for readers interested in the philosophy of the mind.Searle is an outstanding thinker; informed, entertaining and provocative, he has an excellent critical eye and just the right mix of overconfidence, intelligence and wit.

barking up the wrong tree
The criticisms in the existing reviews are well founded, but so far one key, major fault has not been mentioned: Searle remains caught between the untenable standard options for dealing with the Cartesian mind-body duality. Therefore, regardless of how he squirms, his is an untenable, ultimately incoherent position.

He mis-states, and then rejects -- quite stupidly, I believe -- the one viable though not face-credible alternative to Cartesian dualism or the many varieties of its reductionism: panpsychism. On pp. 104-105, he presents a silly, grossly inadequate and distorted version (thermostats are conscious), ridicules it, and then dismisses panpsychism altogether on that basis. Interested readers should go to Panpsychism in the West (Bradford Books) for a contemporary, compelling presentation of that unpopular position.

Good Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind
I used this book to teach a course in the philosophy of human nature and I loved it. Searle touts his brand of philosophy in this work called "biological naturalism." It is the view that all of our conscious states arise from neurobiological processes. The book is also an introduction to the common problems in philosophy of mind. But you better come prepared for a somewhat technical (in some places) discussion of free will, mental causation and the mind-body problem. As usual, however, Searle is crystal clear in his explanations and arguments. Moreover, he appears to be pretty convincing in his refutations of materialism. This book is informative and a pretty good read.

Good introduction to the topic, but his own theories are flawed
This book served as my introduction to the mind/body problem, and his introductory material (the first 100 pages or so) was actually quite decent.He explained the issues, gave the differing views on the issues, and was rather comprehensive and fair for the most part.The only complaints I had about that section were (1) that he often gave the reader the bare minimum of information and left the reader to figure out what it meant instead of giving a clear example of what he was saying (the issues he was discussing were ofter very difficult to understand, and I would have to read a section and sit and think about it for five minutes to figure out what exactly he was saying, when he could easily have given examples to significantly speed up the process), and (2) I think he unfairly dismissed dualism without really giving many reasons why it was not correct.I agree that there are significant problems with dualism, but I think his treatment of it was far too brief and not especially fair.

The rest of the book, however, was not so great.The position he takes is called non-reductive physicalism.This means that he thinks the mind is nothing but physical processes but is not reducuble to physical processes.The whole rest of the book is about how this theory explains things like consciousness, free will, etc.The two main problems I had with this part of the book are far more significant than those I had with the first part.They are (1) the failure to adequately explain how a mind which is entirely physical processes can escape being reduced to physical processes, and (2) his section on free will.

The reason he wishes to escape reducing the mind to physical processes is that if we do that we are left with determinism.Everything we think, and thus do, is then reduced to the outcome of physical processes leaving no room for free will.The problem is that Searle offers no legitimate explanation of how we escape reductionism if the mind is "just physical processes" (that is exactlty how Searly says it).Other non-reductive physicalists like Nancy Murphy do go into detailed explanations (which I find unconvincing as well), but Searle just passes it off as plausable then moves on, effectively skirting the issue by changing the topic to how this theory explains mental phenomenon like free will.

The problem with that is that when he gets to free will, he is forced to admit that his system does not seem able to account for free will, so he calls it a mystery and appeals to quantum mechanics.He acknowledges that randomness does not amount to freedom (which many who advocate quantum mechanics as the basis of free will fail to acknowledge, so at least it's a step forward), but he is forced to look there for help because, as he notes, it is the only non-determined field of science we know about.Since he has already decided that nothing non-physical can be a part of our minds, he is left with no choice but a listless appeal to quantum mechanics, though he openly admits he has no idea how this solves anything and that it does not really seem to work.Perhaps this is a good indication that his starting point of physicalism is lacking.

In short, this is a good introduction to the mind/brain topic, but his own ideas about the subject are largely unconvincing and seem to me to be rather lacking in evidence.That said, I would recommend it to anyone wishing to learn about these issues, as the non-redcutive physicalism is a growing position you would do well to know about and understand, and Searle presents the one of the most comprehensive discussions of that position in this book.He also presents an excellent critique of reductionist philosophies of mind, from behaviorism to functionalism to the newer theories about how the mind is to brain as computer program is to hardware.

Overall grade:B

Edit (April 11th):In the few months since I read this book, I have actually come to adopt Searle's position (or something very close to it).A number of other sources played in my "conversion," making me wonder whether this really is a good introduction to the topic or something which should be read after a working knowledge of competing positions is already known.It could be that Searle's position was so radically different than my own that I would have rejected it no matter how it was first presented to me, or it could be that Searle's presentation of it was just not as convincing as the positions of Nancy Murphy and Kevin Corcoran in The Search for the Soul (a survey of four views of the soul [or lack thereof] from a Christian perspective), which played a significant role in my shift of positions.

Confused, Muddled Thinking
John Searle provides what he thinks is a corrective to other introductory works in the philosophy of mind. In traditionally Searlean prose, he guides us through what he sees as the major problems of philosophy of mind, giving a background and providing some solutions of his own to the major problems. The writing style is clear, simple, and concise, which makes the book quite readable and indeed pleasant at many points. It is when you begin to dig beneath the words and extract Searle's arguments that the book falls apart.

In the beginning, we see a rather good explication of Descartes' views on the mind, which lead into contemporary approaches to the subject. This is where the book runs into problems. The first approach other than dualism that Searle considers is behaviorism. Here, he betrays philosophical superficiality by completely ignoring the valuable points made by behaviorists and painting a terrible caricature that barely qualifies as a straw man. As he continues, it becomes obvious that Searle has failed to understand virtually every argument in the history of the philosophy of mind. His treatment of functionalism is terribly vague and while his outline of various anti-functionalist arguments is useful, his characterization of their rebuttals is not.

As the work goes on, we get more into Searle's positive work, which is even more muddled than his critical work. He freely contradicts himself, such as in the chapter on free will, where he goes against one of his core philosophical principles (common sense). There is also his theory of consciousness, in which the brain causes the mind, which is separate and sits on top of the brain, but it is not dualism. Such conceptual muddles plague this book, making it difficult to even make sense of what Searle wants to say.

In the end, the book deserves two stars because it causes violent disagreement and is a suitable starting place for discussions and inquiry. However, anyone reading this book would do well to get another introductory book (I recommend Kim) or a good anthology (I recommend Chalmers) to accompany it, because alone the book is wholly inadequate at mapping the field or providing a positive position. It is probably more valuable as an introduction to John Searle, and someone interested in Searle's philosophy of mind would find this an easy way to get acquainted with his ideas. ... Read more

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Product Description
The author?s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man?s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. Edited by Mary McCarthy; Indices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A refuge of delight for the thoughtful reader
I came to this book still quite skeptical of Arendt's writing style and intellectual caliber; several years earlier I had attempted to read her book 'The Human Condition' and it underwhelmed me with its stilted writing style. But I was pleasantly surprised and even delighted almost from the first few pages of this work. This book was a complete intellectual delight, relatively easy to digest, but extremely well written, without a trace of arrogance or stylistic awkwardness. This is no doubt due to the expert assistance given Arendt by her editor Mary McCarthy.

While Arendt had originally planned to write a three-part work, on Thinking, Willing, and Judging, she only lived to complete the first two sections. But since she associates Thinking with the past and Willing with the future, it seems fitting to limit the book to these two concepts. (There is a short appendix containing lecture notes from a series she had given on Kant's Critique of Judgment, but I don't recommend it; it's very rough and hard to read.)

A large part of the first section on Thinking is devoted to Greek philosophy. She throws around a fair amount of Greek that, for the most part, is translated or understandable from the context. The second section is heavy on medieval philosophy with healthy doses of Latin all over the place. This was the more interesting section from my point of view, for there are lengthy discussions of Augustine and Duns Scotus. Towards the end of the second section she deals with Nietzsche and Heidegger. Heidegger (as you might expect) is given a full and sympathetic treatment.

Reading this book has been an experience that I won't soon forget. In fact, I am suffering withdrawal symptoms from it as I write this review. The book was a one-of-a-kind intellectual home to me. I will also add, once you get to the end of the Willing section, you may as well stop reading. Editor Mary McCarthy's Postface is rather self-centered and repetitious, not really worth one's time. And the final unedited lectures of Arendt on Kant's Critique of Judgment are rough, sketchy, and very unlike the polished prose of the earlier part of this great book.

If you are looking for a sophisticated work that will engage your mind but will not overwhelm your intellect, then this is the book. It will easily become a refuge of delight for any thoughtful reader.

A great Testament to Arendt's genius
`Life of the Mind,' while incomplete, nevertheless serves as a phenomenal exegesis of Western thought from one of the leading political and metaphysical thinkers of our era. Arendt breezes through an exorbitant quantity of philosophy with remarkable clarity and grace in this two-volume work. In it she provides a critical review of classical thought, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Dons Scotus, leading all the way up to Kant and Rousseau. She also explicates the notion of the Will in Nietzsche, and then Heidegger's `Will-Not-to-Will' in his later thought. It is possible that Arendt will remain among the greats in Western philosophy, political theory, and journalism more broadly. Her depth of knowledge and insight and capacity to read a text with fresh eyes will astonish you. Also included in the second volume of the text is one of the most cogent explications of Heidegger's Being and Time you are ever likely to find.

Appearances and Being
Arendt's premise - assuming that Chapter 1 is the place to start and the book is not a suspense novel, that "Being and Appearing coincide," and that nothing exists that does not presume a spectator, made it difficult for me to continue the book.She maintains, up front, that Being and Appearance are prominent (she refers to them as part of the "two-world theory") philosophical fallacies.What a place too begin?! And so dogmatically!She goes on to use the internal organs of a man as an example of "behind the appearances" (my quote marks), then spins off additional abstractions (as if philospophy needs them) such as semblance and authentic appearance and process.Later, she pronounces "thought without speech is inconceivable"; oh boy.

I found her discussion of truth and meaning incomplete and confusing, if not, in places, just plain incorrect. Arendt assumes "meaning" conveys how something arrives at being (using Kant's texts), and contrasts it (meaning) with truth, writing that there can be only factual truths, disposing of propositional (logical) truths and mathematical truths, seemingly declaring that these a priori artifacts of reasonng can only be evaluated meaningful or meaningless.

While obviously a scholar, Arendt is neither clear nor convincing in this book.She does make her points at places: describing the futility of adopting solipsism - and Wittgenstein's role in promoting it interesting enough.

Her use of the senses and the superficial appearances of the world as the foundation of a book on thinking is itself superficial.Her writing is not however; it is althogether hard-headed.

A must read
If you are interested in philosophy or religion, then you must read this book. I think book 2 on the will is the more important of the two books. The central issue is the movement of time, if time is linear then the will is central in creating reality, if time is circular then the will is an illusion.

Philosophically speaking, this is Arendt at her best.
In her typical straight-to-the-point style of writing, Arendt explores some of the most philosophically important questions asked since antiquity. She guides us through the ages of development on topics such as freewill, time, and Being. She is one of the most important thinkers, not of the 20th century, but of all "time". This is Arendt for the philosopher/thinker, not the political scientist. From Heraclitus to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Arendt leaves no great thinker's stone unturned. I've read a lot of books, and this is probably one of the most important. Does she give us any answers to these important questions? NO. However, she shows that there are no answers to these questions, only better questions to be asked. ... Read more

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The study of the mind has always been one of the main preoccupations of philosophers, and has been a booming area of research in recent decades, with remarkable advances in psychology and neuroscience. Oxford University Press now presents the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the philosophy of mind.

An outstanding international team of contributors offer 45 specially written critical surveys of a wide range of topics relating to the mind. The first two sections cover the place of the mind in the natural world: its ontological status, how it fits into the causal fabric of the universe, and the nature of consciousness. The third section focuses on the much-debated subjects of content and intentionality. The fourth section examines a variety of mental capacities, including memory, imagination, and emotion. The fifth section looks at epistemic issues, in particular regarding knowledge of one's own and other minds. The volume concludes with a section on self, personhood, and agency.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and scholars of philosophy, and also for researchers in neighboring disciplines seeking a high-level survey of the state of the art in this flourishing field. ... Read more

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First published in 1990, Mind and Cognition: An Anthology is now firmly established as a popular teaching apparatus for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mind.

• Brings together the most important classic and contemporary articles in philosophy of mind and cognition
  
• Completely revised and updated throughout, in response to feedback from teachers in the field
  
• Now includes 20 new readings
  
• Each updated part opens with a brief, synoptic introduction to the individual field and a comprehensive further reading list
  
• Each section also includes three to four of the most influential papers that have been written in the philosophy of mind over the last 40 years

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Anthology
Lycan has assembled an anthology that should serve as an example to all aspiring anthologists of the future.It probably won't, but Lycan has given us such an example, nonetheless.He gathered the most importantwritings in a field that is difficult to track and presented them in anorder that makes sense and directs the casual reader to the portions thatmost interest him.Such an order also makes it easy to use the book as areference, as do the bibliographies. ... Read more

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The Philosophy of Mind remains the only sourcebook of primary readings offering in-depth coverage of both historical works and contemporary controversies in philosophy of mind. This second edition provides an expanded treatment of classical as well as current topics, with many additional readings and a new section on mental content. The writers included range from Aristotle, Descartes, and William James to such leading contemporary thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and Jaegwon Kim. The 83 selections provide a thorough survey of five areas of enduring controversy: the mind-body problem, mental causation, mental content, innatism and modularity, and associationism and connectionism. Each section includes an introductory overview of the topic by the editors as well as suggestions for further reading.

The selections added for the second edition serve both to enhance historical coverage and to update contemporary issues, especially in areas of current empirical research such as connectionism and innatism. Changes to historical coverage include a wider array of readings on classic positions as well as neglected precursors to views often considered recent innovations. The section on the mind-body problem in particular has been greatly expanded, including numerous selections on consciousness and phenomenal qualities (qualia). The book is ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy and the history of psychology and will be useful both as a reference for researchers and as a self-contained survey for the general reader. ... Read more

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The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems--What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world?--are at the heart of metaphysics. Rather than try to cover all of the many strands in the philosophy of perception, this book focuses on a particular orthodoxy about the nature of visual perception.The central problem for visual science has been to explain how the brain bridges the gap between what is given to the visual system and what is actually experienced by the perceiver. The orthodox view of perception is that it is a process whereby the brain, or a dedicated subsystem of the brain, builds up representations of relevant figures of the environment on the basis of information encoded by the sensory receptors. Most adherents of the orthodox view also believe that for every conscious perceptual state of the subject, there is a particular set of neurons whose activities are sufficient for the occurrence of that state. Some of the essays in this book defend the orthodoxy; most criticize it; and some propose alternatives to it. Many of the essays are classics. The contributors include, among others, G. E. M. Anscombe, Dana Ballard, Daniel Dennett, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, H. P. Grice, David Marr, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Zenon Pylyshyn, Paul Snowdon, and P. F. Strawson. ... Read more

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A wise and witty compendium of the greatest thoughts, greatest minds, and greatest books of all time -- listed in accessible and succinct form -- by one of the world's greatest scholars.

From the "Hundred Best Books" to the "Ten Greatest Thinkers" to the "Ten Greatest Poets," here is a concise collection of the world's most significant knowledge. For the better part of a century, Will Durant dwelled upon -- and wrote about -- the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. His selections have finally been brought together in a single, compact volume. Durant eloquently defends his choices of the greatest minds and ideas, but he also stimulates readers into forming their own opinions, encouraging them to shed their surroundings and biases and enter "The Country of the Mind," a timeless realm where the heroes of our species dwell.

From a thinker who always chose to exalt the positive in the human species, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time stays true to Durant's optimism. This is a book containing the absolute best of our heritage, passed on for the benefit of future generations. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events and ideas in simple and exciting terms, this is a pocket-size liberal arts and humanist curriculum in one volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Delightfully insightful
Will Durant was an immensely learned thinker, and I've grown to greatly appreciate his work over the years.He does express his opinions with an enthusiastic flair which may throw readers expecting dry scholarly detachment, but I personally find his vigor to be a nice refreshing change.Moreover, he offers many deep insights to consider, and he does it with humility befitting a genuinely wise person.

In this book, Durant specifically lists and describes what he considers the "greatest minds and ideas of all time," and I think his choices are generally good.Of course, readers may disagree with some of his choices, but it's pointless to get hung up on that, since such lists are necessarily somewhat subjective.If you recognize that his choices are only meant to be "among" the greatest, you shouldn't have any problems.

The only real criticism I can offer is that Durant perhaps makes the process of becoming educated sound easier than it really is.He spent decades climbing to his lofty height, and I've logged in plenty of hours myself.Describing greatest books, minds, historical events, etc. is certainly interesting, useful, and even inspiring, but such lists don't really enable much of a shortcut.Also, as a fairly minor point, I think his pre-1900 choices of greatest books are good, but his 20th-century choices warrant updating, especially with regard to the sciences.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who seriously wrestles with the big questions and values growth of human understanding.People who are themselves relatively well read will particularly enjoy comparing notes with Durant.Also, this book works very well in audiobook format, so don't hesitate to give that a try.

Accurate Title, Wonderful Book
Some will obviously quibble over Will Durant's selections, but I will not.I got hooked on Durant after reading his 1916 doctoral disseration (a full thirty years after I acquired the multi-volume History of Civilization), and have been working my way through various "short books" in the past six months.

Here are my fly-leaf notes.

Slams H. G. Wells early on.Durant seems to be the anti-thesis to Marx.

He opens by pointing out that the greatest minds of history were those of philosphy and science, not captains of war, priests, or artists.

As is my tendency, I praise the book by summarizing it.Below are his lists.

Ten greatest thinkers:
01 Confucius as a moral philosopher
02 Plato for first university, philosophy as means of remolding world
03 Aristotle as philosopher and scientists, creating new science
04 St. Thomas Aquinas for bridging between knowledge and belief
05 Copernicus (Poland) for astronomy and mathematics, shifting attention from man to the cosmos
06 Sir Francis Bacon, for knowledge as remodeling power, opened eyes to nature (see my review of Intelligence in Nature, forthcoming).
07 Sir Isaac Newton, for scientific mastery of modern thought
08 Voltaire for ending despotism and starting the enlightenment, but see my review of Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
09 Immanuel Kant for mind over materialism, restored faith to co-equal status with science
10Charles Darwin for state of nature, life as conflict, natural selection

Ten greatest poets:
01 Homer
02 "David"
03 Garupedes
04 Lucretius
05 Li Po
06 Dante
07 Shakespeare
08 Keats
09 Shelly
10 Whitman

Ten "Peaks" for Humanity
01 Speech
02 Fire
03 Conquest of Animals
04 Agriculture
05 Social Organization
06 Morality [see my review of The Lessons of History)
07 Tools
08 Science
09 Education
10 Writing & Print

I have a note to myself in which I iclude the Internet in #10, and see #11 as being "True Cost" accounting, see my reviews of, among others:
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Twelve Major Dates in Human History
01 4241 BCEgyptian Calendar
02 543 BC Death of Buddha
03 478 BC Death of Confucius
04 199 BC Death of Socrates
05 44 BC Death of Caesar
06 BC-AD Birth of Christ
07 AD 632 Death of Mohammed
08 AD 1294 Death of Roger Bacon, birth of gunpowder
09 AD 1455 Gutenberg Press
10 AD 1492 Columbus discovers America (see 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
11 AD 1769 James Watt and the Steam Engine
12 AD 1789 French Revolution

One can only speculate at what he might have picked in the past century or two, that alone would make a marvelous semester-long course.

The book has a lovely index of all names, both those considered and those considered but not selected.

I consider this a classic gift item, along with Ralph Nader's The Seventeen Traditions and Durant's Lessons of History linked above as well as his edited work drawing out others On the Meaning of Life

For my own contribution, a work marvelously edited by Canadian PhD candidate Mark Tovey, see Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.All of the work I have sponsored or produced can be found for free at OSS.Net.

Insight into Will Durant and his passions
This collection of articles and writing from Durant is his opinion of the greatest thinkers, poets and books of all of humanity. Clearly an almost impossible task and one filled with biases. I won't go through the list and critique each selection, as that is up to the reader to decide, but I will point out some interesting facets of his thoughts on the matters.

In thinkers he states that it "breaks his heart" to have to include St. Thomas Aquinas in the list.

Durant unashamedly loves the French Renaissance and thinks of it as the height of human culture.

In a possibly shocking narrative Durant dreams of having a library, which could be considered a shrine, which he lavishly details as a place of worship for himself and friends. He specifically calls the great philosophers, thinkers, and scientists "gods", and speaks of lighting candles to their images. Durant waxes wistfully for the lost faith of his youth, and replacing it with reverence and worship, towards great men. His critics are right to point out this sort of unapologetic hero worship taints scholarship.

Those criticisms aside, this book is still worth reading for one man's learned opinion about what is great in humanity. To Durant's credit he does expose and admit his hero worship and biases in this book, and realizes his focus on Western culture and general dislike of religion, particularly Christianity, shapes his recommendations.

The Greatest Minds, Will Durant
I have owned this book for at least five years and consider it a treasure in my personal library.My recent purchase was for a gift to a friend.It is a book you can reread and refer to frequently.Doreen McPhail Kohr

Moderate. Not the high mark of Will Durant
The book is a collection of interviews and articles in interaction with the great writer, but the subject depth is lacking and there is little cohesion. ... Read more

Product Description
A reconciliation of two conflicting visions of what a person is--one embedded in our humanistic traditions, the other advanced by mind science--from one of the most influential philosophers of our time.

Science has always created problems for traditional ways of seeing things, but now the very attributes that make us human--free will, the permanence of personal identity, the existence of the soul--are threatened by the science of the mind. If the mind is the brain, and therefore a physical object subject to deterministic laws, how can we have free will?

If most of our thoughts and impulses are unconscious, how can we be morally responsible for what we do? If brains and bodies undergo relentless change, how can our identities be constant?

The Problem of the Soul shows the way out of these paradoxes. Framing the conflict in terms of two dominant visions of the mind--the "manifest image" of humanistic philosophy and theology, and the scientific image--Owen Flanagan demonstrates that there is common ground, and that we need not give up our ideas of moral responsibility and personal freedom in order to have an empirically sound view of the human mind. This is a profoundly relevant work of philosophy for the common reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

The Problem of the Soul
I have been very pleased with my purchases online from Amazon. I have been ordering philosophy and religion books and this is the first time, this year of using Amazon online. It is very easy, less expensive and less time consuming.

Misrepresents the opposition
Despite being a supporter of the nonreductive physicalist and compatibilist positions defended by Flanagan, I was very disappointed by this book. My main objection is that it misrepresents the views it disagrees with, and fails to engage modern, top-level exponents of the opposing views.

In a brief, well written, "Bibliographic Essay" at the end of the book Flanagan shows that he is aware of many of the philosophers he ignores in the main text, so his choice to ignore them is deliberate.

On the question of free will, Flanagan supports a form of compatibilism that he calls "neo-compatibilism", but virtually all modern compatibilists are "neo" by his definition and I don't think he adds much to what has already been said by other compatibilists. But far worse is his dismissive approach to the position he attacks, libertarianism. The only 20th century libertarian philosopher referred to in the main text is Chisholm, whom Flanagan quotes only for the purpose of pouring scorn. He totally fails to do justice to Chisholm's position, and does not even address the arguments of other leading libertarians such as Kane, Ginet and Van Inwagen. He gains only a cheap victory by attacking a straw man.

On the question of monism versus dualism, the same is true. Flanagan attacks an out-of-date ghost-in-the-machine kind of substance dualism without facing up to the arguments of modern substance dualists such as Swinburne and Goetz.

As far as religion is concerned, the misrepresentation is even more extreme. Flanagan reacts against the Catholicism of his childhood (understandably he was horrified by his grandmother who scandalously baptized all the Jewish children (babies?) in her hospital), and he attempts to give the impression that almost all Christians hold onto the naive Cartesian views that he apparently learned in childhood. Almost a quarter of the book is devoted to attacking theism and supporting Buddhism, which would be fair enough if he gave a fair representation of his opponents' views, but he does not. The only mention of modern theistic views on the soul is a brief section (pp49-53) about what he calls "Sophisticated Conciliationism", where he mentions physicists Ian Arbour and John Polkinghorne (whose main contributions were in completely irrelevant areas) and Nancey Murphy. Nancey Murphy's views are in fact rather close to those of Flanagan, both being nonreductive physicalists, but Flanagan ignores this and makes no mention of modern theists (e.g. MacKay, Jeeves) who support related views such as dual aspect monism.

To end with something positive, I was moved by Flanagan's personal history of how a pituitary tumour temporarily disrupted his personality and led to the break-up of his marriage, and how Buddhist meditation now contributes to his efforts to practise an ethic of universal love and compassion.

A naturalist critique of humanism
In The Problem of the Soul (2002), Owen Flanagan sets up a contrast between the perennial philosophy (or humanism) and scientific naturalism. He takes scientific naturalism to be the correct method for pursuing knowledge. He lays out this contrast in a manner that presupposes the reader has at least a basic grasp of Western philosophy. He combines sound scholarship with entertaining and sometimes personal writing styles.

Flanagan makes the traditional case against believing things without a rational warrant in his critique of religion and immorality of the soul. He argues that the persistent belief in the manifest (common) image of being in the world includes the residue of some theistic baggage, in particular, freedom of the will, conscious experience, and selfhood. The task is then how to accommodate these notions in a scientific naturalism.I will focus on just two of these for the purpose of a brief review.

The conceptual gap in consciousness studies is the problem of relating phenomenal experience (the way things feel from a first person perspective) to physical processes in the brain. For Flanagan, the challenge is to accommodate, not eliminate, subjectivity and phenomenality within scientific naturalism. Flanagan argues that a first person perspective does not entail another sort of being (e.g., spirit or mind) or any qualitative difference within being; the being of physical objects is sufficient to explain everything there is. Although Flanagan admits that mental events cannot be completely described from third person perspective, he argues that the qualitative feel of experiences is still identical to neural events:

"The nature of conscious mental events is such that despite being perfectly natural, objective states of affairs, they have as part of their essential nature their subjective feel" (89).

So the objective state of affairs (physical processes in the brain) appears to have ontological priority, since it is what produces or realizes the phenomenal experience. The subjective feel emerges somehow as part of the essential nature of certain objective states of affairs. This view is similar to John Searle's view that mental states are emergent (macro) properties of physical states of the brain (micro properties). Both views try to accommodate the subjective interiority of human reality by making it a property of the physical.But these reductionist views do not explain the qualitative differences between mental contents and physical objects located in space. How do we get from the neurons firing away to the feeling of sadness or the qualia of colors? There is still an epistemological gap between the first person description and the alleged objective process that is supposed to underwrite that description.

With regard to a critique of Cartesian freedom, Flanagan argues that what motivates a belief in free will is generally a theological commitment that sees God as holding humans accountable for what they do on earth.

"It is unimaginable to me, despite the power of the phenomenological feeling that we are agents who control what we do, that anything as strong as a conception of ourselves as finite unmoved movers would have been added to our manifest image unless we had first conceived of God and his will along these lines, and then added the view that he holds people fully accountable for what they do" (107).

So if we liberate ourselves from this theism, we should let go of this "incredible, incoherent" idea and conceive of human freedom in terms of voluntary behaviors that obey the laws of nature. Flanagan's neo-compatibilist (actions can be caused, yet voluntary) position is that voluntary action "involves the agent knowing what action she is performing and acting from reasons and desires that are her own" (113).Notice the use of the term "from." It seems to imply that reasons and desires determine me to act the way I do. Indeed, Flanagan refers to what he takes to be the standard assumption in philosophy of mind that "reasons can be causes." If I do not decide about which reasons to employ, this raises a question about just how "voluntary" voluntary actions are.

Why can't an agent choose the reasons and desires in accordance with which she will act?What is it that prevents her action from being free in the Cartesian sense of being self-caused? Flanagan stacks the deck in favor of determinism by equating deliberation and will with brain processes. Since brain processes ultimately obey chemical and physical laws, and willing, for Flanagan, is already presupposed as a brain process, willing must obey physical laws. He also employs an epistemic argument based on the limitations of our self knowledge. When I choose, I am not aware of "what causes me to deliberate and weight my options the as I do" (114).So my feeling of autonomy when I deliberate is illusory.

In the picture of the natural mind drawn by Flanagan, life experiences and genes "feed into a brain" in such a way as to form habits and virtues over time. When confronted with a morally charged situation, conscious deliberation is determined by these habits and virtues to arrive at a decision. These determining factors are not chosen by the individual.Such a claim, for Flanagan, would be "certainly false." These virtues come from a combination of biologically evolved dispositions, moral education, and cultural norms. In so far as we can be said to assent to a new norm, that assent is determined by some pre-existing disposition (reasons, desires, habits, virtues, genetic traits). On Flanagan's view, conscious deliberation is entirely parasitic on what has been established at the level of habit and virtue. In this picture, agency never transcends its past in relation to the given opportunity to decide.

There is something wrong with this model. While it is true that I cannot be aware of all of my mental processes, I can be aware of the relevant ones when faced with a moral decision.The question is whether the habits, virtues, reasons and desires I have had in the past must now determine my decision.I believe the answer is no. It simply is not necessary that I follow my instincts, habits, virtues, desires, and usual reasons.Within the constraints of my abilities and situation, I choose not only my behavior, but the values in accordance with which I will act.I can break with my former habits, even if they go against deeply ingrained feelings and beliefs.

Flanagan has loosened the grip of the perennial philosophy, only to fall into the grip of an all too dogmatic naturalism and computationalism. His complex naturalist model of deliberation has the key moves involved in deliberation happen automatically, like an information processor.Flanagan's example of voluntary action is instructive so I will quote the main scenario in full.

"Suppose a high school student has been accepted to Duke, the Harvard of the South, and Harvard, the Harvard of the North, and that she is having real trouble deciding which to choose.She can't seem to break the mental tie. Suppose we survey the state of her brain as she deliberates and we see two cell assemblies, one fighting for the Harvard of the South and one for the Harvard of the North, that are of exactly equal strength. We know she must eventually choose. If you believe in strict causal determinism you think something will eventually happen that will tip the balance, and whatever that is will itself have a set of sufficient causes that made it happen" (121).

This example is instructive. Since Flanagan has rejected the Cartesian notion of a free will, his voluntary agent cannot simply make herself the person who will go to one or the other universities. In Flanagan's world, since she has no reason to choose one university over the other, she needs a push from some cause external to her freedom.This, according to Flanagan, can come in the form of some accident, like the sun shining through the window to tip the balance in favor of Duke, which has warmer weather, or a newspaper article open on the table that suggests George W. Bush went to Harvard Business School.Either way, a new reason can then tip the balance.

The other alternative is that some indeterminate state of certain neurons in her brain tips the balance. With regard to indeterminacy at the level of neurons, I have not seen any good arguments as to how, at the level of human deliberation, this could make a difference. So let us focus on the new information scenario. Notice that the way we interpret her response to the new information should be no different from the way we interpret how the tie came to be in the first place. If the tie came about through strict determinism, so too does the tie breaker. However, if she chose to value certain features of each college and was not simply determined by predispositions, then both the tie and any new information would be subject to the same freedom.

Flanagan project of dismantling the perennial philosophy of the soul arguably goes a bit too far in the direction of naturalism. If Cartesian freedom is to be refuted, it must be done on its own merits and not as the residue of theism.Before dismissing free will out of hand, one should consider its most challenging development in Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. This developed concept of radical freedom is worthy of consideration before one falls into the grip of naturalism.

Flanagan's book is a good read and is both well researched and stimulating.His section on ecological ethics provides good arguments for an empirically based morality.But again, one leaves the text a bit uneasy about his account of phenomenal experience and free will.

For those interested in Flannagan's views on the conceptual gap in consciousness studies, Consciousness Reconsidered is a better read.There Flannagan critiques the mystereans (McGinn, Nagel) and offers a more detailed naturalistic interpretation of consciousness as an emergent property of physical events in the brain.

Good but Closed Minded
Flanagan attempts to tackle the Mind-Body problem in this book with scienitific details and deep philosophical thought.I myself enjoyed the book and found it worth reading.However, i did have one complaint.Flanagan is completely closed minded and even rude to Supernatural concepts.He openly and bluntly states that such concepts have no warrant in any field.For a man seeking a truly scientific explaination, he contradicts his own claim for the pursuit of truth with such statements.While one shouldn't expect others to agree there is no reason for such rudeness. Unfortunately, this attitude doeasn't end in the first part.Flanagan should have thought of a more professional way to state his views.

The most important philosophy book I have ever read
I won't waste too much time echoing what many other reviewers have said.This book is a rarity in philosophy in that there is nothing very abstract.Owen takes a deliberate, logical approach to his subject that makes the book easy to read and understand.One thing I think people should understand before reading is that Flanagan sets out with a purpose in mind.His scientific and logical approach can at times lead the reader to think of the book as a truly scientific inquiry, and much of it is, but Flanagan stretches his theories at times in order to pull everything together at the end.
One specific point: Flanagan calls himself a neo compatibalist, and he chastizes traditional compatibalist for essentially "changing the subject," meaning that their version of free will is different than what we normally think of as free will.I would challange Flanagan that his neo compatibalism is essentially doing the same thing to moral responsibility.Although I do think that a form of moral responsibility can fit within his naturalistic view, we cannot decieve ourselves into thinking that nothing is lost from our traditional conceptions of moral responsibility. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a book about the nature of film: about the nature of moving images, about the viewer's relation to film, and about the kinds of narrative that film is capable of presenting. It represents a very decisive break with the semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film that have dominated discussion over the past twenty years.Professor Currie provides a general theory of pictorial narration and its interpretation in both pictorial and linguistic media, and concludes with an analysis of some ways in which film narrative and literary narrative differ. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Articulation of fertile ideas on the philosophy of film
Written in 1995, Currie's Arguments are Concise, Persuasive on the topic of, generally, what is cinema.

Currie's Bibliography includes:
Carroll, Noel
Dennett, Daniel
Eco, Umberto
Lewis, David
Metz, Christian
Walton, Kendall

In college & graduate school, I have found writings on film studies, particularly those which apply psychoanalysis & semiotics, generally stodgy & often impenetrable. Even Mulvey's seminal, infamous essay on "Visual Pleasure" is hard to understand from the standpoint of a rationalist.

Currie's approach is Concise & persuasive; I think he's an analytic philosopher. He counter-argues against "film as a language," which I suppose is metaphorical at best (nevertheless, this language concept is found in many respectable film studies textbooks). His writing is accessible for college level & up; he applies findings in Cognitive Science to his arguments For the fictional film. Noel Carroll, a film studies iconoclast, embraces this book with one caveat: avant-garde films, films that are more purely visual than pictorial, are not tackled sufficiently here.

Here's a quick glimpse at the book, offered by University of Houston's Cognitive Science website.

It is highly possible to shape an advanced undergraduate course on the philosophy of film (mixed in with Philosophy of the Mind) with this book using such films as: Antonioni's "Blow-Up" Linklater's "Before Sunset" Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" Soderbergh's "The Limey" Haneke's "Cache" Bier's "Brothers" Hitchcock's "Spellbound"

Currie's next book "Arts & Minds" was released in January 2005. ... Read more

Product Description
Like a Splinter in Your Mind leads readers through the myriad of philosophical themes within the Matrix trilogy, helping them to gain a better understanding of the films and of philosophy itself.

• Offers a way into philosophy through the Matrix films.
  
• Covers thirteen of the biggest philosophical questions in thirteen self-sufficient chapters suitable for course use.
  
• Demonstrates how each of these questions is illustrated through the events and characters of the films.
  
• Considers whether sentient machines are possible, and whether we should expect them to face the same existentialist issues that we do.
  
• Familiarises readers with key issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, race and gender, existentialism, Taoism and mysticism.
  
• Includes a chapter that explains some of the technical elements of the films and confusing aspects of the plot.
  
• Also includes a Matrix glossary, and a cast of characters and their related symbolism.

Customer Reviews (21)

For all Splintered Minds
Very well written introduction to philosophy via the matrix. A must read for serious Matrix fans.

"It is time to give up your belief in material spoons."
What a fun read!

This book presents a thorough analysis of the entire Matrix saga, including the Animatrix and Enter the Matrix video game. Rather than approaching the films from one philosophical view, many contrasting opinions are presented, leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind.

I've watched the films countless times, and this book still made me look at the Matrix in a way I never had before. Still, this book manages to provoke a chuckle here and there, rather than taking itself too seriously. And that's the great thing about this book. It's far from dull, nothing like a textbook. And when I read it, I could tell that Matt Lawrence is a genuine fan of the series, not just a professor looking to cash in on the Wachowskis' success. I could feel his excitement for the subject matter, which added to my excitement.

One of the highlights of this book is its character list and glossary, both of which are very informative. I knew these films were loaded with symbolism, but these passages opened my eyes to some intriguing, subtle details that, otherwise, would have gone unnoticed.

If you're a Matrix buff, this is definitely the book to get. However, it may be a little dense for casual fans or those who wish to simply understand the plot elements.

This book can only show you the door. You must be the one to walk through it.

Like A Splinter In Your Mind Review
The book, Like a Splinter in Your Mind, is a great read for anyone who enjoys The Matrix trilogy and is interested in understanding additional backstory and clarifying a few of the confusing concepts found in the films.For example: why don't the machines just kill all the humans instead of plug them into the Matrix, what kind of philosophy Morpheus, the Oracle, Neo, and the Merovingian believe in, why Neo can do what he does, etc.The philosophy presented will embellish the reader's understanding of The Matrix trilogy, and lend relevance to the philosophy which exists in our every day lives.It's an awesome book.

Philosophy 101 revisited
This is really a great philosophy 101 book that tries to link examples to the three matrix movies, animatrix video and enter the matrix game.It does this very well but asside from the very excellent glossary and cast of characters which gives you the symbolism of names used down to what agent smith's car license plate "IS 5416" means, this is first of all a philosophy book.You will find all views on current philosophy, dualism determinism, etc etc discussed and defined.It's really great stuff and they try to make it as far removed from a college course as possible by going back to the matrix once in a while to give examples.I really liked it and learned a lot of things i missed back in college phil 101 that have pointed me to new books and ideas.

Although i haven't read these other books, it seems a trend now to link movies or tv shows to a book about philosophy.I've seen the tv show LOST and even "Battlestar Galactica" published as a "the philosophy of...".I have a feeling many of these books will also go over the same basic philosophy principles and try to make them stick to the show/ movie for better or worse.

Unbelievable
THis book dives right into the Philisophical side of the Matrix and the ideas behind the Matirx. This book also goes over writings used to help understand other points about Philosophy. ... Read more

Product Description
How can the human mind represent the external world? What is is thought, and can it be studied scientifically? Does it help to think of the mind as a kind of machine?

Tim Crane sets out to answer questions like these in a lively and straightforward way, presuming no prior knowledge of philosophy or related disciplines. Since its first publication in 1995, The Mechanical Mind has introduced thousands of people to some of the most important ideas in contemporary philosophy of mind. Tim Crane explains some fundamental ideas that cut across philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science: what the mind-body problem is; what a computer is and how it works; what thoughts are and how computers and minds might have them. He examines different models of the mind from dualist to eliminativist, and questions whether there can be thought without language and whether the mind is subject to the same causal lsaws as natural phenomena. The result is a fascinating exploration of the theories and arguments surrounding the notions of thought and representation.

The edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes a new chapter on consciousness and new sections on modularity and evolutionary psychology. There are also guides for further reading, a chronology and a new glossary of terms such as mentalese, connectionism and the homonculus fallacy. The Mechanical Mind is accessible to the general reader as well as students, and anyone interested in the mechanism of our minds. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Intro Text
If you're a casual reader looking for bold explorations of the mysteries of consciousness, etc., then you should probably look elsewhere.

This, however, is a very useful and clear text concerning the mind as information processor view (also known as the computational/representational theory of mind) that tends to dominate academic discussion.A good introduction to the 'cognitivist' paradigm and the philosophical issues that arise within it.

The book avoids/evades most metaphysical issues, but achieves what it sets out to do very well.

somewhat dry
The author takes a combination platter approach
to the material giving a somewhat bland result.
The subject matter is rather familiar and the best
thing about the book is the suggested readings
which follow each chapter. ... Read more

Product Description
12 lectures on 6 cassettes, housed in a clamshell case, with booklet ... Read more

Product Description
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind provides a lively and accessible introduction to all the main themes and arguments currently being debated in this area. The book examines and criticizes four major theories of mind: Dualism, Mind/Brain Identity, Behaviourism and Functionalism.

It argues that while consciousness and our mental lives depend upon physical processes in the brain, they are not reducible to those processes. The differences between mental and physical states, mind/body causality, the problem of other minds, and personal identity are also explored in full.

The second edition of this well respected text has been revised to include a new chapter which explores Aristotle’s philosophy of psychology and mind. It also includes new material on the Turing test and has been expanded and updated throughout.

The book is designed to help students think for themselves about all the issues identified above, and contains exercises throughout the text to stimulate and challenge the reader. Objectives are clearly set out at the start of every chapter to enable students to check their understanding as they proceed, and each chapter ends with questions to consider. There are discussions of the most cited contemporary writers in the field, so that the reader can gain a rounded perspective of the debates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not about the book
If you are considering buying a used Hardcover copy of this first edition; be aware that the seller Sweethomeliquid2 is advertising NEW for $6 under the wrong ISBN. The copy I received was new and in perfectly new condition; however it was a Paperback that I received. I have used sweethomeliquid many times and they have always been very reliable. For $6 I can't really complain, of all the choices between - first & second editions - hardcover or paperback - new or used - available at the time, I would have bought the new paperback first edition from sweethomeliquid2 that I got. This is just a heads up for others who might be more miffed. ... Read more