78 papers in the library · 2,060 citations · publishing 1988-2026
Cambridge University Press eBooks December 21, 2006 Kate Miriam Loewenthal
Definitions and causes of dissociation and dissociative personality disorder Trances and possession states are sometimes thought of as dissociative. Are they? Do religious and cultural factors contribute to dissociative states and disorders? Eric had suffered serious abuse as a child, and in psychotherapy began to reveal different personalities: ‘quiet, middle-aged Dwight, the hysterically...
Cambridge University Press eBooks May 27, 2004 Wayne Hall, Louisa Degenhardt 27 citations
There are good reasons to be concerned about the possibility that cannabis use may be a cause of psychotic disorders. Psychoses are serious and disabling disorders (Bromet et al. , 1995). Cannabis is widely used during late adolescence in many developed societies (Hall et al. , 1999), and high doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the psychoactive substance in cannabis – have been reported to...
Cambridge University Press eBooks March 29, 2004 William S. Robinson 108 citations
William S. Robinson has for many years written insightfully about the mind-body problem. In Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness he focuses on sensory experience (e.g., pain, afterimages) and perception qualities such as colours, sounds and odours to present a dualistic view of the mind, called Qualitative Event Realism, that goes against the dominant materialist views. This theory is...
Cambridge University Press eBooks September 28, 2000 Peter Carruthers 414 citations
How can phenomenal consciousness exist as an integral part of a physical universe? How can the technicolour phenomenology of our inner lives be created out of the complex neural activities of our brains? Many have despaired of finding answers to these questions; and many have claimed that human consciousness is inherently mysterious. Peter Carruthers argues, on the contrary, that the subjective...
Cambridge University Press eBooks August 13, 1996 Sara Rappe 46 citations
Plotinus anticipates Descartes in arguing both that the soul as subject of perception cannot be an extended substance, as well as in arguing that the mind necessarily knows itself. Like Descartes, Plotinus also invokes an introspective or subjective stance within his dialectical procedure. Methodologically, it will be seen, Plotinus shares along with Descartes in a tradition of philosophy of...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes 827 citations
[Dedicatory letter to the Sorbonne] To those most learned and distinguished men, the Dean and Doctors of the sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris, from Rene Descartes. I have a very good reason for offering this book to you, and I am confident that you will have an equally good reason for giving it your protection once you understand the principle behind my undertaking; so much so, that my best...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes 4 citations
It remains for me to examine whether material things exist. And at least I now know they are capable of existing, in so far as they are the subject-matter of pure mathematics, since I perceive them clearly and distinctly. For there is no doubt that God is capable of creating everything that I am capable of perceiving in this manner; and I have never judged that something could not be made by...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes 2 citations
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that 1 had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes
You conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist , is true whenever it is put forward by you or conceived in your mind. But I do not see that you needed all this apparatus, when on other grounds you were certain, and it was true, that you existed. You could have made the same inference from any one of your other actions, since it is known by the natural light that whatever acts exists. [ Fifth...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes
There are many matters which remain to be investigated concerning the attributes of God and the nature of myself, or my mind; and perhaps I shall take these up at another time. But now that I have seen what to do and what to avoid in order to reach the truth, the most pressing task seems to be to try to escape from the doubts into which I fell a few days ago, and see whether any certainty can...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes
So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown as a result of yesterday's meditation that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top. Nevertheless I will make an effort and once more attempt the same path...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes
During these past few days I have accustomed myself to leading my mind away from the senses; and I have taken careful note of the fact that there is very little about corporeal things that is truly perceived, whereas much more is known about the human mind, and still more about God. The result is that I now have no difficulty in turning my mind away from imaginable things1 and towards things...
Cambridge University Press eBooks April 18, 1996 Rene Descartes
I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, and withdraw all my senses. I will eliminate from my thoughts all images of bodily things, or rather, since this is hardly possible, I will regard all such images as vacuous, false and worthless. I will converse with myself and scrutinize myself more deeply; and in this way I will attempt to achieve, little by little, a more intimate knowledge of myself. I...
Cambridge University Press eBooks February 23, 1996 Peter Carruthers
This chapter will set the scene for the remainder of the book, reviewing the desiderata for a theory of consciousness, and setting aside some false starts. After a brief retrospect, I shall begin by explaining and defending the distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states, before criticising two theories of the nature of this distinction which I regard as being overly simple –...
Cambridge University Press eBooks February 23, 1996 Peter Carruthers
In the present chapter I shall outline, and criticise in turn, a number of higher-order thought theories of consciousness, due to David Armstrong, David Rosenthal, Daniel Dennett, and others. Elements of these theories will then be incorporated into my own reflexive thinking theory, to be presented in the next chapter. Remember that one important strategic aim of this discussion is to see...
Cambridge University Press eBooks January 26, 1996 Graham Oppy
A simple version of an experiential ontological argument is the following: The word ‘God’ is not susceptible of an explicit definition but is a term whose meaning can only be had on the basis of religious experience. (Premise) A body of experience adequate as a basis for an understanding of this term must also be adequate as an evidential basis for assent to the proposition that God exists....
Cambridge University Press eBooks July 28, 1995 Frederick A. Olafson
The approach to the philosophy of mind that has been adopted in this book does not attempt to demarcate a special domain of mental phenomena. Instead, the fact of presence – the “There is … ” – in its several dimensions has set the agenda for this inquiry, and the progressive differentiation of the concept of what there is – that is, of the world – has replaced the analysis of states of mind...
Cambridge University Press eBooks July 28, 1995 Frederick A. Olafson
The importance of the decision one makes about where an inquiry is to begin can hardly be overestimated. That decision sets the character of the questions to be addressed; and by laying down the terms in which they are formulated, it can even carry an implicit commitment to a certain kind of answer to those questions. In the philosophy of mind especially, the terminology traditionally used to...
Cambridge University Press eBooks May 26, 1995 David Woodruff Smith 35 citations
THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN HUSSERL Husserl is often read as an idealist, more like Kant than Berkeley, or else as a dualist, with epistemological motivations like those of Descartes. It would be only fitting for Husserl then to set aside the physical world and study pure consciousness. Phenomenology, the science of consciousness, would become the whole of philosophy. However, when we look closely...
Cambridge University Press eBooks February 16, 1995 Susan J. Rasmussen
Spirits of solitude bring illnesses of the heart and soul. In song verses used in spirit possession rituals, one who is possessed is referred to obliquely through the metaphor of an orphan ( golama ), a term also used to refer to a childless camel, and a female camel who has lost her young. Asalama, the blacksmith woman whose ritual served as a prelude to my quest for understanding possession,...
Cambridge University Press eBooks February 16, 1995 Susan J. Rasmussen
There are numerous elements of reversal, or symbolic inversions, during the possession ritual that are apparent in the singing, dance motions, and ritual paraphernalia of the event. Possession songs begin only after sunset, when restrictions on behavior are relaxed, and when patients usually emerge from their tents (or, more rarely, are brought to the curing site away from their compound)....
Cambridge University Press eBooks February 16, 1995 Susan J. Rasmussen
Spirit possession rites and verbal art imagery do not occur as discrete entities, but as a continuous code. Ritual and mythology are mirror images of each other in their articulation of issues surrounding concepts of self. Both address healing in their interconnected themes of suffering and social conflict, and both draw upon the same symbolic repertoire and imagery. Both encapsulate the...
Cambridge University Press eBooks January 27, 1995 Sergio Moravia
PUTNAM: THE ATTACK ON MATERIALISM AND PHYSICALISM In the debate engaging the contemporary philosophy of mind the functionalist movement has proved to be an extremely lively, complex, and epistemologically formidable contender. Functionalism has addressed themes and issues of crucial importance to the mindbody relationship: the nature of mental states, the structure of psychological explanation,...
Cambridge University Press eBooks January 27, 1995 Sergio Moravia
THE LINGUISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE MENTAL AND ITS VARIANTS In the preceding two chapters we pointed out the unquestionable merits as well as the limits of the proposals advanced by functionalism and by the other ‘reformist’ version of the identity theory. These proposals helped ‘liberalize’ the reflection on the mbp and orient it in new and stimulating directions. They have, however, been...
Cambridge University Press eBooks September 29, 1994 Barry Windeatt 1 citation
(Chapters 44, 45, 46) ‘This hevenly boke more precyous than golde’ is the description of The Scale of Perfection in Wynkyn de Worde's edition of 1494, the first printed text of English mystical writing and published at the behest of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. The title seems ill-suited, in that imagery of a ladder (Latin: scald) is not the unifying concept, and other titles in...