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...
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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...
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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...
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November 18, 1993
Charles Davis
In a much-noticed Aquinas Lecture, given at Marquette University in 1968, Bernard Lonergan discussed the shift of attention from the metaphysics of the soul to the analysis of the subject. The metaphysics of the soul is a totally objective account of the constituents of human nature, applying universally to all human beings, whatever may be their state of mind or degree of development. The...
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January 29, 1993
Robert B. Pippin
54 citations
WHAT IS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT? Beginning around the summer of 1802, Hegel began to prepare his friends and students for the immanent publication of his own “system” or at least a part of it. For a young professor out to make his mark, this was apparently the thing to do in those heady days in the university city of Jena, which had already seen several of Fichte's “Doctrines of Knowledge”...
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August 28, 1992
Oliver Leaman
14 citations
Islamic philosophy makes a sharp distinction between different categories of believers. Some, and indeed most, believers follow Islam in an unquestioning and natural manner. They adhere to the legal requirements of the religion, carry out the basic rules concerning worship, pilgrimage, charity and so on, and generally behave as orthodox and devout Muslims. Some are more devout than others, and...
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August 28, 1992
Thomas R. Flynn
9 citations
The purpose of this essay is to reflect on Sartre as a philosopher of the imagination in order better to describe and assess his approach to the philosophy of history. Sartre was, of course, an existentialist and we shall consider what it means to formulate an “existentialist” philosophy of history. But his was equally a philosophy of consciousness and the paradigm of consciousness for him was...
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August 28, 1992
Michael McGhee
1 citation
In this paper I continue an enterprise begun in earlier work (McGhee, 1988, 1989) in which I attempt to naturalize into a western philosophical context concepts that derive from the practice of Buddhist meditation. In particular I shall try to make use of the notion of samādhi (sometimes translated as ‘concentration’) and vipassanā or insight. I should stress that I make no attempt at a...
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March 19, 1992
Fausto Massimini, Modesto Carli, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
1 citation
Unlike somatic medicine, psychology has failed to develop an adequate model of the healthy individual and particularly of the range of variations of normal experience in daily life. Consequently, psychiatry lacks what physiology contributes to pathology in medical sciences. The task of studying normal consciousness should be the concern of psychology, so that a theoretical discipline could...
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January 31, 1992
Pierre-Yves Pétillon
18 citations
In the meantime, in between time … — Popular song Where have you been in the uterim? — Finnegans Wake I t is, to use a highly typical Pynchon word, rather “odd” that The Crying of Lot 49, a slim novella which, because he was short of cash, Thomas Pynchon dashed off for Esquire on time borrowed from a long haul of erecting the vast cathedral of Gravity's Rainbow , should have become an overnight...
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August 30, 1991
Stephen R. L. Clark, Kathleen V. Wilkes
Back Before Descartes Cartesian accounts of the mental make it axiomatic that consciousness is transparent: what I feel, I know I feel, however many errors I may make about its cause. ‘I’ names a simple, unextended, irreducible substance, created ex nihilo or eternally existent, and only associated with the complete, extended, dissoluble substance or pretend-substance that is ‘my’ body by...
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May 25, 1990
Barbara G. Myerhoff
38 citations
What do we mean by transformation in consciousness? Everyday usage suggests a transformation is a major and lasting change: in structure, appearance, character or function. One becomes something else, and since we are emphasizing consciousness, we must add, one has an altered state of consciousness, a new perception of oneself or one's socio/physical world, a conversion in awareness, belief,...
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August 26, 1988
Fausto Massimini, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Antonella Delle Fave
126 citations
This chapter is about the role of the flow experience in the construction and complexification of the self, and, in a broader sense, its role in biological and cultural evolution. Some of the theoretical assumptions underlying this relationship have already been developed elsewhere (e.g., Massimini & Calegari 1979; Massimini 1982; Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini 1985; Csikszentmihalyi 1987b). The...
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August 26, 1988
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
77 citations
At the end of this volume, it is time to assess the cumulative implications of the assembled evidence. What has been learned about flow in the 10 or so years since the model was first presented? The main conclusions, derived from a variety of different studies, seem rather robust. In the first place, it is clear that the flow experience is recognized as a phenomenological reality by people of...
Cambridge University Press eBooks
August 26, 1988
Anne J. Wells
66 citations
One of the most intriguing aspects of flow theory concerns the effects of the experience on the sense of self. On the one hand, a person in flow is supposed to be unself-conscious. On the other hand, the self is said to emerge strengthened from the experience (Csikszentmihalyi & Graef 1980; Csikszentmihalyi 1982a, 1985b). Presumably, even though the self need not be in the focus of awareness...