University of Toronto quarterly
April 1, 2010
Michael Lambek
What does it mean to know one's own mind, to make up one's mind, or to be of two minds? The paper explores some of the assumptions Westerners make about mind and confronts them with elements from the ethnography of spirit possession among Malagasy speakers. It challenges the assumption that a unified state of mind, exemplified by pure reason as opposed to passion, is the necessary basis for...
Philosophical Psychology
April 1, 2010
Erik C. Banks
43 citations
Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion...
Counseling and Values
April 1, 2010
Craig S. Cashwell, Harriet L. Glosoff, Chereé Hammond
44 citations
The phenomenon of spiritual bypass has received limited attention in the transpersonal psychology and counseling literature and has not been subjected to empirical inquiry. This study examines the phenomenon of spiritual bypass by considering how spirituality, mindfulness, alexithymia (emotional restrictiveness), and narcissism work together to influence depression and anxiety among college...
Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio
March 30, 2010
Silvano Zipoli Caiani
Over the last few decades the body has been ignored in theories of mind. Recently, however, several conceptions concerning the way the body shapes the mind have been developed (LAKOFF 1987; VARELA, THOMSON, & ROSCH 1991; HURLEY 1998; BARSALOU 1999; NOA 2004; THOMSON 2007). Common among these theories is the idea that the body plays a critical role in shaping our experiential and cognitive life....
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Bernard W. Kobes
AbstractDualist themes in Burge's philosophy of mind are gathered and articulated. Burge's anti-individualism yields an argument against token-identity theory; his reflections on mental causation have a dualist flavor; and he doubts that the relation of mental events to neural events is one of composition or constitution. This chapter argues that compositional materialism about representational...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Laurence BonJour
AbstractThis chapter argues that there are no compelling arguments in favor of, and very powerful, seemingly unanswerable objections to, materialism in the philosophy of mind. The arguments for materialism that appeal to (a) the ‘principle’ of causal closure and (b) the doctrine of naturalism are argued to rest entirely on undefended assumptions. The central objection that materialist views...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
George Bealer
AbstractThis chapter targets functionalism as the most cogent form of contemporary materialism. In particular, it takes aim at ‘ontic’ or reductive functionalism: a theory that attempts to specify the essences of mental states, in a non-circular fashion, by means of physicalistic functional definitions (i.e., by means of the Ramsification of causal theories of the mind). The chapter points out...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
William Hasker
AbstractWe have a conception of the human person as constituted in part by a self, a unified, coherent center of consciousness which is a rational agent, capable of being responsive, and responsible, to other agents. There are, however, empirical phenomena — in particular, commissurotomy and multiple personality syndrome — that seem to threaten this unity both theoretically and practically. As...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Terry Horgan
AbstractThis chapter formulates and motivates the current favored articulation of the metaphysical doctrine of materialism. It describes an alternative metaphysical position called minimal emergentism, which has two versions; and then contrasts it with stronger kinds of emergentism. Minimal emergentism posits certain inter-level necessitation relations — either nomically necessary connections,...
NeuroQuantology
March 17, 2010
Evgeny Ivanov
The original approach to the decision of a mind-body problem which basis on philosophically rethought of H. Everett’s multiworld interpretation of quantum mechanics and M. Mensky's idea about identity of consciousness with process of selection of quantum alternatives is offered. The explanation of visible psychophysical interaction and processes of a reduction of wave function in the quantum...