De La Mettrie's Ghost

De La Mettrie's Ghost PDF Author: Chris Nunn
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0230552218
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book is about how we make choices. It is a compelling analysis of the nature of free will, drawing together evidence from chemistry, literature, politics, history and beyond. Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine. Nunn concludes that a mechanistic view of the human brain, though once fruitful, is now moribund. He proposes a powerful alternative: that stories, recorded in our memories throughout life, are the mediators of free choice. Nunn demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the latest brain-imaging results and our seemingly contradictory intuition about decision making and responsibility.

De La Mettrie's Ghost

De La Mettrie's Ghost PDF Author: Chris Nunn
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0230552218
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
This book is about how we make choices. It is a compelling analysis of the nature of free will, drawing together evidence from chemistry, literature, politics, history and beyond. Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine. Nunn concludes that a mechanistic view of the human brain, though once fruitful, is now moribund. He proposes a powerful alternative: that stories, recorded in our memories throughout life, are the mediators of free choice. Nunn demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the latest brain-imaging results and our seemingly contradictory intuition about decision making and responsibility.

The Ghost Dimension

The Ghost Dimension PDF Author: Jack Tanner
Publisher: Magus Books
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
In the 17th century, an English philosopher proposed the existence of a fourth dimension, inhabited by spirits. This same philosopher was an immense influence on Isaac Newton. Leibniz accused Newton of believing in the occult, citing gravity as a theory of which any magician would be proud. God is the essential ingredient in Newton's famous theory of gravity. They don't teach you that in science class! John Maynard Keynes said of Newton, "He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage." Has science since Newton buried the spiritual dimension that Newton believed essential to any rational explanation of reality?! Can it be resurrected?

The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers

The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers PDF Author: Heiner F. Klemme
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474255981
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 880

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Book Description
The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a landmark work. Covering one of the most innovative centuries for philosophical investigation, it features more than 650 entries on the eighteenth-century philosophers, theologians, jurists, physicians, scholars, writers, literary critics and historians whose work has had lasting philosophical significance. Alongside well-known German philosophers of that era-Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel-the Dictionary provides rare insights into the lives and minds of lesser-known individuals who influenced the shape of philosophy. Each entry discusses a particular philosopher's life, contributions to the world of thought, and later influences, focusing not only on their most important published writings, but on relevant minor works as well. Bibliographical references to primary and secondary source material are included at the end of entries to encourage further reading, while extensive cross-referencing allows comparisons to be easily made between different thinkers' ideas and practices. For anyone looking to understand more about the century when enlightenment thinking arrived in Germany and established conceits were challenged, The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a valuable, unparalleled resource.

De La Mettrie's Ghost

De La Mettrie's Ghost PDF Author: C. Nunn
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781403994967
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.

The Master and His Emissary

The Master and His Emissary PDF Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300247451
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
A new edition of the bestselling classic—published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.

Non-Representational Theory

Non-Representational Theory PDF Author:
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134162723
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description


Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change

Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change PDF Author: Christopher Shaw
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429872763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
In this book Christopher Shaw analyses how liberalism has shaped our understanding of climate change and how liberalism is legitimated in the face of a crisis for which liberalism has no answers. The language and symbolism we use to make sense of climate change arose in the post-World War II liberal institutions of the West. This language and symbolism, in neutralising the philosophical and ideological challenge climate change poses to the legitimacy of free market liberalism, has also closed off the possibility of imagining a different kind of future for humanity. The book is structured around a repurposing of the ‘guardrail’ concept, commonly used in climate science narratives to communicate the boundary between safe and dangerous climate change. Five discursive ‘guardrails’ are identified, which define a boundary between safe and dangerous ideas about how to respond to climate change. The theoretical treatment of these issues is complemented with data from interviews with opinion-formers, decision-makers and campaigners, exploring what models of human nature and political possibilities guide their approach to the politics of climate change governance. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, liberal politics, environmental communication and environmental politics and philosophy, in general.

Emotion, Place and Culture

Emotion, Place and Culture PDF Author: Mick Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317144643
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Recent years have witnessed a rapid rise in engagement with emotion and affect across a broad range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, with geographers among others making a significant contribution by examining the emotional intersections between people and places. Building on the achievements of Emotional Geographies (2005), the editors have brought together leading scholars such as Nigel Thrift, Alphonso Lingis and Frances Dyson as well as young, up and coming academics from a diverse range of disciplines to investigate feelings and affect in various spatial and social contexts, environments and landscapes. The book is divided into five sections covering the themes of remembering, understanding, mourning, belonging, and enchanting.

Who Was Mrs Willett?

Who Was Mrs Willett? PDF Author: Chris Nunn
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845404130
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Here is an account of mentality and human experience, written for a multi-disciplinary readership. The focus is on how mind, consciousness and selves inter-relate, extending into exploration of ideas about the nature of awareness and a search for relevant evidence. 'Consciousness studies' has reached something of a crossroads nowadays. Computational approaches to mind and 'quantum consciousness' theories, have not lived up to early hopes. Neuroscience has made huge strides in the last few years, but is still nowhere near able to account for the existence of consciousness itself - as opposed to being able to explain how some of its content gets there. Philosophically, there is lack of consensus over both the nature of consciousness and what questions we should be asking about it. Chris Nunn's book surveys the current situation and argues that, as far as 'mind' is concerned, we need to take the overall dynamics into consideration, which include genetic, environmental and social factors along with neurology. He emphasizes the close links that exist between memory, experience and personhood. What emerges most strongly from this account is that answers to questions about the nature of consciousness are likely to depend on achieving a better understanding of the physics of time.

The Countess of Rudolstadt

The Countess of Rudolstadt PDF Author: George Sand
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : French fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description