This chapter extends biogenetic structural theory to a consideration of the biopsychological principles underlying higher phases of consciousness, particularly those attained by the systematic exploration of consciousness called contemplation. The concepts of psychic energy, flow, centeredness, energy circulation, and dreambody are explored as presented in various mystical traditions, and a model of the underlying neurophysiology is presented in terms of ergotropic-trophotropic tuning. The psychophysiology of various forms of meditation together with emergent peak experiences is examined and integrated into the ergotropic-trophotropic (...) tuning model. Structural invariance of ergotropic-trophotropic tuning as well as invariant aspects of contemplation across different cultures and associated with different symbol systems is considered. Finally the nature and implications of Void Consciousness, God Consciousness, or Abssolute Unitary Being are examined. (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text focuses on the intersection between Deleuzian philosophy and the arts.

In summary, the usual elements of a typical health care ethics consultation note might reasonably accommodate the needs and expectations of relevant parties, and would therefore include: 1. identification of the relevant ethical issues, questions, or dilemmas; 2. reference to any relevant facts--medical, nursing, social, psychological, spiritual, legal, political, etc.; 3. a prioritized list of recommendations to improve coordinated care; 4. a clear and concise articulation of relevant arguments, wtih specific reference to the list of recommendations as well as to (...) the institution's overall ethos; 5. a contextual statement, identifying the perceived degree of consensus or support for the recommendations and conclusions, as well as any inherent agendas. (shrink)

A brief biographical entry on Charles Morris in the Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics.

A brief biographical entry on Charles Peirce in the Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics.

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

This article is a bibliographical entry in the Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics.

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Eugenics is bringing misunderstandings linked to eugenism as socio-political movement.Eugenism is the political movement, which estimated that eugenics could ameliorate the qualities of “race”. This idea, that the gene pool of the human species could be ameliorated, is not new and is even a part of the history of our nations. It is on the United States that, between 1900 and 1930, eugenism found its first socio-political successes.Eugenism has roots in the conservative movements of the 19th century and will condemn (...) itself by the Nazi exactions. Indeed, it is abnormal that a political movement, or even nations, would impose laws with genetical implications: this eugenism must be totally rejected. However, we must continue to favour individual and free kinds of eugenics, based on precise studies and objective information.It seems normal to human beings, in his struggle against natural forces, to use his reproductive capacities on a non-animal way: a plannified and intentional reproduction must be natural to rational human beings. Not to allow this rule consists to start from theological opinions, such as the idea that the sexual act not desiring to be procreative consists in a refusal of a divine principle. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, William James was America's most widely read philosopher. In addition to being one of the founders of pragmatism, however, he was also a leading psychologist and author of the seminal work, The Principles of Psychology. While scholars argue that James withdrew from the study of psychology after 1890, Eugene Taylor demonstrates convincingly that James remained preeminently a psychologist until his death in 1910.Taylor details James's contributions to experimental psychopathology, psychical research, and the (...) psychology of religion. Moreover, Taylor's work shows that out of his scientific study of consciousness, James formulated a sophisticated metaphysics of radical empiricism. In light of historical developments in psychology, as well as the current philosophic implications of the neuroscience revolution related to the biology of consciousness, Taylor argues that both the subject matter of James's investigations and his metaphysics of radical empiricism are just as important for psychology today as James believed they were in his own time.This book represents a major new contribution both to James scholarship and to the history of American psychology. Although philosophers have analyzed radical empiricism, this book is the first to trace the development of radical empiricism as a metaphysics addressed to psychologists. It is also the first to show James's involvement in depth-psychology and psychotherapeutics and to trace historical continuity between James's work on consciousness and subsequent developments in psychoanalysis, personality theory, and humanistic psychology. (shrink)

Western analytic philosophers tend to confine themselves almost exclusively to a discussion of William James’s pragmatism, when thirty years ago John McDermott determined that the core of James’s metaphysics was actually radical empiricism. James, in fact, developed a tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism, which constituted the actualization of his philosophical legacy inherited through Henry James Sr’s Swedenborgianism and Ralph Walled Emerson’s transcendentalism, both of which he opposed, which he tempered through his contacts with Charles Sanders Pierce, (...) Chancy Wright, and others in the early years of the Metaphysical Club, until his own ideas began to come to maturity by the late 1890s. It is conjectured that, seeing as how James frequently built some of his major ideas by retailing the more cryptic philosophy of Peirce, the tripartite nature of James’s metaphysics was an attempt to model Peirce’s three categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. The international success of pragmatism, however, prevented James from articulating the full nature of his philosophy, which he tried to do in the closing decade of his life, but alas, he left us with only an unfinished arch. There is enough there, however, to state emphatically that if modern psychologists and philosophers persist in talking only about James’s pragmatism without reference to pluralism and radical empiricism, they are not really talking about William James. (shrink)

Charles Peirce claimed that logically "every true universal, every continuum, is a living and conscious being." Such a claim is precisely what hunter-gatherers believe: a world-view depicted as animism. Suppose animism represents a sophisticated world-view, ineradicably embodied in our physical bodies, and that Peirce's philosophy points toward a new kind of civilization, inclusive of what I term animate mind. We are wired to marvel in nature, and this reverencing attunement does not require a concept of God. Marveling in nature (...) proves to be not only a motive source of human evolution, but key to continued development. (shrink)

Biologists are faced two questions which are new in their fields. How far to go in genetical research? How should new findings be applied?Theoretically, the answers are not so difficult to find. Research should not be halted or even slowed down. On which basis should we limit knowledge, it would even be on topics such as cancer, AIDS, ageing,…, a crime against humanity not to develop research. Also theoretically, findings would be applied for the good of humanity and for a (...) better health. But, negative consequences can, however, be expected if applications of research, and research itself, serves interests of private companies or of individuals. We cannot deny the advantages of the HGP which are considerable indeed in discovering, isolating, describing, sequencing genes, using in genie therapy,…, developing a better predictive medicine.But rules, and probably laws, will have to be developed to protect the confidentiality of genetical information, the risk being present that insurance companies or employers would use it to discriminate the individuals. People can not be defined only by their genomes. Individuals or populations cannot be stigmatised or ostracised by their genes. (shrink)

This paper explores the connection between supererogation and the integrity of ethical agents. It argues two theses: there is a generally unrecognized but crucial social dimension to the moral integrity of individuals which challenges individual ideals and encourages supererogation; the social dimension of integrity, however, must have limits that preserve the individuals's integrity. The concept of integrity is explored through recent works by Christine Korsgaard, Charles Taylor, and Susan Babbitt. A life of integrity is in part a life whereby (...) one 'lives up to' one's own deeply held values. Yet, as one seeks to transcend the realm of the morally customary or the dutiful, one must check one's progress not only against one's own ideals but against the ideals and behavior of the ethical community. To answer affirmatively to one's own ideals is to hear the call of integrity both from within oneself and from without. However, by being free to hear, the freedom to close one's ears inevitably will arise. Only actions displaying such freedom can be actions of moral integrity. Since supererogatory actions are always left to an agent's discretion-that is, are fully optional-they show in paradigmatic fashion the integrity of moral agents. While an ethic of integrity and supererogation provides challenges to members of an ethical community by encouraging them continually to reevaluate their actions and character in reference to postulated ideals, it also leads us to be quite wary of judging individual's moral motives from the outside. A passage by Jonathan Kozol is cited that suggests our society routinely demands supererogatory action from its poorest members. This is illegitimate since they live in conditions that alienate rather than integrate them both with themselves and with the rest of the community. (shrink)

By comparing some founding concepts underlying developing interest in the role of signs and symbols in social life, such as the nature of the sign in Charles Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure and in Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead, and then exploring recent developments in structuralism and symbolic interactionism, a critical appraisal of their theories of meaning is made in the context of an emerging semiotic sociology.

In this radical critique of contemporary social theory, Eugene Halton argues that both modernism and postmodernism are damaged philosophies whose acceptance of the myths of the mind/body dichotomy make them incapable of solving our social dilemmas. Claiming that human beings should be understood as far more than simply a form of knowledge, social construction, or contingent difference, Halton argues that contemporary thought has lost touch with the spontaneous passions—or enchantment—of life. Exploring neglected works in twentieth century social thought and (...) philosophy—particularly the writings of Lewis Mumford and Charles Peirce—as well as the work of contemporary writers such as Vaclav Havel, Maya Angelou, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, and Victor Turner, Halton argues that reason is dependent upon nonrational forces—including sentiment, instinct, conjecture, imagination, and experience. We must, he argues, frame our questions in a way which encompasses both enchantment and critical reason, and he offers an outline here for doing so. A passionate plea for a fundamental reexamination of the entrenched assumptions of the modern era, this book deals with issues of vital concern to modern societies and should be read by scholars across disciplines. Robert Bellah: "This is an original, incisive, and badly needed book. In prose as vigorous as his argument, Halton addresses issues urgent in many disciplines, as well as in our common culture." "Halton takes the 'ghost in the machine' as a dominant defining metaphor for modern thought and life, and criticizes it with gusto, wit, wide reading, and philosophical acumen."—Robert J. Mulvaney, _Review of Metaphysics_. (shrink)

The chapter discusses the following quotation from Charles Peirce: "One of these days, perhaps, there will come a writer of opinions less humdrum than those of Dr. (Alfred Russel) Wallace, and less in awe of the learned and official world...who will argue, like a new Bernard Mandeville, that man is but a degenerate monkey, with a paranoic talent for self-satisfaction, no matter what scrapes he may get himself into, calling them 'civilization,' and who, in place of the unerring instincts (...) of other races, has an unhappy faculty for occupying himself with words and abstractions, and for going wrong in a hundred ways before he is driven, willy-nilly, into the right one. Dr. Wallace would condemn such an extravagant paradoxer." Charles Peirce, 1901 -/- . (shrink)

In this study, Charles M. Sherover argues that there is a single, substantial line of development that can be traced from the work of Leibniz through Kant and Royce to Heidegger. Sherover traces a movement from deep within the roots of German idealism through Royce's insights into American pragmatism to the ethical ramifications of Heidegger's existential phenomenology, and then provides an analysis of the neglected ethical and political implications of Heidegger's Being and Time. The essays lead finally to Sherover's (...) own view of the self as a member of a moral and political community. Charles M. Sherover is Professor Emeritus of philosophy, Hunter College, City University of New York. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Heidegger, Kant and Time and Time, Freedom and the Common Good. Gregory R. Johnson is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pacific School of Religion. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Sherover combines solid and original scholarship with well-argued conclusions of his own, seeking to lead us in the direction of a higher and fuller mode of authentic being in the world. This collection of essays is an excellent addition to the series, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, edited by Jude P. Dougherty." -- Eugene Thomas Long, Review of Metaphysics. (shrink)

The tendency in semiotics toward unnecessary abstractionism and antinaturalism is criticized. More broadly, a transformation is proposed from abstractionism, with its fetishism of signs, to an animism of signs in which the imagination and the signs it gives birth to not only reconnect with the biocultural heritage, but also animate an idea of culture as involving living purpose, not simply inert code. See the revised version of this chapter in my book, Meaning and Modernity.

Pragmatism is the distinctive contribution of American thought to philosophy. It is a movement that attracted much attention in the early part of the twentieth-century, went into decline, and reemerged in the last part of the century. Part of the difficulty in defining pragmatism is that misconceptions of what pragmatism means have abounded since its beginning, and continue in today’s “neopragmatism.”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 46-58 [Access article in PDF] In Defense of Trimming Eugene Goodheart I In The Education of Henry Adams, Adams disparages a class of English politicians as "trimmers." They are "the political economist, the anti-slavery and doctrinaire class, the followers of Tocqueville, and of John Stuart Mill. As a class, they were timid--and with good reason--and timidity, which is high wisdom in philosophy, sicklies (...) the whole cast of thought in action." 1 Timidity in action, but high wisdom in philosophy. Adams's ambivalent characterization is, relatively speaking, kind to the trimmer, for in the prevailing view he has a reputation for cowardice, lack of integrity, unprincipled behavior. Dante did not know the word, but the "neutrals" (in Sinclair's translation) whom the poet consigns to limbo have been retroactively called trimmers. Virgil regards them as beneath contempt: "Let us not talk of them; but look thou and pass." Sinclair explains why: "These innumerable seekers of safety first, and last, who take no risk either of suffering in a good cause or of scandal in a bad one, are here manifestly, nakedly, that which they were in life, the waste and rubbish of the universe, of no account to the world, unfit for Heaven and barely admitted to Hell. They have no need to die, for they 'never were alive'. They follow still, as they have always done, a meaningless, shifting banner that never stands for anything because it never stands at all, a cause which is no cause but the changing magnet of the day. Their pains are paltry and their tears and blood mere food for worms." 2The dictionary defines trimming as the "modif[ication] of one's attitude in order to stand well with opposite parties; also to accommodate oneself to the mood of the times," and gives 1685 as the date of provenance. By the late nineteenth century trimming becomes opportunism: [End Page 46] "to modify according to expediency." So it was something of a surprise to find a defense of trimming in Macaulay's famous History of England in his eulogy of one of Charles the Second's ministers, Viscount Halifax (Charles Savile). "Halifax," we learn, "was a trimmer on principle. He was also a trimmer by the constitution of his head and his heart." Macaulay sums up Halifax's defense in his essay "The Character of a Trimmer." "Everything good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice." Behind trimming lies Aristotle's golden mean.What of the character of the trimmer? Macaulay provides an admirable and admiring portrait of Halifax. "His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections; his taste refined, his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration." Charming and agreeable, but where is the integrity or courage, attributes that we associate with character? He had nothing in common with those who fly from extreme to extreme, and regard the party which they have deserted with an animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between the hostile divisions of the community.... The party to which he at any moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent associates, and was always in friendly relations with his moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting honor it must be mentioned that he attempted to save those victims whose fate... (shrink)

The great divide of modern thought is whether mind is real or naught. The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied understanding of semiosis as the bridge between mind and matter, and (...) human biology and culture. I begin by first delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirce’s alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as trans-action, then consider the self-transcending nature of the human body-mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpect-edly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting-gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged. (shrink)

In the words of Charles Peirce from 1901, “man is but a degenerate monkey, with a paranoic talent for self-satisfaction, no matter what scrapes he may get himself into, calling them ‘civilization…’” Peirce’s concept of degenerate monkey draws attention both to our neotenous or prolonged newborn-like nature as “degenerate” in the mathematical sense of a genetic falling away from more mature genomes of other primates, and also to our monkeying around with the long evolutionary narrative of foraging, through the (...) advent of agriculture, settlement, and civilization. -/- Homo sapiens, man the knower, is the way we humans like to distinguish ourselves from the rest of nature. But if we consider ourselves as degenerate monkeys, perhaps homo errans, man the blunderer, would have been a better term, calling attention to our softened instinctive intelligence, in contrast to the “unerring instincts of other races,” as Peirce put it. -/- I take Peirce’s term “degenerate monkey” as not limited to moderns, but applicable to homo sapiens sapiens, anatomically modern humans, generally. Considering humans as degenerate monkeys is a key to understanding human development, in my view, precisely because we need to attune ourselves to the instinctive intelligence of the environment, drawing its intelligence into our dematured, blundering selves through abductive inference, and therein finding our maturity. Without that attunement to the Others, monkey goes mad, monkeying in its mirror of itself, fatally fixated, like Narcissus, and with similar results: planet of the degenerate monkeys, monkeying to mayhem. -/- As Cornelius, the ape archaeologist and historian in The Planet of the Apes stated it, reading from the sacred scrolls: “Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.” Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it: “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” . (shrink)