continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

In this first issue of the new Erkenntnis, it seems fitting to recall at least briefly the character and the main achievements of its distinguished namesake and predecessor. The old Erkenntnis came into existence when Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap assumed the editorship of the Annalen der Philosophie and gave the journal its new title and its characteristic orientation; the first issue appeared in 1930. The journal was backed by the Gesellschaft f r Empirische Philosophie in Berlin, in which Reichenbach, (...) Walter Dubislav, and Kurt Grelling were the leading figures, and by the Verein Ernst Mach in Vienna, whose philosophical position was strongly influenced by that of the Vienna Circle; a brief account of these groups, and of several kindred schools and trends of scientific and philosophical thinking, was given by Otto Neurath in his 'Historische Anmerkungen' (Vol. 1, pp. 311-314). As Reichenbach noted in his introduction to the first issue, the editors of Erkenntnis were concerned to carry on philosophical inquiry in close consideration of the procedures and results of the various scientific disciplines: analysis of scientific research and its presuppositions was expected to yield insight into the character of all human knowledge, while at the same time, the objectivity and the progressive character of science inspired the convection that philosophy need not remain an array of conflicting 'systems', but could attain to the status of objective knowledge. As a student in Berlin and Vienna during those years, I experienced vividly the exhilarating sense, shared by those close to those two philosophical groups, of being jointly engaged in a novel and challenging intellectual enterprise in which philosophical issues were dealt with 'scientifically' and philosophical claims were amenable to support or criticism by logically rigorous arguments. The 'logical analyses' and 'rational reconstructions' set forth by adherents of this program often made extensive use of the concepts, methods, and symbolic apparatus of contemporary symbolic logic, whose importance for philosophy was the subject of Carnap's article, 'Die Alte und die Neue Logik', which appeared in the first issue.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Mahāyāna Reading of Chalcedon Christology:A Chinese Response to John KeenanPan-chiu LaiIntroductionThe Christological formula of Chalcedon, especially its use of the substantialist concepts such as ousia, hypostatsis, and so on, has long been a target of criticism in the history of Western Christian theology.1 Recently, Kwok Pui-lan, an Asian feminist theologian, has queried not only the language or way of thinking of traditional Western Christology, but also its anthropocentric (...) tendency. According to Kwok, "the majority of Asian people find it difficult to accept a savior in human form because of their cosmological sensibility."2 Kwok also thinks that the Chalcedonian expressions such as "fully God and fully man" or "two natures in one substance" are quite beyondthe understanding of the majority of the Asian people. The lengthy debate on the difference between homoousia and homoiousia is also irrelevant to the average Chinese, because there are no immediate Chinese equivalents to the terms such as "being" or "essence." According to Kwok, Buddhism, in contrast, characterizes the world as transient and impermanent without using the philosophical language such as "being" and "nonbeing."3 Kwok further notes that "The Buddhist tradition asserts that there is not one Buddha, but many Buddhas, and that everyone has the potential to attain Buddhahood. If we get away from the framework defined by a language of substance, we will not be fixated on a one-time incarnation."4 Kwok concludes that the anthropocentric perspective and the substantialist language of the Chalcedonian Creed represent a burden or obstacle that needs to be put aside. She even laments that "the church worldwide is still much under the yoke of the Chalcedonian captivity and Eurocentric theological formulations based on Western heritages."5 Kwok's comment seems to imply that the Buddhist way of thinking may offer a better alternative or a remedy to Chalcedonian Christology.In the contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue, John P. Keenan, when proposing a Mahāyāna theology, also offers a critique of Chalcedonian Christology.6 [End Page 209] Through a response to Keenan's discussion, this paper will examine these critiques and will attempt to reinterpret the Chalcedonian Christology from a Mahāyāna perspective.The Mahāyāna Theology of John KeenanIn proposing a Mahāyāna theology, Keenan assumes a Christian standpoint and tries to make use of Mahāyāna Buddhism for the service of Christianity. As Keenan himself frankly admits, his basic approach is to adopt "Mahāyāna Thought as Theologiae Ancilla, " which is the heading for the second part of his The Meaning of Christ. Keenan's strategy of arguing for a Mahāyāna theology is to identify the need of Christianity first, and then to argue in what way Mahāyāna Buddhism can help Christian theology to solve its own problems. According to Keenan's diagnosis, a fundamental problem of the Western Christian tradition is the detrimental separation of mysticism from doctrine. In his own words,It is argued here that, to date, the Christian West has been unable organically to relate its own mystic thinkers to its doctrinal, theoretical thinking. The reason for this inability was not simply, as Adolf von Harnack thought, the adoption and superimposition of Greek patterns of ontology upon the gospel. Rather it is an inability to differentiate that realm of Greek, logos-centered theory from the more primal realm of mystic awareness, an ability to understand the mind of faith in its polyvalent realms of meaning.7In the first part of the book (ch. 1-5), based on his review of the historical development of the Christian understanding of Christ, Keenan highlights the tremendous tension between the primal experience of "being in Christ" and the theoretical understanding of Christ.8 Keenan believes that the school of wisdom literature in the Old Testament has prepared the New Testament for an understanding of the meaning of Christ as God's wisdom. This wisdom comprises essentially God as Father (Abba) as well as the theology of the cross and resurrection. He further points out that early Christians, following the example of Jesus Christ, had direct experience of God as Father. Owing to the... (shrink)

Twentieth Century philosophical thought has expressed itself for the most part through two great Movements: the phenomenological and the analytical. Each movement originated in reaction against idealistic—or at least antirealistic—views of "the world". And each has collapsed back into an idealism not different in effect from that which it initially rejected. Both movements began with an appeal to meanings or concepts, regarded as objective realities capable of entering the flow of experience without loss of their objective status or of their (...) power to reveal to us an objective world as it would be if there were no subjective apprehensions of it. Both movements ended with a surrender of the objectivity of meanings and concepts in this strong sense, coming to treat them as at most more-or-less shareable components of a somehow communalized experience, but in any case incapable of revealing how things are irrespective of actual human experience. For the old Egocentric Predicament, with its "ideas" etc., is substituted a Lingocentric or Histrocentric Predicament of "language" and its elements. Hilary Putnam speaks for the current consensus: 'Internal realism says that we don't know what we are talking about when we talk about "things in themselves"' ( The Many Faces of Realism , p. 36). (shrink)

The moment of engagement in experiencing every minute detail around you is mindfulness. It is focusing and refocusing from moment to moment to expand awareness and discover inner peace. Developing this skill weaves a translucent thread of lucidity throughout the fabric of our existence. It allows the fullest and authentic expressions of self. In West, Kabat-Zinn is credited to popularize this age old Buddhist practice as a stress management intervention. An ancient Indian philosophy, older than the Buddhist concept of (...) mindfulness, holds a niche in developing mindfulness—Yoga. Unlike the modern understanding of yoga, which is limited to asanas or physical activity, ashtang yoga comprises eight steps. Each step when practiced scrupulously helps the practitioner to attain mindfulness of surroundings, body, mind and feelings. The paper offers an analysis of yoga steps to attain mindfulness. (shrink)

Six-month-old infants discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity when other extraneous variables are controlled, provided that the sets to be discriminated differ by a large ratio (8 vs. 16 but not 8 vs. 12). The capacities to represent approximate numerosity found in adult animals and humans evidently develop in human infants prior to language and symbolic counting.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Out of an Old Toy ChestMarina Warner (bio)The Soul of the ToyIn Baudelaire’s essay “La Morale du joujou,” written in l853, he remembers how the toyshop owner Madame Pancoucke, all wrapped in velvet and furs, beckoned the young Charles to choose something from her “treasure store for children.” Looking back down the years, the poet still sees in his mind’s eye the magic room overflowing with toys from floor (...) to ceiling that this “Fée du joujou” (Toy Fairy) opened to him. Without a second thought, he picked out “the most beautiful, the most expensive, the most garish, the freshest and the most bizarre of the playthings.” But his horrified mother insisted he choose another, less extravagant present, and the little Baudelaire had to resign himself and relinquish his toy.The word joujou (not jouet, the usual word for toy) is almost a pet name with a nursery ring like a “teddy” or a “dolly”; its repetition hints at baby talk and hence at playing, as when a child exchanges endearments and questions with a toy in imaginary conversations and elaborate scenarios. The toy in so many children’s games becomes part of an ongoing story and in this way initiates the first invented narratives in the child’s life.That scene of seduction, pleasure, and frustration with Mme. Pancoucke and his own mother catches Baudelaire’s lasting affection and reasoned admiration for toys. He called them “cette statuaire singulière” (this singular statuary); he was first a poet and then an art critic rather than a novelist, and as a flâneur of the boulevards and the galleries, he adopted a language of aesthetics, treating toys as an unusual form of sculpture. He recalls in pleasurable detail the miniature worlds conjured by Victorian nursery games and child’s play—from tiny “diligences” or mail coaches to detailed model furniture. But above all he muses in wonder at children’s ability to play without props or models, creating narratives, dialogue, and dramas [End Page 3] through fantasy alone: “All children talk to their toys; toys become actors in the great drama of life, reduced by the camera obscura of their small brains. Children bear witness through their games to their great faculty of abstraction and their high imaginative power. They play without playthings.”1Significantly, Baudelaire goes on to make the connection to creativity in general: “[The child’s] facility to satisfy the imagination shows the spirituality of childhood in its artistic conceptions. The plaything is the first initiation of a child to art.” Nothing will ever attain again, he says, the same degree of liveliness, or, crucially, the same intensity of presence or belief. For Baudelaire, the realization of childish make-believe cannot be regained: “Isn’t all of life found there in miniature, and much more vivid in colour, cleaner and shinier than real life?”2Yet Baudelaire’s essay lingers on the frustration that dims these vivid, shiny colors, for children, he says, also want to see the soul of a toy. He describes how they will turn about their playthings and shake them, hurl them to the ground, and often break them in their bafflement and even rage at their stubborn refusal to awaken into life. His meditation hints that at the point when make-believe fails, the vitality of toys vanishes and produces a primal encounter with mortality: “But where is the soul? It’s here that bewilderment and sadness begin.”3 The beginning of imagining stories brings with it frustration that the story is not powerful enough—it is not the real thing. In a connected prose poem entitled “Le Joujou du pauvre,” published nine years later, Baudelaire pursues this thought, as he observes an exchange between a beautiful, pampered child inside the exclusive railed park of a chateau. He has “a splendid toy, as fresh as its master, varnished, gilded, clothed in a purple dress and covered with plumes and glitter.”4 But the rich child is not interested in his doll, for on the other side of the railings a ragged street urchin shows him, in a little cage which he shakes about, a living rat—”drawn... (shrink)

The article purports to show that the preference of theôria in Nicomachean Ethics X 7–8 does not represent Aristotle's definitive conception of the best form of life, because it is compatible neither with his overall conception of happiness in the EN nor with its political framework. The critical chapters rather recall an early contribution of Aristotle's to a controversy on the best form of life in the Academy, attested to in Politics VII 2–3; its central point is resolved in Politics (...) VII 13–15 in a sketch of the life of leisure that combines both politics and philosophy. (shrink)

In December 1924 when Simone de Beauvoir almost certainly wrote her essay analyzing Claude Bernard's "Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine," a classic text in the philosophy of science, she was a 16 yr old student in a senior-level philosophy class at a private Catholic girls' school. Given the popular conception of existentialism as anti science, Beauvoir's early interest in science, reflected in her baccalaureate successes as well as her paper on Bernard, may be surprising. But her enthusiasm for (...) Bernard is unmistakable. We have identified three themes in Beauvoir's essay that reappear in her later work, including the valuing of philosophical doubt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesSalzburg, Austria, June 8–11, 2007John D’Arcy MayIs it a problem for Buddhists that what is generally regarded as religion can be profoundly different from tradition to tradition? Is it appropriate or even desirable to speak of a Buddhist “theology of religions”? Does Buddhism have its own ways, however subtle, of affirming its superiority over all else that claims the name “religion”?The European Network of Buddhist-Christian (...) Studies set out to find answers to these questions at its seventh conference, held at the splendid Catholic conference center of St. Virgil on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria.Given the demographic realities in Europe, the network has inevitably tended to be a group of Christians discussing Buddhism, as far as possible with the participation of Buddhist guests but without really providing a platform for a thoroughgoing Buddhist discussion of religious plurality. This time, more Buddhists than ever before, including significant scholars from America and Asia as well as Europe, participated in the conference. We were thus treated to a discussion of Buddhist attitudes to the religions that broke new ground and presented a vivid picture of Buddhism’s own internal diversity.In his introductory address the president of the network, Prof. John May, paid tribute to the University of Salzburg’s newly established Centre for Intercultural Theology and the Study of Religions, whose director, Prof. Gregor Maria Hoff, welcomed participants on behalf of the university. Dr. Ulrich Winkler contributed substantially to the organization of the conference.Dr. Kristin Kiblinger (Winthrop University), author of the first systematic treatment of Buddhist “inclusivism,” opened the conference proper by distinguishing between “open” and “closed” forms of inclusivism. She suggested a parallel with George Lindbeck’s “experiential-expressive” paradigm of religious doctrine in order to make clear that Buddhists, like Christians, have ways of privileging their own positions, though these generally remain unacknowledged.“One vehicle” (ekayāna) theories of Buddhism have something in common with “common core” theories of Christian pluralism in that they presuppose a “single end” [End Page 149] inclusivism. Whether the “positionless position” derived from Buddhist “emptiness” (śūnyatā) is a better guarantee of genuine pluralism than the Christian notion of “self-emptying” (kenōsis), as suggested by Masao Abe, remains an open question. The Buddhist doctrine of “two truths,” one expressed in the “higher” language (paramārthasatya) accessible only to Buddhist practitioners and the other in the “lower” language (samvrtisatya) of discourse with others, does not hold out much promise of true mutual respect between traditions.Prof. John Makransky (Boston College), an ordained lama and meditation teacher as well as a renowned scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, took up the challenge of developing a Buddhist “theology” that avoids the claim to superiority. What matters to the Buddhist practitioner is to cut through all subconscious clinging, even to approved teachings and spiritual results. “Ultimate truth” can be known, directly but nonconceptually, yielding a “nonconceptual compassion” comparable to what Christians call “totally undivided oneness with God.” Lacking historical consciousness, however, teachers have tended to project their understanding of skillful means back on to Śākyamuni Buddha, each school assuming that other schools are merely preparations for itself. The same pattern is evident in the integration into Buddhism of indigenous religions such as Shintō, which enriched Buddhism but also assimilated it to themselves. Prompted by his contacts with Christian colleagues to venture beyond practice into Buddhist self-reflection, Makransky is now prepared to see in conceptions such as the Dharmakāya (“Dharma body” of the Buddha or ultimate reality) an equivalent of what Christians understand by God. The Body of Christ, with its implications for ecclesiology, could open up a further avenue for comparison.Existing under the conditions of late or post-modernity, Buddhism is forced to come to terms with pluralism and ecumenism. Prof. Kenneth Tanaka (Musashino University, Tokyo), an ordained Jōdo Shinshū priest, sees himself as incapable of saying to a non-Buddhist, “You’re not saved,” because the practice of prajñā and karunā (wisdom and compassion) is not restricted to Buddhists. Even within traditions, however, levels of spiritual attainment are not equivalent, nor are all religions equally valid. “Prophets can’t be pluralists,” but like... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Bittersweet Score:A Father’s Account of His Family’s 20-Year Journey After a Pediatric Brain Tumor DiagnosisChristopher RileyI hadn’t seen him for 20 years, not since the day he drilled a hole in Peter’s head and left the stainless steel drill and bloody bit on the bedside table. He figured prominently in the story I often told of that day when he, a doctor in training, [End Page 3] informed (...) my wife Kathy and me that, “Wow,” our five-year-old son had “an impressive tumor” in his brain. He announced it with the admiration I reserve for a touchdown pass or stunning sunset. Since that day, he had become a venerable physician. Back then he was the resident who met us in the ER after our pediatrician told us that the MRI of Peter’s brain was “not normal,” that “there might be a growth.” As if there might not be. I imagined that Peter’s brain might simply have an unusual shape, or that the scan revealed some undiscovered fracture and the authorities only wanted to lock me up and all with my son would be well. The thrilled young doctor slew those hopes with an ice pick: “Wow, that’s an impressive tumor.” I said, “That’s the first time anyone has used the word tumor.” The doctor appeared mortified and started over.Now 20 years later we found ourselves at the same party and I felt a compulsion to introduce myself, remind him we’d met that day in 1993, and tell him what had become of Peter and his family in the decades since he’d made that mortifying mistake, one I hoped had become for him a defining moment. To my disappointment, he didn’t seem to remember.Peter was my red-haired boy. Fearless and whip smart, he told a stream of knock-knock jokes and performed dance routines choreographed by his 8-year-old sister Rachel. Six months of headaches, vomiting and clumsy falls led to discovery of the tumor. When I phoned my parents with the news, I couldn’t speak the words, words that felt as if they spelled my boy’s doom. My body refused to pronounce them.The war for Peter’s life began with surgery. I sat with Kathy in the surgical waiting area, fearing every minute that I would see the surgeon approaching with his shoulders slumped in mortal defeat. I learned during those hours that fear of your child’s death is a physical pain, a constriction in the chest, a suffocation. At the end of that wait, the surgeon told us the tumor was out and Peter had survived. The pathology indicated the tumor was a medulloblastoma. Without additional treatment, including radiation, it was certain to come back. Kathy’s knees buckled. Having just endured one life-and-death battle, we were plunged into another. To complicate matters, Peter wasn’t waking from surgery. Even after the anesthesia wore off, Peter remained groggy, unable to move or focus his eyes.Through the following days, Peter failed to rouse or speak. Sores formed at the back of his neck where his unswallowed saliva pooled. Neurologists doubted he knew us. His doctors hoped Peter would recover but it was possible he would remain as he was indefinitely. As I sat holding his useless hand, watching his useless body, I thought I’d never loved him as much as I did now.Peter’s doctors presented two treatment options. The first consisted of relatively high doses of daily radiation, the most effective known method for preventing the return of the cancer. But radiation wasn’t good for young brains. It “shaved IQ points,” they said in wild understatement. So they offered a second, experimental option, one that reduced radiation by a third and added months of chemotherapy. The doctors hoped this new regimen would be as effective as the old but cause less cognitive damage. They asked us to choose. It seemed impossible. We gathered the scant available data. We weighed the risks. We prayed. We took a leap. Without asking him, we made a decision for Peter we knew... (shrink)

A main issue in Swedish school debate is the question of how to teach the student a common value system based on democracy and western humanism. The debate is rather intense, to say the least. Not only is the premise that there exists one value system that we share a target for critique, but there is also the question of what value education is or could be. There is, as well, quite a body of research on children's moral development, where (...) many take as their departure the work of Kohlberg. However, there has been little or no attention on how the individual learner conceptualizes and makes meaning out of ethical issues. That is, descriptions of processes. In this paper we will present what we take to be urgent questions that need to be investigated against the background of prior research and practical work at Södra teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. For eight years in a row, Södra teatern has had as a main project to lead a practice on the subject of philosophy with children. Several groups of youths in the age of nine to eighteen have regularly met to discuss philosophical thoughts and problems, which in a democratic manner are settled for discussion by the participants. Today this philosophical practice has spread to the north of Sweden. In Backman's final exam within the teacher education she has explored the development of children's (7‐8 years old) ability to argue for different ethical positions, both verbally and in writing and painting. This practice has been inspired by the tradition at Södra teatern, but customized to fit a regular school class in Luleå, with very little experience of philosophical discussion. In the very short period of five weeks Backman has been able to see quite significant changes in the children's ability to argue for their ethical positions. The study was initiated by examining some argumentative abilities of the pupils, for instance the ability of expressing an argument for an ethical position in writing. In the final part of the study, the same ability was examined in very similar circumstances, and the augment of expressed arguments in writing was significant. Another consideration that was raised as a consequence of the study regards the pupil's conceptualizing of ethical issues. In some conversations about the notion of justice it became clear that children interpreted the term very differently. This is not very surprising but important to pay further attention to. As mentioned earlier, there has been very little attention on how individual children conceptualize ethical issues. In this paper we argue that more interest should be put on investigating these issues in more depth, and we will do this by an outlining of a research application. (shrink)

In Patricia Churchland's 2006 essay on free will, she cites the case of a middle-aged man who, without any prior history of misbehavior, suddenly became obsessed with child pornography and started to molest his 8-year-old stepdaughter. He was subsequently discovered to have a brain tumor affecting the frontal lobes, and when it is successfully treated his aberrant behavior stopped.Thomas Szasz is famous for his denunciation of the concept of mental illness, and his critique is partly responsible for instigating an (...) enduring philosophical discourse about the nature of mental disorder. Szasz's key insight was the recognition that we find it important to distinguish between situations that are characterized by... (shrink)

Books reviewed in this article:John Barton, The Biblical WorldWalter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, AdvocacyBernhard W. Anderson, Contours of Old Testament TheologyJames Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament PerspectiveCarl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Reclaiming the Bible for the ChurchNancy L. deClaissè‐Walford, Reading from th eBeginning: The Shaping of the Hebrew PsalterBirger Gerhardsson, The Reliability of the Gospel TraditionBen Witherington III, New Testament History: A Narrative AccountNeil Richardson, God in the New TestamentJohn (...) S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings GospelFrancis J. Moloney, The Gospel of JohnMartin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch. The Unknown YearsF. Gerald Downing, Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches: Cynics and Christian Origins IIAnthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the CorinthiansKieran J. O'Mahony, Pauline Persuasion: A Sounding in 2 Corinthians 8‐9C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Volume I: Acts XV–XXVIIApril D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics: Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian LiteratureManlio Simonetti, Ippolito. Contro NoetoCatherine Brown Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and the Early Christian ImaginationSerge Lancel, St AugustinePatricia Cox Miller, The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and ReligionThomas Head, Medieval Hagiography: An AnthologyAllan Greer, The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth‐Century North AmericaStephen R. Holmes, God of Glory and God of Grace: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan EdwardsStephen Prickett, Narrative, Religion and Science. Fundamentalism versus Irony, 1700–1999Linda Woodhead, Reinventing Christianity: Nineteenth‐Century ContextsFlorent Gaboriau, The Conversion of Edith SteinJeffrey S. Siker, Scripture and Ethics. Twentieth‐Century PortraitsRicherd B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Community, Cross, New CreationJohn Kavanaugh, Who Counts as Persons: Human Identity and the Ethics of KillingJohn Keown, Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument against LegalisationStephen J. Pope and Charles Hefling, Sic et Non: Encountering ‘Dominus Iesus’J'annine Jobling and Ian Markham, Theological Liberalism, Creative and CriticalHans Küng, Women in ChristianityLynne Broadbent and Alan Brown, Issues in Religious EducationJeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political ThoughtGiles Fraser, Redeeming NietzscheAlexander Garcia Düttman, The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and AdornoRobert J. Dostal, The Cambridge Companion to GadamerMichael Fuller, Making Sense of MacIntyre. (shrink)

Recent studies in neuroeducation highlight the benefits of teaching children about how the brain works. However, very little is known about children's naive conceptions about the brain. The current study examined these representations, by asking 6–10 year-old children and adults to draw a brain and the inside of a belly as a control drawing. The drawings were scored using a content analysis and a list of graphic indicators was derived. First, all the graphic indicators used in the brain drawings were (...) different from those used in the belly drawings, suggesting that children are able to distinguish these two organs. Second, with age, children depict an increasing number of indicators, more complex indicators, indicators that are more anatomically correct, to depict the brain. There is an important evolution between 6 and 8 years-old but also between 10 years-old and adults. These results are discussed in relation to children's metacognitive knowledge and to their implications for neuroeducation. (shrink)

Impairments in executive functioning are prevalent in chronic pain conditions, with cognitive inflexibility being the most frequently reported. The current randomized, cross-over trial, piloted a computerized cognitive training program based on Relational Frame Theory, targeting improvement in cognitive flexibility. At baseline, 73 chronic pain patients completed testing on pre-selected outcomes of executive functioning, alongside IQ measures. When tested three times over the course of 5 months, there was a drop-out rate of 40% at the third time point, leaving 44 patients (...) who had data at all time points. The results showed that there was a substantial learning effect from the MINDFLEX training and a substantial time-dependent improvement on the primary outcomes of increased flexibility, but that this could not be tied to active training. In conclusion, this small study indicated a learning effect as well as improvement on primary outcomes. Based on the current results, a larger trial with improved feasibility of training is warranted. (shrink)

The selection strategies of individuals and 2-person cooperative groups were investigated in 5 concept-attainment problems. 2 types of stimulus displays were used: (a) form displays, consisting of geometric forms varying in 6 attributes with 2 levels of each, (b) sequence displays, consisting of 6 plus and/or minus signs in a row. The arrangement of cards in the stimulus displays was ordered or random. The principal results were: (a) 2-person groups used the focusing strategy more, required fewer card choices to (...) solution, and required more time than individuals; (b) form displays resulted in more use of the focusing strategy than sequence displays, with no difference in number of card choices; (c) no difference between ordered and random arrays in use of the focusing strategy or number of card choices. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

dai 1-kan. Hō no kihon riron -- dai 2-5-kan. Hōshisō no rekishiteki tenkai -- dai 6-8-kan. Gendai jitteihō no kihon mondai.

The aim of this paper is to reconsider certain assumptions about conceptual structure which have become influential in recent Cognitive Science and which are associated in particular with the Cognitive Linguistics research agenda. I will outline three areas within the Cognitive Linguistics theory of concepts which seem to create some difficulties in their present formulation: the 'embodied cognition' idea, the function of imagery and the role of metaphor in the structure of concepts.

Children and adults from theus and China heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts – medical and religious – and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In theus, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7–8 years, which decreased thereafter.uschildren’s persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context – occurring more often for religious narratives – and (...) such judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 425-444 [Access article in PDF] The Passions and Animal Language, 1540-1700 R. W. Serjeantson "Do not think, kind and benevolent readers, that I am proposing a useless subject to you by choosing to discuss the language [loquela] of beasts. For this is nothing other than philosophy, which investigates the natures of animals." 1 The Italian medical professor Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (...) began his 1603 treatise On the language of beasts with this captatio benevolentiae with good cause. For early modern natural philosophers almost universally insisted that only humans were capable of language and speech. In this they followed, sometimes explicitly, their ancient authorities. "Man," Aristotle had said in the Politics, "is the only animal that has the gift of speech." "Men," wrote Cicero in the De inventione, "most excel the beasts in this, that they can speak." 2 They were sentiments echoed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. "There is no true language among beastes," said Sir Kenelm Digby. "Language" (loquela), concurred G. J. Vossius, "is unique to man." And according to John Ray in The Wisdom of God (1691), speech was "a quality so peculiar to Man, that no Beast could ever attain to it." 3Language was a subject of absorbing interest to numerous early modern philosophers. They investigated its origin, its production, its signification, and its use. But behind almost all of these investigations lay one of the most profound suppositions in early modern anthropology: the uniqueness of the human [End Page 425] capacity for language, and the brutishness of the brute beasts. Harsh judgments were passed on those who thought that animals might be able to speak. Lawyers held that belief in animal language was sufficient evidence of idiocy. According to Kenelm Digby it was only vanity, ignorance, and a specious desire for reputation that had led some authors to argue that animals used "compleate languages as Men haue to discourse with one another in." And the seventeenth-century English writer on the passions, Edward Reynolds, thought that only "melancholy men" believed "that Elephants and Birds, and other Creatures have a language whereby they discourse with one another." 4Yet despite this pervasive assumption that humans spoke and animals did not, the question of animal language kept arising in early modern culture. Readers met speaking animals in beast fablesand on Lucianic voyages. There was a popular belief in early modern England that "in the olde tymes" animals could speak. 5 Theodore Zwinger, Claude Duret, and G. J. Vossius all recorded many accounts of human communication with birds, with the ancient claim that Apollonius of Tyana could understand birdsong being particularly notorious. 6 In the Old Testament Balaam's ass asks his owner what he has done to deserve being beaten. 7 And St. Basil had even suggested that before the Fall Adam and Eve had been able to talk to the animals as well as to name them--a suggestion that both Thomas Browne and Joseph Glanvill gave short shrift. 8 But my purpose in this paper is not to follow speaking animals through early modern fables, popular beliefs, or even Biblical commentary. Instead, I propose to explore the serious investigations of zoosemiotics and animal communication that were undertaken by numerous philosophers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 9For then as now, the question of animal language, broadly interpreted, was a serious one for the sciences. It was a question that was addressed across a wide range of disciplines, from logic to natural history. As such it was an important component of the many discussions of the nature of animal reason--discussions that provided a means for skeptical moral philosophers to humble human pretensions [End Page 426] to rationality and wisdom. 10 Natural philosophers, too, undertook detailed inquiries into the question of animal expression, exploring issues of articulacy, anatomy, and function. Almost all early modern authors agreed that animals could not speak and did not possess language in the same way that humans did. But this still left a great deal of scope for considering the extent... (shrink)