Author : Gregory Bateson
Publisher : Hampton Press (NJ)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 33,85 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Ethnology
ISBN : 9781572734340
A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.
Author : Gregory Bateson
Publisher : Dutton Books
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 39,55 MB
Release : 1979
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN :
An exploration of the mental patterns in nature that connect all living beings. -- Dust jacket.
Author : Peter Godfrey-Smith
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 47,23 MB
Release : 1998-09-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780521646246
This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature.
Author : Hermann Weyl
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 112 pages
File Size : 16,79 MB
Release : 2015-09-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1512819328
A new study of the mathematical-physical mode of cognition.
Author : C. B. Martin
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 12,42 MB
Release : 2010-05-20
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191614602
What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities. He also spells out the implications of this view for philosophical conceptions of causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Martin emphasizes the importance of non-conscious 'vegetative' systems, which provide clear examples of intentionality in the form of representational use. The slide from representational use to consciousness involves a change in the material of use, but not the form of representation. A concluding chapter provides an argument for the view that an ontology of particular substances and properties leads ineluctably to monism: the bus we board with Locke takes us directly to the world of Spinoza and Einstein. Along the way, we are led to understand the nature of minds and conscious states of mind in a way that avoids both reductionism (the idea that mental is reducible to the non-mental) and dualism (the idea that mental substances or properties differ dramatically from physical substances and properties).
Author : Thomas Nagel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 35,59 MB
Release : 2012-11-22
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0199919755
The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Author : James D. Madden
Publisher : Catholic University of America Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 32,25 MB
Release : 2013-06-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0813221420
Written for students, Mind, Matter, and Nature presumes no prior philosophical training on the part of the reader. The book nevertheless holds the arguments discussed to rigorous standards and is conversant with recent literature, thus making it useful as well to more advanced students and professionals interested in a resource on Thomistic hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind.
Author : Gregory Bateson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 572 pages
File Size : 44,21 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780226039053
Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.
Author : Roger Smith
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 20,76 MB
Release : 2013-06-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1780231180
From William James to Ivan Pavlov, John Dewey to Sigmund Freud, the Würzburg School to the Chicago School, psychology has spanned centuries and continents. Today, the word is an all-encompassing name for a bewildering range of beliefs about what psychologists know and do, and this intrinsic interest in knowing how our own and other’s minds work has a story as fascinating and complex as humankind itself. In Between Mind and Nature, Roger Smith explores the history of psychology and its relation to religion, politics, the arts, social life, the natural sciences, and technology. Considering the big questions bound up in the history of psychology, Smith investigates what human nature is, whether psychology can provide answers to human problems, and whether the notion of being an individual depends on social and historical conditions. He also asks whether a method of rational thinking exists outside the realm of natural science. Posing important questions about the value and direction of psychology today, Between Mind and Nature is a cogently written book for those wishing to know more about the quest for knowledge of the mind.
Author : Jesse J Prinz
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 439 pages
File Size : 19,64 MB
Release : 2012-01-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1846145724
In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.
