History of Mind: Studies in the Philosophy of Simo Knuuttila


Book Description

Simo Knuuttila was an influential philosopher, theologian, and historian of philosophy who conducted research on a variety of topics including modalities, emotions, perception, and change in different historical periods, from Ancient to Modern. His contribution to the study of modalities and emotions was groundbreaking and trendsetting with a lasting impact on the area. In this volume, a group of international scholars – all of whom worked directly with Knuuttila – elaborate on some of those topics, trying to understand the core interpretative ideas, the polemical aspects, and how to develop those interpretations in different authors and/or conceptual frameworks. The result is an unique volume that presents a broad range of perspectives on key topics in the history of philosophy in the last decades, both influenced and challenging the interpretations advocated by Knuuttila.




Sourcebook for the History of the Philosophy of Mind


Book Description

Fresh translations of key texts, exhaustive coverage from Plato to Kant, and detailed commentary by expert scholars of philosophy add up to make this sourcebook the first and most comprehensive account of the history of the philosophy of mind. Published at a time when the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology are high-profile domains in current research, the volume will inform our understanding of philosophical questions by shedding light on the origins of core conceptual assumptions often arrived at before the instauration of psychology as a recognized subject in its own right. The chapters closely follow historical developments in our understanding of the mind, with sections dedicated to ancient, medieval Latin and Arabic, and early modern periods of development. The volume’s structural clarity enables readers to trace the entire progression of philosophical understanding on specific topics related to the mind, such as the nature of perception. Doing so reveals the fascinating contrasts between current and historical approaches. In addition to its all-inclusive source material, the volume provides subtle expert commentary that includes critical introductions to each thematic section as well as detailed engagement with the central texts. A voluminous bibliography includes hundreds of primary and secondary sources. The sheer scale of this new publication sheds light on the progression, and discontinuities, in our study of the philosophy of mind, and represents a major new sourcebook in a field of extreme importance to our understanding of humanity as a whole.​




History of Mind: Studies in the Philosophy of Simo Knuuttila


Book Description

Simo Knuuttila was an influential philosopher, theologian, and historian of philosophy who conducted research on a variety of topics including modalities, emotions, perception, and change in different historical periods, from Ancient to Modern. His contribution to the study of modalities and emotions was groundbreaking and trendsetting with a lasting impact on the area. In this volume, a group of international scholars - all of whom worked directly with Knuuttila - elaborate on some of those topics, trying to understand the core interpretative ideas, the polemical aspects, and how to develop those interpretations in different authors and/or conceptual frameworks. The result is an unique volume that presents a broad range of perspectives on key topics in the history of philosophy in the last decades, both influenced and challenging the interpretations advocated by Knuuttila.




Theories of Perception in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy


Book Description

This is the first extensive account of philosophical psychology of perception from ancient to early modern times. The book aims to shed light on the developments in the theories of sense-perception in medieval Arabic and Latin philosophy, their ancient background and traditional and new themes in early modern thought. Particular attention is paid to the philosophically significant parts of the theories. The articles concentrate on the so-called external senses and related themes.




Mind and Modality


Book Description

This volume offers a wide-ranging and profound collection of essays on philosophical psychology and conceptions of modality from antiquity to the present day, with some essays on the philosophy of religion as well.




Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy


Book Description

The first part of the book covers the theories of the emotions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism (Ch. 1) and their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and Origen to Gregory of Nyssa, Cassian and Augustine (Ch. 2). The basic ancient alternatives were the compositional theories of Plato and Aristotle and their followers and the Stoic judgement theory. These were associated with different conceptions of philosophical therapy. Ancient theories were employed in early Christian discussions of sin, Christian love, mystical union, and other forms of spiritual experience. The most influential theological themes were the monastic idea of supernaturally caused feelings and Augustine's analysis of the relations between the emotions and the will. The first part of Ch. 3 deals with the twelfth-century reception of ancient themes through monastic, theological, medical, and philosophical literature. The subject of the second part is the theory of emotions in Avicenna's faculty psychology, which, to a great extent, dominated the philosophical discussion of emotions in early thirteenth century. This approach was combined with Aristotelian ideas in later thirteenth century, particularly in Thomas Aquinas' extensive taxonomical theory. The increasing interest in psychological voluntarism led many Franciscan authors to abandon the traditional view that emotions belong only to the lower psychosomatic level. John Duns Scotus, William Ockham and their followers argued that there are also emotions of the will. Chapter 4 is about these new issues introduced in early fourteenth-century discussions, with some remarks on their influence on early modern thought.




Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition


Book Description

Richard Cross provides the first complete and detailed account of Duns Scotus's theory of cognition, tracing the processes involved in cognition from sensation, through intuition and abstraction, to conceptual thought. He provides an analysis of the ontological status of the various mental items (acts and dispositions) involved in cognition, and a new account of Scotus on nature of conceptual content. Cross goes on to offer a novel, reductionist, interpretation of Scotus's view of the ontological status of representational content, as well as new accounts of Scotus's opinions on intuitive cognition, intelligible species, and the varieties of consciousness. Scotus was a perceptive but highly critical reader of his intellectual forebears, and this volume places his thought clearly within the context of thirteenth-century reflections on cognitive psychology, influenced as they were by Aristotle, Augustine, and Avicenna. As far as possible, Duns Scotus's Theory of Cognition traces developments in Scotus's thought during the ten or so highly productive years that formed the bulk of his intellectual life.




Thinking about the Emotions


Book Description

Leading philosophers offer a rich survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions, discussing major thinkers from antiquity to the 20th century. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating study of how philosophers have grappled with this intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act.




Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy


Book Description

This volume explores emotion in medieval and early modern thought, and opens a contemporary debate on the way emotions figure in our cognitive lives. Thirteen original essays explore the key themes of emotion within the mind; the intentionality of emotions; emotions and action; and the role of emotion in self-understanding and social situations.




Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts


Book Description

During the last decades of the twentieth century highly imaginative thought experiments were introduced in philosophy: Searle’s Chinese room, variations on the Brain-in-a-vat, Thomson’s violinist. At the same time historians of philosophy and science claimed the title of thought experiment for almost any argument: Descartes’ evil genius, Buridan’s ass, Gyges’ ring. In the early 1990s a systematic debate began concerning the epistemological status of thought experiments. The essays in this volume are an outcome of this debate. They were guided by the idea that, since we cannot forge a strict definition of thought experiments, we should at least tame the contemporary wild usage of this notion by analysing thought experiments from various periods, and thus clarify how they work, what their limits are, and what their conceptualisation could be. Medieval and Early Modern Science, 15




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