All of the reviews come from Metapsychology Online Reviews.
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Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach
by Alessandro Antonietti, Antonella Corradini and E. Jonathan Lowe (Editors)
Lexington Books, 2008
Until very recently, mind–body dualism has been regarded with deep suspicion, by both philosophers and scientists. This has been due, amongst other things, to the widespread, if largely unspoken, identification of dualism in general with Cartesian dualism in particular. This traditional version of dualism has long prompted numerous criticisms from philosophers and has been almost universally rejected as untenable in most scientific circles. However, in the last few years new attention has begun to be paid to the dualistic point of view, not least as a result of increasing discontent with the dominance of reductionism in contemporary scientific and philosophical thought. Most importantly, awareness has grown that dualism does not need to coincide with its Cartesian variety: other forms of dualism are philosophically defensible which do not share the conceptual difficulties encountered by Descartes’s version of it and are better able to cope with the sorts of objections commonly raised by scientists. Today, interest in dualism more broadly construed is growing fast, because it appears that, suitably formulated, it constitutes not only an intuitively plausible philosophical point of view but also an approach to the human mind that is based on scientifically acceptable assumptions.Read the whole review.
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Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death
by Richard Sorabji
University Of Chicago Press, 2006
Sorabji's focus in Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death is, as the title indicates, the idea of the Self, an idea that he addresses through both exegesis of historical texts and philosophical analysis. As the subtitle suggests, however, Sorabji is not content to limit his discussion to the idea of the Self alone. Instead, having outlined and defended his account of what a self is (an embodied subject that "owns" its body, the characteristics of its embodiment, its psychological states, and its actions) he turns to consider its implications for the possibility for self-awareness, the question of whether we might survive death, and, if we will not, whether this means that it is rational to fear death.Read the whole review.
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The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding
by Mark Johnson
University Of Chicago Press, 2007
Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body offers a fairly comprehensive discussion of the extent to which embodiment grounds meaning. Johnson's target in this book includes much more than semantic, i.e. linguistic, meaning. Instead Johnson uses the term "meaning" in "its broadest and most profound sense;" Johnson takes meaning to include "images, sensorimotor schemas, feelings, qualities, and emotions that constitute our meaningful encounter with the world." (xi) The real strength of this book is the extent to which it attempts to combine these disparate elements into a unified account.Read the whole review.
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The Secret History of Dreaming
by Robert Moss
New World Library, 2008
Active dreaming, astral travel, dream interpretation, dream-catching, dream travel, dream visitations, visionary experiences, divine dreams, dreams as omens, dream guides, dream healing, diagnostic dreams, incest dreams and more about dreams than you may have known existed thread their way through The Secret History of Dreaming from beginning to the end of Moss's book.Read the whole review.
In this lively book Robert Moss informs us of the ways in which sleeping has been addressed in many different cultures for thousands of years. He includes the Aztec empire, West Africa, Australian Aborigines, Adaman People, Bolivia, Greece, France, England and so much more that you may feel as if you are traveling through time and place to place with him as you read. Moss also incorporates psychology, philosophy, physics, politics and religion through the fascinating stories of Harriet Tubman, Charles De Gaulle, Mark Twain, Joan of Arc, Winston Churchill, Rachmaninoff, the Prophet Mohammed and many, many more notables throughout our history.
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1 comment:
Thanks for this post, Bill. I am always interested in what you're interested in.
I've requested Self from my municipal library's Reach/Link system. I'm looking forward to getting & reading it.
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