Pierfrancesco Basile - Böcker

What is consciousness? What is the place of consciousness in nature? These and related questions occupy a prominent place in contemporary studies in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, often involving complex interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, biology and cognitive neuroscience. At the same time, these questions play a fundamental role in the philosophies of great thinkers of the past such as, among others, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, William James and Edmund Husserl. This new collection of essays by leading contemporary philosophers of mind and historians of philosophy seeks to address these questions from both a systematic and a theoretical perspective and to create a new and fruitful forum for future discussion. In the attempt to do justice to the richness of our mental life, the volume features in-depth examinations not solely of mainstream physicalist doctrines, but also of largely neglected positions such as Cartesian dualism, idealism and panpsychism.

At the beginning of his magnum opus, Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead lists a series of beliefs which he thinks are widely held by contemporary philosophers. They are all condemned as dangerously mistaken. What are these myths? Why are they rejected? In the works of which modern thinker did they arise? What precisely went wrong? At what stage in the development of Western thought did this happen? By tackling these questions, Pierfrancesco Basile makes it possible to grasp the main concepts of Whitehead’s process metaphysics – especially the crucial notion that being and power are one and the same – and appreciate the complex way this is rooted in the modern philosophical tradition.

At the beginning of his magnum opus, Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead lists a series of beliefs which he thinks are widely held by contemporary philosophers. They are all condemned as dangerously mistaken. What are these myths? Why are they rejected? In the works of which modern thinker did they arise? What precisely went wrong? At what stage in the development of Western thought did this happen? By tackling these questions, Pierfrancesco Basile makes it possible to grasp the main concepts of Whitehead’s process metaphysics – especially the crucial notion that being and power are one and the same – and appreciate the complex way this is rooted in the modern philosophical tradition.

This volume gathers prominent international scholars to celebrate the complex legacy of Reiner Wiehl, whose work has been instrumental in bringing together the European tradition of prima philosophia as represented by Plato, Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, with the adventurous speculative renewal of the twentieth century by Alfred North Whitehead. Grouped into four sections (Process and Universals, Nature and Subjectivity, Ethics and Civilization, Psychology and Phenomenology) the fifteen papers collected in this book cover a range of topics which is as wide and as intertwined as Wiehl's own expertise. The common thread running through all contributions is the problematic nature of subjectivity and especially of its process slant, which easily eludes the static and abstract schemes of rationality.

Timothy Sprigge has been a major player on the philosophical scene contributing to discussions as diverse as consciousness, the ontology of time, personal identity, animal rights, punishment, censorship and wider issues in metaphysics, ethics and the history of philosophy. He is, however, less well known for his own highly original system of metaphysics and ethics'a synthesis of Absolute Idealism, panpsychism and utilitarianism. The contributions gathered in this volume, written by philosophers of international reputation or by acknowledged scholars in their specialized fields of inquiry, engage themes in his metaphysics and ethics and provide a critical assessment of his ideas and arguments. In a concluding essay, Sprigge answers the most significant objections raised by his critics: the final result is an engaging dialogue on the perennial and most fundamental questions of philosophy.