Essays on Self-reference

Essays on Self-reference
Author: Niklas Luhmann
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 1990
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780231063685

The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays

The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays
Author: Sydney Shoemaker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1996-09-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521568715

Sydney Shoemaker is one of the most influential philosophers currently writing on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds, and with the nature of those mental states of which we have our most direct conscious awareness. Professor Shoemaker opposes the 'inner sense' conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have non-representational features - 'qualia' - that determine what it is like to have them. Amongst the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the 'first-person perspective' gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind. This major collection is sure to prove invaluable to all advanced students of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Self-Reference

Self-Reference
Author: S.J. Bartlett
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 940093551X

Self-reference, although a topic studied by some philosophers and known to a number of other disciplines, has received comparatively little explicit attention. For the most part the focus of studies of self-reference has been on its logical and linguistic aspects, with perhaps disproportionate emphasis placed on the reflexive paradoxes. The eight-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example, does not contain a single entry in its index under "self-reference", and in connection with "reflexivity" mentions only "relations", "classes", and "sets". Yet, in this volume, the introductory essay identifies some 75 varieties and occurrences of self-reference in a wide range of disciplines, and the bibliography contains more than 1,200 citations to English language works about reflexivity. The contributed papers investigate a number of forms and applications of self-reference, and examine some of the challenges posed by its difficult temperament. The editors hope that readers of this volume will gain a richer sense of the sti11largely unexplored frontiers of reflexivity, and of the indispensability of reflexive concepts and methods to foundational inquiries in philosophy, logic, language, and into the freedom, personality and intelligence of persons.

Why I Write

Why I Write
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Renard Press Ltd
Total Pages: 15
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1913724263

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Disillusioning Modernity

Disillusioning Modernity
Author: Balázs Brunczel
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2010
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783631604502

The work of Niklas Luhmann is the most innovative and comprehensive attempt to describe modern society. His views, in turn, have triggered the most intensive criticism ever in social sciences. This book presents his extraordinarily complex theory in a step-by-step fashion and in a way understandable for those who are not familiar with his thought. It examines his views on politics, which, the author argues, is the best way to demonstrate the provocative character of his theory. The book not only facilitates the understanding of Luhmann's theory but is also useful for getting an insight into the methodological problems of the social sciences and the theoretical issues of modern society. Whether we agree with Luhmann or not, his thoughts on democracy, legitimacy, human rights, and the welfare state may help us understand the society we live in. The reader may consider his disillusioning findings as challenges that can contribute to the solution of the problems our society faces.

Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method

Poststructuralism and the Politics of Method
Author: Andrew M. Koch
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2007
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780739114094

Since the time of Plato, political philosophy has attempted to create a secure basis upon which to build the prescriptive claims for political action. However, if knowledge is a human construction, not the discovery of some essential reality, is it possible to support collective acts by reference to such foundational claims? If not, we must rethink our understanding society, politics, and the exercise of power. Beginning with the premise that our knowledge of political and social life is historical and contingent, Andrew Koch seeks to re-conceptualize our understanding of politics and power. Koch moves the discussions of power and politics away from search for foundational truths. Viewing politics and power through an epistemological lens, he explores what our understanding of politics and power looks like in the wake of deconstruction and genealogy. Koch begins with a general overview of the poststructuralist epistemology. From there the work contrasts this position with the interpretive sociology of Max Weber, uses deconstruction to politicize the work of Niklas Luhmann, and explores the implications of deconstruction for democracy, Marxist theory, institutional power, and anarchist politics.

Freedom and the Self

Freedom and the Self
Author: Steven M. Cahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231539169

The book Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will, published in 2010 by Columbia University Press, presented David Foster Wallace's challenge to Richard Taylor's argument for fatalism. In this anthology, notable philosophers engage directly with that work and assess Wallace's reply to Taylor as well as other aspects of Wallace's thought. With an introduction by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, this collection includes essays by William Hasker (Huntington University), Gila Sher (University of California, San Diego), Marcello Oreste Fiocco (University of California, Irvine), Daniel R. Kelly (Purdue University), Nathan Ballantyne (Fordham University), Justin Tosi (University of Arizona), and Maureen Eckert. These thinkers explore Wallace's philosophical and literary work, illustrating remarkable ways in which his philosophical views influenced and were influenced by themes developed in his other writings, both fictional and nonfictional. Together with Fate, Time, and Language, this critical set unlocks key components of Wallace's work and its traces in modern literature and thought.

Consciousness and the Self

Consciousness and the Self
Author: JeeLoo Liu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2012
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1107000750

New essays connecting recent scientific studies with traditional issues about the self explored by Descartes, Locke and Hume. Leading philosophers offer contrasting perspectives on the relation between consciousness and self-awareness, and the notion of personhood. Essential reading for philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and psychologists.

Self-theories

Self-theories
Author: Carol S. Dweck
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317710339

This innovative text sheds light on how people work -- why they sometimes function well and, at other times, behave in ways that are self-defeating or destructive. The author presents her groundbreaking research on adaptive and maladaptive cognitive-motivational patterns and shows: * How these patterns originate in people's self-theories * Their consequences for the person -- for achievement, social relationships, and emotional well-being * Their consequences for society, from issues of human potential to stereotyping and intergroup relations * The experiences that create them This outstanding text is a must-read for researchers in social psychology, child development, and education, and is appropriate for both graduate and senior undergraduate students in these areas.

Citation and Precedent

Citation and Precedent
Author: Thomas Oliver Beebee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-03-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1628921242

Among Western literatures, only the German-speaking countries can boast a list of world-class writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, Kleist, Kafka, Schmitt, and Schlink who were trained as legal scholars. Yet this list only hints at the complex interactions between German law and literature. It can be supplemented, for example, with the unique interventions of the legal system into literature, ranging from attempts to save literature from the tidal wave of Schund (pulp fiction) in the early twentieth century to audiences suing theaters over the improper production of classics in the twenty-first. The long list of instances where German literature cites law, or where German law serves literature as a precedent, signal the dream of German culture of a unity of interests and objectives between spheres of activity. Yet the very vitality of this dream stems from real historical and social processes that increasingly autonomize and separate these domains from each other. Beebee examines the history of this dialectical tension through close readings of numerous cases in the modern era, ranging from Grimm to Schmitt.