The Book of Minds

The Book of Minds
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2022-06-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226822044

Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

This Is Water

This Is Water
Author: Kenyon College
Publisher:
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Conduct of life
ISBN: 9780316151467

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously' How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion' The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.

The Domain of Being

The Domain of Being
Author: Celestine M. Bittle
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3868382682

In accordance with the purpose as an introduction for students, the scope of the book is frankly positive and constructive. It attempts to build up an understanding of the matter of ontology in a logical manner, using simple language, illustrating the subjects with copious examples, and extracting the contents of each chapter into compact summaries. Some of the more abstruse problems of ontology, such as the problem of essence and existence, have been omitted; it was felt that the average student would derive little benefit from a lengthy discussion of problems which have taxed the ingenuity and acumen of the most profound intellects. Such problems may be attacked after the student has become acquainted with the ideas and subjects which form the foundation of the science of metaphysics. After all, the student cannot be expected to be a professional philosopher; it should be sufficient if he acquires a thorough grounding in fundamentals, so that he can deepen his knowledge through subsequent reading and study. In a general way we may define metaphysics as the science of the ultimate principles and properties of real beings.

The Myth of an Afterlife

The Myth of an Afterlife
Author: Michael Martin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2015-03-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0810886782

Because every single one of us will die, most of us would like to know what—if anything—awaits us afterward, not to mention the fate of lost loved ones. Given the nearly universal vested interest in deciding this question in favor of an afterlife, it is no surprise that the vast majority of books on the topic affirm the reality of life after death without a backward glance. But the evidence of our senses and the ever-gaining strength of scientific evidence strongly suggest otherwise. In The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine collect a series of contributions that redress this imbalance in the literature by providing a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife. Divided into four separate sections, this collection opens with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest evidence of whether or not we survive death—in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next, contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of “surviving” death—from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Then essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife—heaven, hell, karmic rebirth—and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems supporting those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife. Fully interdisciplinary, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death brings together a variety of fields of research to make that case, including cognitiveneuroscience, philosophy of mind, personal identity, philosophy of religion, moralphilosophy, psychical research, and anomalistic psychology. As the definitive casebookof arguments against life after death, this collection is required reading for anyinstructor, researcher, and student of philosophy, religious studies, or theology. It issure to raise provocative issues new to readers, regardless of background, from thosewho believe fervently in the reality of an afterlife to those who do not or are undecidedon the matter.

Conjugial Love

Conjugial Love
Author: Emanuel Swedenborg
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Total Pages: 671
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3849640701

This work, published in 1768, when Swedenborg was eighty years of age, was the first of the author's theological works on the title of which his name appeared. It treats of the relation of the sexes; of the nature and origin of love truly conjugial and of its indissoluble nature; of the marriage of the Lord and the Church, and its correspondence; of the spiritual conjunction of partners in true marriage; of the change effected in both sexes by marriage; of the causes of disaffection, separations, and divorces; of the causes of apparent love, friendship, and favor in marriage; and of iterated marriages. To which is appended a treatise on Adulterous or Scortatory Love in its various degrees, showing it to be in its nature the very opposite of Conjugial Love.

Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology

Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology
Author: David H. Jonassen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 1195
Release: 2004
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0805841458

This edition of this handbook updates and expands its review of the research, theory, issues and methodology that constitute the field of educational communications and technology. Organized into seven sectors, it profiles and integrates the following elements of this rapidly changing field.