Extra Sensory Deception

Extra Sensory Deception
Author: Allison Kingsley
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-08-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698139291

As the owners of the Raven’s Nest bookstore, cousins Stephanie and Clara Quinn are the premier booksellers in the quaint town of Finn’s Harbor, Maine. But with Clara’s inherited ability to read minds and see the future, she’s also the premier crime solver… You don’t have to be a psychic to know: The rodeo is coming to town! Clara’s boyfriend, Rick Sanders, invites her to the show to meet his high school buddy and expert calf roper, Wes Carlton. But when Clara’s Quinn Sense offers her a disturbing vision involving a rodeo clown, she worries that there will be more danger at the rodeo than just the traditional bucking bronco. Of course, her premonition turns out to be accurate, and a dead body is discovered behind the concert stage, strangled by Wes’s piggin’ string. Rick is sure that there’s no way Wes could have murdered anyone, but he’s going to need Clara’s Quinn Sense to keep the authorities from roping the wrong suspect...

The Sensory Deception

The Sensory Deception
Author: Ransom Stephens
Publisher: 47north
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781611099195

"I can't believe I ate a seal. And really enjoyed it." Moments after venture capitalist Gloria Baradaran experiences what it's like to be a polar bear -- really be a polar bear -- she knows she's found something revolutionary. Farley Rutherford and his team -- migraine-tortured neurologist "Chopper" Vittori and uber-geek engineer Ringo Hayes -- have created sensory saturation, a virtual reality system that drops users into the psyches of endangered animals as they fight for survival, and they believe the profound experience could turn the indifferent masses into avid environmentalists. The Sensory Deception is a mind-blowing, globe-trotting ride that will take listeners from cutthroat Silicon Valley boardrooms to pirate ships off the Somali coast to the devastated rain forests of the Amazon, all to ask the question: What is a human life worth compared to that of an entire planet?

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations
Author: David Cunning
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2010-07-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199774471

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy has proven to be not only one of the canonical texts of Western philosophy, but also the site of a great deal of interpretive activity in scholarship on the history of early modern philosophy over the last two decades. David Cunning's monograph proposes a new interpretation, which is that from beginning to end the reasoning of the Meditations is the first-person reasoning of a thinker who starts from a confused non-Cartesian paradigm and moves slowly and awkwardly toward a grasp of just a few of the central theses of Descartes' system. The meditator of the Meditations is not a full-blown Cartesian at the start or middle or even the end of inquiry, and accordingly the Meditations is riddled with confusions throughout. Cunning argues that Descartes is trying to capture the kind of reasoning that a non-Cartesian would have to engage in to make the relevant epistemic progress, and that the Meditations rhetorically models that reasoning. He proposes that Descartes is reflecting on what happens in philosophical inquiry: we are unclear about something, we roam about using our existing concepts and intuitions, we abandon or revise some of these, and then eventually we come to see a result as clear that we did not see as clear before. Thus Cunning's fundamental insight is that Descartes is a teacher, and the reader a student. With that reading in mind, a significant number of the interpretive problems that arise in the Descartes literature dissolve when we make a distinction between the Cartesian and non-Cartesian elements of the Meditations, and a better understanding of surrounding texts is achieved as well. This important volume will be of great interest to scholars of early modern philosophy.

Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution

Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution
Author: Martin Stevens
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2013-02-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0191651478

Throughout their lives animals must complete many tasks, including finding food, avoiding predators, attracting mates, and navigating through a complex and dynamic environment. Consequently, they have evolved a staggering array of sensory organs that are fundamental to survival and reproduction and shape much of their evolution and behaviour. Sensory ecology deals with how animals acquire, process, and use information in their lives, and the sensory systems involved. It investigates the type of information that is gathered by animals, how it is used in a range of behaviours, and the evolution of such traits. It deals with both mechanistic questions (e.g. how sensory receptors capture information from the environment, and how the physical attributes of the environment affect information transmission) and functional questions (e.g. the adaptive significance of the information used by the animal to make a decision). Recent research has dealt more explicitly with how sensory systems are involved with and even drive evolutionary change, including the formation of new species. Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution provides a broad introduction to sensory ecology across a wide range of taxonomic groups, covering all the various sensory modalities (e.g. sound, visual, chemical, magnetic, and electric) relating to diverse areas spanning anti-predator strategies, foraging, mate choice, navigation and more, with the aim being to illustrate key principles and differences. This accessible textbook is suitable for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and professional academics taking courses or conducting research in sensory ecology/biology, neuroethology, behavioural and evolutionary ecology, communication, and signalling. It will also be of relevance and use to psychologists interested in sensory information and behaviour.

Fish's Clinical Psychopathology

Fish's Clinical Psychopathology
Author: Patricia Casey
Publisher: RCPsych Publications
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2019-06-13
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1108663540

Psychopathology lies at the centre of effective psychiatric practice and mental health care, and Fish's Clinical Psychopathology has shaped the training and clinical practice of psychiatrists for over fifty years. The fourth edition of this modern classic presents the clinical descriptions and psychopathological insights of Fish's to a new generation of students and practitioners. It includes recent revisions of diagnostic classification systems, as well as new chapters that consider the controversies of classifying psychiatric disorder and the fundamental role and uses of psychopathology. Clear and readable, it provides concise descriptions of the signs and symptoms of mental illness and astute accounts of the varied manifestations of disordered psychological function, and is designed for use in clinical practice. An essential text for students of medicine, trainees in psychiatry and practising psychiatrists, it will also be useful to psychiatric nurses, mental health social workers and clinical psychologists.

Suggestion and Suggestibility

Suggestion and Suggestibility
Author: Vladimir A. Gheorghiu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3642738753

This book contains the proceedings of the First International Sym posium on Suggestion and Suggestibility, held at the University of Giessen in the Federal Republic of Germany, July 7-111987, upon the initiative of and organized by Dr. V. A. Gheorghiu and Dr. P. Netter. I regret that for personal reasons I was unable to accept his kind invita tion to attend, for Dr. Gheorghiu and I are old friends. I am pleased, however, to have this opportunity to call attention to the significance of this volume. Most of the chapters were presented in approximately their present form at the symposium, though some have been extensi vely revised for publication. It was a wise choice to divide the papers into four major sections. - I. Theoretical and Historical Perspectives, II. Assessment and Indivi dual Differences of Suggestibility, III. Psychophysiological Aspects of Suggestibility, and IV. Social and Cognitive Aspects of Suggestive Processes - each with a summarizing commentary. In view of the variety and difficulty of the individual papers, it is a help to have the integration provided by these commentaries - on Part I by Sheehan (Chap. 7), on Part II by Lundy (Chap. 13), on Part III by Edmonston (Chap. 19), and on Part IV by Fiedler (Chap. 30).

Arts of Perception

Arts of Perception
Author: Jeremy Robbins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1134708610

Arts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracián, Quevedo, Calderón, Saavedra Fajardo, López de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various ‘arts of perception’ - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such ‘arts of perception’. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engaño/desengaño. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

Atheism

Atheism
Author: George H. Smith
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1615929959

"Does a god exist? This question has undoubtedly been asked, in one form or another, since man has had the ability to communicate. . . Thousands of volumes have been written on the subject of a god, and the vast majority have answered the questions with a resounding 'Yes!' " "You are about to read a minority viewpoint." With this intriguing introduction, George H. Smith sets out to demolish what he considers the most widespread and destructive of all the myths devised by man - the concept of a supreme being. With painstaking scholarship and rigorous arguments, Mr. Smith examines, dissects, and refutes the myriad "proofs" offered by theists - the defenses of sophisticated, professional theologians, as well as the average religious layman. He explores the historical and psychological havoc wrought by religion in general - and concludes that religious belief cannot have any place in the life of modern, rational man. "It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism . . . (but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, that is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity."

In Defense of Schreber

In Defense of Schreber
Author: Henry Zvi Lothane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2019-05-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317737202

In this stunning reappraisal of the celebrated case of Daniel Paul Schreber, Lothane takes the reader on a richly documented tour of all the ingredients that made Schreber's illness a unique psychiatric event. Building outward from a close examination of Schreber's troubled relationship to his two psychiatrists, Flechsig and Weber, Lothane elaborates the personal, familial, and cultural contexts of Schreber's illness. Incorporating extensive new archival and bibliographic research, and providing extensive accounts of the personalities and theories of Schreber's two psychiatrists, Paul Flechsig and Guido Weber, Zvi Lothane offers a stunning reappraisal of the Schreber case that overturns virtually all previous opinion. Lothane examines both the man and his milieu in a way that allows the reader fresh access not only to the tragedy of Schreber's illness but also to his heroic, if doomed, attempts to come to terms with his condition through writing. In the process, he persuasively demonstrates that important issues of both psychiatric diagnosis and psychoanalytic interpretation have heretofore been compromised by a failure to pay sufficient attention to Schreber's interpersonal, cultural, and historical contexts.