Archives de catégorie : Philosophy

THE WORLD BEHIND THE WORLD d’Erik Hoel

In a sweeping intellectual narrative, award-winning neuroscientist and author Erik Hoel argues there are two fundamental perspectives on reality: the intrinsic and the extrinsic. The intrinsic perspective is that of consciousness and experience, the feelings and sensations that make up your waking world. The extrinsic perspective is that of science, which views the universe as a set of mechanisms and relations.

THE WORLD BEHIND THE WORLD:
Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science
by Erik Hoel
Avid Reader, Fall 2023
(via Writers House)

The two perspectives have had an uneasy, sometimes troubled relationship. Throughout history some cultures have emphasized one perspective more than the other, which has radically changed how humans think about and conceptualize our own selves. Technologies and media often implicitly enforce one perspective: for instance, television and movies take the extrinsic perspective, exploring the world of relations and images, while literature and novels take the intrinsic perspective, exploring the world of consciousness.
Hoel offers a whirlwind tour of the two perspectives across the ages, like how the intrinsic perspective is absent from Homeric epics and earlier eras, its historical development and ultimate culmination in the invention of the novel, the separation of the two perspectives by Galileo Galilei when he recommended science remove the observer to focus solely on the extrinsic, and the reintroduction of the intrinsic perspective to science by Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA, who proposed a search for the neural correlates of consciousness that continues to this day.
Hoel shows how our picture of reality is incomplete following Galileo’s separation and emphasis on the extrinsic. The ignored intrinsic perspective sheds light on fundamental scientific questions like causation, emergence, how the brain functions, the biological purpose of dreaming, artificial intelligence, and even why humans create art. He reveals how our own culture is becoming more based in the extrinsic perspective over time, neglecting the intrinsic and forgetting the importance of human consciousness, all to its cultural, scientific, and artistic detriment.
Ultimately, the two perspectives have stood apart for too long and must be reunited. To this end Hoel proposes a way to merge the intrinsic and the extrinsic in a radical new theory of consciousness.

Erik Hoel received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Madison-Wisconsin. He is a research assistant professor at Tufts University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the NeuroTechnology Lab, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Hoel is a 2018 Forbes “30 under 30” for his neuroscientific research on consciousness. His first novel, The Revelations, was published in April 2021 by The Overlook Press. He lives in Massachusetts.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION de Sa Sainteté le Dalaï-Lama, avec Thubte Chodron

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION offers an in-depth look at bodhicitta, arhatship, and buddhahood that you can continuously refer to as you progress on the path to full awakening.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Thubte Chodron
Wisdom Publications, May 2021

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION, the sixth volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion series, continues the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the path to awakening. The previous volume, In Praise of Great Compassion, focused on opening our hearts with love and compassion for all living beings, and the present volume explains how to embody compassion and wisdom in our daily lives. Here we enter a fascinating exploration of bodhisattvas’ activities across multiple Buddhist traditions—Tibetan, Theravada, and Chinese Buddhism.
After explaining the ten perfections according to the Pali and Sanskrit traditions, the Dalai Lama presents the sophisticated schema of the four paths and fruits for sravakas and solitary realizers and the five paths for bodhisattvas. Learning about the practices mastered by these exalted practitioners inspires us with knowledge of our minds’ potential. His Holiness also describes buddha bodies, what buddhas perceive, and buddhas’ awakening activities.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama (b. 1935) is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. For sixty years, he was the also the political leader of the Tibetan people, first from the Potala Palace in Lhasa and then helping his compatriots adapt to the modern world from his residence in northern India. An advocate for science, ethics, and harmony among people of different faiths, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and travels widely in support of Buddhism, the cause of Tibet, and human happiness.

Thubten Chodron has been a Buddhist nun since 1977. A graduate of UCLA, she is the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey in Washington State. She is a popular speaker and author of numerous books, including Buddhism for Beginners.

WILD SOULS de Emma Marris

From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with—and responsibilities toward—the planet’s wild animals.

WILD SOULS: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
by Emma Marris
Bloomsbury, June 2021

Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions.
Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe-from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai’ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, WILD SOULS will change the way we think about nature—and our place within it.

Emma Marris is an award-winning journalist based in Oregon. She writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Geographic and Outside Magazine, among many others. Her work has appeared in the “Best America Science Writing 2016” and won an award from the National Association of Science Writers for an essay about wilderness in Orion. She is best known for her previous book, Rambunctious Garden (Bloomsbury, 2011) and subsequent TED Talk urging the importance of letting children experience the outdoors.

MENTAL IMMUNITY de Andy Norman

Why are some people more susceptible to bad ideas and others are more capable of repelling them?

MENTAL IMMUNITY:
Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think
by Andy Norman
HarperWave, May 2021

Andy Norman has spent years studying the destructive forces that can flip the minds of sensible people to understand how they take hold. He calls them mind-parasites, ideas that can poison our thinking and leave us more susceptible to wild conspiracies, lead us to reject scientific evidence, and convince us to double down on unfounded beliefs. Just as the body can be weakened by foreign organisms that make us sick, the mind too is vulnerable to infection. But just as antibiotics can be used to attack the biological organisms causing physical illness, we can treat the mind parasites that invade our heads. He shows us how to engage in productive discussion, analyzes the psychological evidence about how to change minds, and reveals how we can safeguard ourselves and protect those around us from mind-parasites like conspiracies and fake news. In MENTAL IMMUNITY Andy Norman calls for the study of cognitive immunology, a way of thinking where individuals and society learn to differentiate facts and reasons from disinformation and false memes. By strengthening our mental immunity, we become open to other ideas and learn how better to communicate about beliefs and policy without dissolving into partisan finger-pointing. Norman offers suggestions to create a value- and respect-based system of dialogue that can help us bolster cultural cognitive immunity as we protect our own minds from succumbing to bad ideas.
Steven Pinker will write the foreword and has already said that this is “a splendid idea for a book: original, controversial, and timely.”

Andy Norman teaches philosophy and directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. His work has appeared in Free Inquiry, Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, and dozens of other journals.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER de Ian Olasov

For several years Ian Olasov has set up “Ask-a-Philosopher” booths around New York City, answering questions from passers-by. Now in this book he offers answers to the real-life questions on people’s minds.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER:
Answers to Your Most Important—and Most Unexpected—Questions
by Ian Olasov
Thomas Dunne Books, September 2020

Ian Olasov answers questions such as:
– Are people innately good or bad?
– Is it okay to have a pet fish?
– Is it okay to have kids?
– Is color subjective?
– If humans colonize Mars, who will own the land?
– Is there life after death?
– Should I give money to homeless people?

ASK A PHILOSOPHER shows that there’s a way of making philosophy work for each of us, and that philosophy can be both perfectly continuous with everyday life, and also utterly transporting. From questions that we all wrestle with in private to questions that you never thought to ask, ASK A PHILOSOPHER will get you thinking.

Ian Olasov is an adjunct professor and doctoral candidate at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He won the American Philosophical Association’s Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize in 2016 and 2018. His Ask-a-Philosopher series has received a lot of publicity coverage over the years including in Newsweek, The New York Times, qz.com, and WNYC.