Michael Shermer (‘The Believing Brain’) on the Colbert Report
July 12, 2011
The calendar of upcoming releases has been moved to the sidebar “pages” section – here.
Monthly Archive July, 2011
new book – ‘The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity’ by Galen Strawson
July 6, 2011
The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity by Galen Strawson (Oxford University Press, USA, 2011)
Product description from the publisher:
The Evident Connexion presents a new reading of Hume’s ‘bundle theory’ of the self or mind, and his later rejection of it. Galen Strawson argues that the bundle theory does not claim that there are no subjects of experience, as many have supposed, or that the mind is just a series of experiences. Hume holds only that the ‘essence of the mind [is] unknown’. His claim is simply that we have no empirically respectable reason to believe in the existence of a persisting subject, or a mind that is more than a series of experiences (each with its own subject).
Why does Hume later reject the bundle theory? Many think he became dissatisfied with his account of how we come to believe in a persisting self, but Strawson suggests that the problem is more serious. The keystone of Hume’s philosophy is that our experiences are governed by a ‘uniting principle’ or ‘bond of union’. But a philosophy that takes a bundle of ontologically distinct experiences to be the only legitimate conception of the mind cannot make explanatory use of those notions in the way Hume does. As Hume says in the Appendix to the Treatise of Human Nature: having ‘loosen’d all our particular perceptions’ in the bundle theory, he is unable to ‘explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together’. This lucid book is the first to be wholly dedicated to Hume’s theory of personal identity, and presents a bold new interpretation which bears directly on current debates among scholars of Hume’s philosophy.
Strawson also has forthcoming in Oct Locke on Personal Identity (Princeton Monographs in Philosophy), (amazon.co.uk)
See also: Author’s website [updated link 7/19/13]
new book – ‘Investigating Pristine Inner Experience’ by Russell T. Hurlburt
July 1, 2011
Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Moments of Truth by Russell T. Hurlburt (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Product description from the publisher:
You live your entire waking life immersed in your inner experiences (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc.) – private phenomena created by you, just for you, your own way. Despite their intimacy and ubiquity, you probably don’t know the characteristics of your own inner phenomena; neither does psychology or consciousness science. Investigating Pristine Inner Experience explores how to apprehend inner experience in high fidelity. This book will transform your view of your own inner experience, awaken you to experiential differences between people, and thereby reframe your thinking about psychology and consciousness science, which banned the study of inner experience for most of a century and yet continued to recognize its fundamental importance. The author, a pioneer in using beepers to explore inner experience, draws on his 35 years of studies to provide fascinating and provocative views of everyday inner experience and experience in bulimia, adolescence, the elderly, schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, virtuosity, and so on.
See also: Author’s website
Hurlburt’s previous book with Eric Schwitzgebel: Describing Inner Experience?: Proponent Meets Skeptic (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology) (MIT Press, 2007)
