The author argues for three interconnected theses which provide a cognitive account for why humans intuitively believe that others survive death. The first thesis, from which the second and third theses follow, is that the acceptance of afterlife beliefs is predisposed by a specific, and already well-documented, imaginative process - the offline social reasoning process. The second thesis is that afterlife beliefs are social in nature. The third thesis is that the living imagine the deceased as socially embodied in such (...) a way as to continue to fulfill on-going social obligations with others. The author further suggests six reasons why the fantasy/reality distinction breaks down for the imaginer such that the continued existence of the decedent in the afterlife is believed to be real. Finally, the author suggests avenues for further research which would support this cognitive account. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 89-103 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Philosophical AestheticsDonald Phillip VereneIs there an aesthetics of philosophy? Does philosophical discourse have a foundation in sense and sensibility? If the answer to these questions is affirmative and there is in some sense a philosophical aesthetics, what conclusions might be drawn for philosophical education?Put another way: Does philosophy require the power of the imagination and the product (...) of this power-image? Or is philosophy the product of the pure concept, the rational idea? Does philosophical reason rest upon a logic that resides in thought alone that is expressed essentially in principles and arguments disconnected from images and sentiment?The Philosophical ImaginaryThe French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff says:Whether one looks for a characterization of philosophical discourse to Plato, to Hegel or to Bréhier, one always meets with a reference to the rational, the concept, the argued, the logical, the abstract. Even when a certain coyness leads some authorities to pretend that they do not know what philosophy is, no agnosticism remains about what philosophy is not. Philosophy is not a story, not a pictorial description, not a work of pure literature. Philosophical discourse is inscribed and declares its status as philosophy through a break with myth, fable, the poetic, the domain of the image. 1Le Doeuff continues:If, however, one goes looking for this philosophy in the texts which are meant to embody it, the least that can be said is that it is not to be found there in a pure state. We shall also find statues that breathe the scent of roses, comedies, tragedies, architects, foundations, dwellings, [End Page 89] doors and windows, sand, navigators, various musical instruments, islands, clocks, horses, donkeys and even a lion, representatives of every craft and trade, scenes of sea and storm, forests and trees: in short, a whole pictorial world sufficient to decorate even the dryest "History of Philosophy." 2Le Doeuff points to Hegel's work as an example of the claim that the sole form of philosophy is thought. Yet the works of Hegel, like those of Plato, are full of images. Plato and Hegel are masters of metaphor. One can say of them what Aristotle says in the Poetics, that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others and it is a sign of genius. For the right use of metaphor requires an eye for similarities in dissimilars." 3 Despite his mastery of metaphor, in the Republic Plato uses his doctrine of eidos to criticize the power of eikon to present truth. Hegel, in the Phenomenology, uses his doctrine of the Begriff to claim that the Bild cannot produce the science of the absolute. Plato and Hegel say one thing in their texts, but in the texts themselves they do another. Plato's dialogues are filled with metaphors and likely stories from the Ring of Gyges to the metaphor of the Sun to the tale of Atlantis, as are Hegel's works, from the "night in which all cows are black" to the phrenological skull to the owl of Minerva that flies only at the falling of dusk.How are we to comprehend the extremes of philosophical doctrine on the one hand and the discourse that expresses it on the other? Is the discourse simply the outer shell of the doctrine, inessential to its truth, or does the doctrine itself require for its truth all that is needed for its proper statement?I wish to seek the answer to this by connecting Plato to Hegel, using Vico as an intermediary, in particular Vico's conception of la sapienza poetica (poetic wisdom) and his conception of the universale fantastico (imaginative universal). My claim is that philosophical discourse, as well as philosophy itself, depends upon an aesthetic that cannot be overcome by reason, that there is a philosophical imaginary that necessarily accompanies philosophical rationality. The concept, the idea, always has a shadow, a doppelgänger through which... (shrink)

Abstract: This article presents a strategy for introducing Presocratic thought to students in a manner that is both engaging and relevant. The first section addresses students' reactions to the claim that the Presocratics were the first philosophers. The second section considers how the fragmentary state of Presocratic thought does not hinder its comprehension. The third section proposes a classroom exercise for testing the scientific merits of each of the Presocratic theories. The final section proposes the use of a mock trial (...) as a means of applying the materialist approach introduced by the Presocratics to contemporary debates about free will and determinism. (shrink)

(2004). Is There a History of Educational Philosophy? John White vs the historical evidence. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 35-56.

While post-modernist assaults on modernity correctly expose the pretensions of modernity – including its constructs of meaning in history, its abnegation of mystery, and its lapses into scientism, historicism, and relativism – the philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan discerned progress as well as decline in recent intellectual history. In part this is because under contemporary conditions we can avoid the pretensions of modernity, since – in the wake of modern science and modern historical scholarship – we witness the differentiation of (...) interiority, which, properly understood as the discovery of the self, may be seen as leading to a new integration of the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral, and the historical. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Max Weber, Edward Shils, Charles Camic and Thomas Spence Smith, among others, this article analyzes the effect of the breakdown of charismatic groups on tragic protagonists. Because criticism has usually focused on the isolation of tragic figures, little attention has been paid to group formation and group dissolution as significant components of tragedy. Yet group function makes a manifest contribution to tragic denouement: the vicissitudes of charismatic authority not only reflect but often bring about the (...) catastrophes in tragic drama. The article demonstrates this thesis in a concluding discussion of Shakespeare's Othello. (shrink)

This is a Big Book from one of Canada's preeminent philosophers. It aims at nothing less than to define what characterizes modernity, and then to tell us what is wrong with it. Like many a Big Book, it is predictably full of interesting things, and equally predictably disappointing, not to say feeble, in some of the central theses for which it argues. But then what more, in philosophy, can we really expect? It's what we tell our students: you don't have (...) to be right, and you don't have to make me agree with you, but you do have to produce interesting arguments and show that you have thought seriously about the issues. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Vygotsky’s holism by considering his usage of ‘microcosm’ and chronicling the term’s origin and development. This exploration leads first to Spinoza’s monism as the primordial source of Vygotsky’s holism. Then, I present the notion of microcosm in the context of German Romanticism and J. W. Goethe. Humboldt’s Cosmos and Lotze’s Microcosmus are presented as 19th-century exemplars of the holistic tradition. Finally, I examine Vygotsky’s usage of the term ‘microcosm’ and argue that this concept cannot be (...) fully understood outside the long tradition of holism in western philosophy. This understanding helps to explain apparent contradictions in his texts as well as affinities with his contemporaries’ philosophy of life and German holistic approaches. (shrink)

The primary significance of the adoption of Black’s (1962) interaction view of metaphor by Hesse in her network model of theories (1966, 1972 and 1974) and in her network model of meanings (1984a) is the fact that it leads to a fundamental modification of the hypothetical-deductive account of scientific theorizing and a relativization of the traditional logical positivist distinction between observation language and theory language. Hesse argues that what holds for metaphorical language in ordinary language use, namely that it is (...) affected by the contextual interaction between the various elements present in the metaphor, is also true of scientific models. They function in a similar fashion (1972, p. 254). She does not reject the distinction between literal and metaphorical language, but claims that the distinction is a pragmatic one. The distinction concerns the way in which speakers learn, use, and if necessary, define the words of their language. (shrink)

The philosophy of Bernard Williams, recognised as a prominent expression of ethical thought, presents an intense dialogue with ancient Greek tragic culture. Combining erudition and elegance, Williams evokes Greek tragedies to discuss modern ethical ideas and conceptions. Our article intends to consider Williams’ thought from a cultural point of view: we propose analysing Williams’ cultural methodology, which may be described as a way of thinking beyond the traditional dichotomies between the ancient and the modern, especially concerning the notion of the (...) tragic. Accordingly, we shall examine the affinities between ancient and modern tragic cultures by identifying common narrative and poetical elements. To do so, we shall consider the interpretation of Hamlet, developed by the classicist scholar H.D.F. Kitto. In Form and Meaning in Drama: A Study of Six Greek Plays and of “Hamlet” (1956), Kitto proposes reading Hamlet in close alliance with Oedipus Tyrannus. Kitto maintains that both tragedies are poetical expressions of a shared tragic element: miasma, or “pollution”, a concept thoroughly treated by Williams in the third chapter of Shame and Necessity. Our article aims to combine Williams’ cultural methodology—we may call it the deconstruction of the repeated theoretical frameworks regarding the differences between the ancient and the modern—and Kitto’s reading of Hamlet in line with Oedipus Tyrannus, which may be understood as an illustration of the persistence of common tragic elements beyond time and the historical separation of cultural periods. Our perspective shall be both cultural and aesthetical. (shrink)