This was printed long ago at a transitional phase in the writer's life. It speaks of the angst of being alone in a cooling world.

Eleonore Stump has argued that the fulfilment of union between God and human beings requires a mode of relatedness that can be compared to joint attention, a phenomenon studied in contemporary experimental psychology. Stump’s account of union, however, is challenged by the fact that mother Teresa, despite her apparent manifestation of the love of God to others, herself experienced an interior ”dark night of the soul’ during which God seemed to be absent and to have rejected her (...) completely. The dark night of the soul poses a problem for Stump’s account, since, if anyone had a union of divine love with God, it would seem that mother Teresa did. Nevertheless, I argue that the isolation and abandonment of mother Teresa’s dark night are contrary to the conditions assumed to be required for joint attention with God. As an alternative to Stump’s account, I suggest that the dark night of the soul might be better understood by reference to a combination of joint attention and blindsight, according to which interpersonal closeness might be realized through a consistent pattern of external actions without, however, a direct awareness of one person by the other. (shrink)

The ”dark night of the soul’ is a common motif in Christian spiritual writing; and the locus classicus for this motif is the work of John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite friar of the sixteenth century. My aim in this paper is to use John’s account of the ”night’ to consider how the themes of mystery, humility and religious practice may be subsumed, and related to one another, within a Christian conception of God and of (...) human life lived out in relation to God. (shrink)

Over a hundred years have passed since the birth of behaviorism or behavioristic psychology, often regarded as the "first force" in contemporary psychology. Many might assume that "the dark night of behaviorism" has subsided once and for all, especially since the behavioristic paradigm has been superseded by the cognitive revolution and other developments, such as psychoanalysis ("second force"), humanistic psychology ("third force") and transpersonal psychology ("fourth force"). However, this assumption would be incorrect as it initiated one of the (...) most powerful currents of modern psychology in the twentieth century. Thus it launched an assault on the human microcosm by decisively abolishing, if not radically trivializing, the role of the psyche or soul and the spiritual dimension in an unparalleled fashion. Although less known, this destructive paradigm was perhaps even more influential than psychoanalysis that predates its existence but did not emerge into a movement in America until later on, nonetheless behaviorism has had an irrevocable impact on the way that the human psyche was universally understood across the diverse cultures prior to the advent of modernism and the development of modern psychology. (shrink)

Some recent considerations of religion and psychiatry have drawn a distinction between pathological and spiritual/mystical experiences of mental phenomena typically regarded as within the realm of psychiatry (e.g. depression, hearing voices, seeing visions/hallucinations). Such a distinction has clinical implications, particularly in relation to whether some religious people who suffer from depression, hear voices, or see visions should be biomedically treated. Approaching this question from a theological and philosophical perspective, I draw a distinction between (what I call) ‘spiritual health’ (SH) and (...) ‘potentially transformative’ (PT) theologies, arguing that a PT model is therapeutically and philosophically more sound than a SH one. I then apply this to the clinical debate in critical dialogue with Dein and Durà-Vilà’s 2009 article, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul: spiritual distress and psychiatric implications’. My primary focus is on depression, though the discussion is also relevant to debates about psychosis and schizophrenia. (shrink)

The monopolistic tendency of modern science in asserting itself as the exclusive interpreter of the human psyche or mind through its psychology does so while negating the most crucial dimension that makes it a complete psychology, the metaphysical order as is found across the world in all times and places. The reductionistic turn of modern Western psychology away from its metaphysical roots has deformed the original “science of the soul” rendering it null and void. That spirituality and metaphysics have (...) been marginalized and deemed irrelevant in modern science was assumed to be the logical course of progress. Ironically, however, their fundamental absence is the reason contemporary psychology is in disarray. Numerous individuals may see this as preposterous and think that to suggest this is to turn back the clock to the dark ages of knowledge. However, if psychology is returned to its origin in metaphysics, sacred science, and spiritual principles, it can again become worthy of being called a “science of the soul.” This interview with Islamic philosopher, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on the discipline of psychology explores the original meaning of the “science of the soul” as it is understood across the diverse cultures of the world. (shrink)

Philosophy and psychoanalysis should address the problem of sorrow qua melancholia and even, in a popular manner, Major Depressive Disorder. I have tried to take both philosophy as a therapeutic tool, as well as use DSM criteria to help the lonely.

At Republic 435c-d and again at 504b-e, Plato has Socrates object to the city/soul analogy and declare that a “longer way” is necessary for gaining a more “exact grasp” of the soul. I argue that it is in the Philebus, in Socrates’ presentation of the “god-given” method of dialectic and in his distinctions of the kinds of pleasure and knowledge, that Plato offers the resources for reaching this alternative account. To show this, I explore (1) the limitations of (...) the tripartition of the soul that Socrates’ own objections in the Republic suggest, (2) the route of the “longer way” through the Eleatic dialogues to the Philebus, (3) the procedures that constitute the “god-given” method and the structure of the eidetic field it discloses, and (4) the resources that, considered in light of the method, Socrates’ distinctions of the kinds of pleasure and knowledge provide for the more “exact grasp” of the soul. (shrink)

This is an essay I entered in a competition about the Bhagavad Gita. Probably written about 2,000 years ago; this writing is perhaps the greatest philosophical expression of Hinduism. I was attracted to the contest because the website included a very favourable comment about the Bhagavad Gita by Albert Einstein (see below). For a while, I actually considered it possible that I’d win the contest. But that time has passed. The winner has been announced and I can now see my (...) entry for what it is – a naïve attempt to preach science to the religionists, as well as a naïve attempt to preach religion to the scientists. -/- There’s a statement in the essay which I’m wondering about. I said, “However, the concept of possessing a soul is not automatically supported. The idea of having a reincarnating soul would be an easy way of explaining immortality thousands of years ago when people were completely unfamiliar with the scientific facts of an eternal universe, Einstein’s Unified Field, and fractal geometry.” I still think this might be correct. But “might” is the word. I’m wondering about something I later wrote – could the ghostly immaterial body described below be what we call the soul? If such a body is developed in the future to overcome present limitations, could it be referred to as a soul if it travels into the past and is absorbed into a physical body? (It might be what the Bhagavad Gita refers to as the Supersoul, and might be quantum entangled with all space and all time. And if the physical brain is receptive to this so-called entangled soul’s knowledge of everything in space and time, the presently accepted limits to acquiring knowledge would, to use the below quote of Einstein’s, be “superfluous”). The preceding agrees with Zen Buddhism's idea of intuitively getting in touch with your inner self. -/- From “Physics and Philosophy Beyond the Standard Model” (http://vixra.org/abs/1411.0585) – “In 1925, the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli discovered the exclusion principle. This says two similar particles cannot have both the same position and velocity. If two electrons could have identical positions and velocities, they could all collapse into a roughly uniform, dense “soup”. Protons and neutrons would do the same, and there would be no well-defined atoms. So we need the exclusion principle. Force-carrying particles like photons and gravitons do not obey the exclusion principle so we might assume the immaterial body wouldn’t be well-defined and would collapse into a ghostly soup. But perhaps a well-defined structure can be built if the photons are first stopped. The potential for photons to possess mass by having their digital sequence altered and being converted to other particles – or the potential for programming the photons - may make this definition possible. A chrononaut whose body is defined by mass would still have a gravitational effect, and be dark matter. But if she or he would rather not be a lump of dark matter, her or his body might be defined by programming photons and gravitons; creating a body of “light matter”. The beginnings of this technology may be in [43] which speaks of one photon being “stuck” to another.” . (shrink)

The Soul is considered, both for religions and philosophy, to be the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, conferring individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. For most theologies, the Soul is further defined as that part of the individual, which partakes of divinity and transcends the body in different explanations. But, regardless of the philosophical background in which a specific theology gives the transcendence of the soul as (...) the source of its everlasting essence – often considered to survive the death of the body –, it is always appraised as a higher existence for which all should fight for. In this regard, all religious beliefs assert that there are many unseen battles aiming to take hold of the human soul, either between divinity and evil, or between worlds, or even between the body and the soul itself. These unseen battles over the human soul raging in the whole world made it the central item of the entire universe, both for the visible and the unseen worlds, an item of which whoever takes possession will also become the ruler of the universe. Through this philosophy, the value of the soul became abysmal, incommensurable, and without resemblance. The point for making such a broad overview of the soul in religious beliefs is the question of whether we can build an interfaith discourse based on the religions’ most debated and valuable issue, soul? Regardless of the variety of religious beliefs on what seems to be the soul, there is always a residual consideration in them that makes the soul more important than the body. This universal impression is due to another belief or instead need of believing that above and beyond this seen, palpable, finite life and the world should exist another one, infinite, transcendent, and available all the same after here. This variety stretches from the minimum impact that soul has on the body, as being the superior essence that inhabitants and enlivens the matter, to the highest impact in which soul has nothing to do with matter[1] and is only ephemeral linked to it, but its existence is not at all limited, defined or depended on the matter [2], or even placed to the extreme, as the very life of the matter thus this seen universe is merely a thought in the soul/mind [3]. In this extensive variety of soul overviews, the emphasis of the soul’s importance gives an inverse significance to the body/matter, from being everything that matters to a thin, dwindle item that has no existence at all outside consciousness. (shrink)

The article "Philosophia of Pure Mind: Declassification of the basic Biblical Mysteries" offers a tool for solving biblical mysteries — this is the philosophy of pure mind, which brings to life conceptual thinking with private and extremely general comparative concepts — concepts of practical mind and categories of pure mind. From these positions, an active study of the fundamental biblical mysteries is carried out, and not just their description or discussion. The investigation implies their comprehension related to the understanding of (...) reality, which we find in the first lines of the Torah, in which comparative concepts are represented by gradation (light and darkness, day and night) and orthogonal views, i.e. the relationship between two pairs of opposites (day and night — evening and morning): "And there was evening, and it was morning: day one." Thus, through the concepts of practical mind, the author reveals the general idea of the Creator, reflecting the harmony of nature in Words, each of which is a comparative concept of one kind or another. This is the key to uncovering the Biblical mysteries, namely: how the Word of God relates to the mystery of the fall, to the mysteries of the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Sign of the Cross. Finally, how the proposed thinking helps to understand and gain a more complete understanding of the essence of these mysteries within the framework of one more general problem. Moreover, the root of all these problems, in my opinion, is that the mind thinking of people, given to them, as well as to all living things from nature through sensations, was supplemented by a person with a multi-valued reason thinking with classification concepts of natural language. In this connection, the natural human mind, through unambiguous comparative concepts, was supplanted by reason, apparently absent in animals. All of this unfolds against the background of three successive Reformations, which gave rise to three Abrahamic religions dating back to the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, Abraham. Whereas the beginning of these reforms is associated with the struggle of Moses for faith in the invisible God Yahweh, perceived as a civil war between the supporters of Moses as one part of the Jews with another part of them worshipping the God of their ancestors, the creator of all things — Ilohim. The article concludes with an understanding of the 4th Reformation, which aimed to create a modern synthetic religion with the help of AI. (shrink)

This article reexamines Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil in The Life Divine. According to my reconstruction, his response has three key dimensions: first, a skeptical theist refutation of arguments from evil against God’s existence; second, a theodicy of “spiritual evolution,” according to which the experience of suffering is necessary for the soul’s spiritual growth; and third, a panentheistic conception of the Divine Saccidānanda as the sole reality which playfully manifests as everything and everyone in the (...) universe. While a number of scholars have already discussed Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I elucidate the skeptical theist dimension of his theodicy, which previous scholars have overlooked. Third, I argue that Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may have been shaped, in part, by the teachings of Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa. Along the way, I also reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying Aurobindo’s various theodical arguments. In the concluding section, I suggest that there are conceptual resources within Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy. (shrink)

The paper gives (I) a short introduction to Aristotle’s theory of the soul in distinction to Plato’s and tries again (II) to answer the question of whether the individual or the general active mind of human beings is immortal by interpreting “When separated (χωρισθεìς)” (de An. III, 5, 430a22) as the decisive argument for the latter view. This strategy of limiting the question has the advantage of avoiding the probably undecidable question of whether this active νοῦς is human or (...) divine. The paper closes with an outlook (III) on the Christian belief in the resurrection of body and soul in a spiritual body (σῶμα πνευματικóν) (1 Corinthians: 15, 44) by accentuating the ethical aspect of the belief in individual immortality as a “need of reason” (Vernunftbedürfnis) (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, A 256–258). (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

This essay is a comparison between Schelling's and Blanchot's conceptions of the night of the imaginary. Schelling is the most romantic of the German idealist philosophers and Blanchot the most extreme of the French “deconstructionists.“ Their historical link is actually indirect, but they offer two complementary views on the “same“ impersonal nocturnal experience of the imaginary, the approach of which requires a certain self-overcoming of philosophy towards literature.

Is it not surprising that we look with so much pleasure and emotion at works of art that were made thousands of years ago? Works depicting people we do not know, people whose backgrounds are usually a mystery to us, who lived in a very different society and time and who, moreover, have been ‘frozen’ by the artist in a very deliberate pose. It was the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle who observed in his Poetics that people could apparently be moved (...) even by the imitation of a person or an act. And although we are usually well aware that it is a simulacrum, not a real situation, it nevertheless sometimes seems as if we ourselves are standing there on the stage or in the painting, so intense and emotional is our response, even though we are just spectators. Aristotle concludes from this that we have intellectual capacities which allow us put ourselves in another’s place and consequently to react to simulated situations as though they are actually happening to us, here and now. In this process, he contends, observation, memory, imagination and emotions are crucial elements. In the past it was not customary to invoke human mental faculties to explain our response to works of art. The Ancient Greeks, after all, knew little about the human body or brain and usually referred to the extended world of the gods in their endeavours to comprehend the ‘inner world’ of human beings. In our time the situation is completely different—such an allusion to the brain no longer surprises us. Whether it is about the mystery of the consciousness, the question of free will or accounts of bizarre psychological aberrations or disorders, we have become accustomed to references to parts of the brain, to images of brain scans, to reports about neural networks and the like. However, because there are so many factors that play a part in our appreciation of works of art we need a complex explanation for it, and it is not enough to look only at certain properties of the brain that are determined by evolution. Those properties are shared by every human being, and so are rather useless in explaining people’s different reactions to the same work of art. Evidently the brains of individuals differ so much that they make it possible for people to respond differently to one and the same artwork. This, of course, raises questions concerning the painted emotions that can be seen in this exhibition. Virtually everyone, after all, is fascinated by such paintings and usually recognizes the emotions they represent. The reactions to these painted emotions are also often similar. This is probably why artworks like this are generally highly valued, then and now, here and elsewhere: from the enigmatically smiling Egyptian Queen Nefertiti and the startled Rembrandt to a seemingly despairing African mask. Aristotle observed that in the theatre players imitate actions that are associated with emotions in a number of ways and that these emotions are shared in a particular fashion by the playwright, the actors and the audience. The audience may even be carried away by these emotions to such an extent that they are in a sense purged of them and can subsequently leave the theatre relieved. Are such emotional reactions perhaps related to the fact that emotions are universal and that brains respond similarly to them? Is this why we can so readily identify painted emotions? May we therefore also assume that the properties of the brain determined by evolution help us to explain these emotions? In answering these questions we shall discuss a number of insights into emotions in psychology and brain science and explore some theories about the possible function of emotions and their expression. (shrink)

The paper deals with the "deuteros plous", literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s "Phaedo", the key passage being Phd. 99e4–100a3. The second voyage refers to what Plato’s Socrates calls his “flight into the logoi”. Elaborating on the subject, the author first (I) provides a non-standard interpretation of the passage in question, and then (II) outlines the philosophical problem that it seems to imply, and, finally, (III) tries to apply this philosophical problem to the "ultimate (...) final proof" of immortality and to draw an analogy with the ontological argument for the existence of God, as proposed by Descartes in his 5th "Meditation". The main points are as follows: (a) the “flight into the logoi” can have two different interpretations, a common one and an astonishing one, and (b) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’s ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th "Meditation" and the "ultimate final proof" for the immortality of the soul in the "Phaedo". (shrink)

This article’s conclusion is that the theories of Einstein are generally correct and will still be relevant in the next century (there will be modifications necessary for development of quantum gravity). Those Einsteinian theories are Special Relativity, General Relativity, and the title of a paper he published in 1919 which asked if gravitation plays a role in the composition of elementary particles of matter. This paper was the bridge between General Relativity and the Unified Field Theory he sought during the (...) last 25 years of his life. In an article published in the "Annals of Physics" in 1957, Charles Misner and John Wheeler claimed that Einstein's latest equations demonstrated the unified field theory. But Einstein himself felt he had not fully succeeded. The present article begins with Olbers’ paradox (why is the sky dark at night?) Then it briefly proceeds to the subjects of Newtonian gravity, quantum entanglement, gravitational waves, E=mc^2, dark energy, dark matter, cosmic expansion, redshift, blueshift, the cosmic microwave background, the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, and explanation of advanced waves travelling back in time. The section “vector-tensor-scalar geometry” touches on mass, quantum spin, the Higgs boson and Higgs field, stellar jets, the pervasiveness of photons and gravitons, and supersymmetry. Then come half a dozen paragraphs referring to formation of planets, black holes, and bosons of the weak and strong nuclear forces. They end with Descartes’ space-matter relation. Also added are paragraphs about simply-connected mathematics, non-orientability, consciousness, the Law of Falling Bodies, the multiverse, space-time travel developed from maths’ Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem and from an experiment in electrical engineering performed at Yale University, development from future space-time travel of human flight in the manner of fiction’s Superman and Supergirl, as well as downloaded band-gap implants in the brain that could deal with forms of matter. They could add or delete anything and everything we choose by emulating computers’ copy/paste function to add things; as well as their delete function, to remove things. To complete my seemingly unusual ideas, 6 sections are added – 1) “Advanced and Retarded Waves” is extended to include dinosaurs, ageing, and photography, 2) there’s a bit about space-time warping and “imaginary” computers, 3) several paragraphs about restoring health (even gaining immortality) by using gravity, 4) a section about superconductivity and the electric or magnetic fields of planets (this section mentions Mercury, Planet 9 and precession), 5) a section titled EXPLAINING OCEAN TIDES WHEN GENERAL RELATIVITY SAYS GRAVITY IS A PUSH CAUSED BY THE CURVATURE OF SPACE-TIME (this has subsections about M-Sigma, Geysers on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, and A Brief History of Gravity), plus 5) the potential of COVID-19 to create the Golden Rule, world peace, eternal life, and a non-economic world that doesn’t use any form of money (no cash, credit cards, digital currency, etc.) The final section is called DISTANT-FUTURE SCIENCE INTERPRETED BY RELIGIONS AS SUPERNATURAL and introduces an idea for becoming immortal in these physical bodies. If the Theory of Everything sought by physicists applies to all space-time, then every person’s brain must be entangled with the 22nd century (and far beyond that time too). (shrink)

Does Aristotle offer a definition of the soul? In fact, he rejects the possibility of defining the soul univocally. Because “life” is a homonymous concept, so too is “soul”. Given the specific causal role that Aristotle envisages for form and essence, the soul requires multiple different definitions to capture how it functions as a cause in each form of life. Aristotle suggests demonstrations can be given which express these causal definitions; I reconstruct these demonstrations in the (...) paper. (shrink)

The conventional view is that Enlightenment thinkers all believed that the fruits of Reason would always be beneficial. Is this accurate? Laclos's celebrated novel "Les Liaisons dangereueses", published in 1782, provides a perspective on the world of Reason that certainly does not square with that view. Working at the level of individual psychology, Reason in Laclos's novel divides the world into the strong and the weak – more specifically, the astute and the naïve. It defines human worth in terms of (...) a capacity to deceive and control others, a capacity that can only be fully expressed by the complete defeat and humiliation of one’s adversary. (shrink)

This essay argues that Plato in the Republic needs an account of why and how the three distinct parts of the soul are parts of one soul, and it draws on the Phaedrus and Gorgias to develop an account of compositional unity that fits what is said in the Republic.

In the tripartite psychology of the Republic, Plato characterizes the “spirited” part of the soul as the “ally of reason”: like the auxiliaries of the just city, whose distinctive job is to support the policies and judgments passed down by the rulers, spirit’s distinctive “job” in the soul is to support and defend the practical decisions and commands of the reasoning part. This is to include not only defense against external enemies who might interfere with those commands, but (...) also, and most importantly, defense against unruly appetites within the individual’s own soul.1 Spirit, according to this picture, is by nature reason’s faithful auxiliary in the soul, while appetite is always a potential enemy to be watched .. (shrink)

The paper examines the account of the mortal parts of the human soul in theTimaeus. What is their nature? What is their relationship to the immortal part of the soul and its inner structure on the one hand, and to the body and its organs and their functioning on the other? Are they incorporeal or corporeal? What kind of movement do they have? In what sense precisely are they ‘another kind of soul’ ?

This paper is intended as a critical examination of the question of when and under what conditions the use of computer simulations is beneficial to scientific explanations. This objective is pursued in two steps: First, I try to establish clear criteria that simulations must meet in order to be explanatory. Basically, a simulation has explanatory power only if it includes all causally relevant factors of a given empirical configuration and if the simulation delivers stable results within the measurement inaccuracies of (...) the input parameters. -/- In the second step, I examine a few examples of Axelrod-style simulations as they have been used to understand the evolution of cooperation (Axelrod, Schüßler). These simulations do not meet the criteria for explanatory validity and it can be shown, as I believe, that they lead us astray from the scientific problems they have been addressed to solve. (shrink)

Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have contributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s aesthetics. I will reveal (...) an interpretation of the aesthetic of the Stoics which has more explanatory power for the history of aesthetic theory than a history of aesthetic theory which leaves out the Stoics. (shrink)

In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume argues for a provocative account of the soul; the soul - or self, as he prefers to call it - is nothing but a bundle of perceptions. But this bold thesis, concedes Hume, gives rise to a predicament concerning two incompatible propositions, or principles as he calls them: one on the nature of perceptions, the other on the capabilities of the mind: "In short, there are two principles, which I cannot render (...) consistent; nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences". But the situation is not hopeless, thinks Hume. Someone might be able to show that these principles are actually consistent: "Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more mature reflection, may discover some hypothesis, that will reconcile those contradictions". (Treatise 636, my emphasis) My paper is an attempt to throw light on this important component in Hume’s analysis of his account of the self. In the course of our investigation of Hume's suggestion that an hypothesis can resolve his contradiction we will learn more about his conception of a contradiction - ultimately enriching our understanding of his account of the soul. (shrink)

Ancient intellectuals from Gorgias of Leontini forward employed the notion of 'imprinting' the soul in order to describe various sorts of psychic affections. The dominant context for this scientific language remains juridical both in 4th Century philosophy (e.g. Plato's description of the soul being whipped in the Gorgias) and in religion (e.g. the soul's imprint as keyword in "Orphic" Gold Tablets). This tradition continues in the fragments of Plutarch's de Libidine et Aegritudine, although without proper attention to (...) its origins in the Sophists. (shrink)

This is a 2020 revision of my 1988 dissertation "The Choreography of the Soul" with a new Foreword, a new Conclusion, a substantially revised Preface and Introduction, and many improvements to the body of the work. However, the thesis remains the same. A theory of consciousness and trance states--including psychedelic experience--is developed. Consciousness can be analyzed into two distinct but generally interrelated systems, which I call System X and System Y. System X is the emotional-visceral-kinaesthetic body. System X is (...) a harmonic system of "endokinetic" (internal bodily) and "ectokinetic" (emotionally expressive) movement. System Y is a "teleokinetic" (goal directed) system that includes language, cognition, perception, voluntary motor control, manipulation of the environment, etc. Contrary to theories of consciousness prevalent in the Western philosophical traditions that begin with Plato, I argue that System Y is secondary to and dependent upon System X, not the reverse. In building my thesis I draw upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, Jungian depth psychology, political anthropology, modern neuroscience, Pythagorean music theory, and the mathematical theory of harmonic systems. (shrink)

This review essay introduces Brian Treanor’s Melancholic Joy in dialogue with themes in Nietzsche’s thought. The book invites this comparison in its penultimate section, which distinguishes briefly its own account from the tenets of Dionysiac pessimism. Finding that section fertile, but tantalizingly short, I parse in greater detail relevant points of convergence and divergence. The first section, “After Nietzsche,” follows Nietzsche’s development out of the first naïveté of ascetic idealism and into the wanderer’s night of biting suspicion. It likens (...) Nietzsche’s leonine eschewal of metaphysics and morals to Treanor’s sober engagement with the fruits of the physics and philosophy that have ripened in between. The second section, “Second Innocence,” contrasts Nietzsche’s vision of childlike innocence after nihilism, a renaissance beyond good and evil, with Treanor’s vital response to an updated nihilism: a love of world that refuses to deny the many realities of evil, and that responds by embracing the many mundane realities of joy. (shrink)

At Phaedo 86b7–c2 Simmias puts forward the theory that the soul is the attunement of bodily elements. Many scholars have claimed that this theory originates in the Pythagoreans, especially Philolaus. The claim is largely based on their reading of the Phaedo, since we have scarce doxographical evidence. In this paper I show that the dialogue in question does not constitute any evidence for the Pythagorean origin of Simmias’ attunement theory, and that it rather represents the theory as stemming from (...) a materialistic world view that had become widespread among people at that time. I also pursue the question how and why, then, the attunement theory was able to attract many people, by examining its relation to Socrates’ affinity argument. (shrink)

Does the soul have powers? If so, what general account can philosophy give of powers of the soul? One can broach some of Thomas Aquinas’s more obscure teachings concerning the soul and its powers, such as that the soul alone is the subject of some powers and that powers flow from the soul, by asking these broad questions. Many commentators have preferred, however, to focus on specific powers of the soul, which has resulted in (...) detailed studies of, for example, the intellect and the will. Here, however, I take up powers of the soul in general and, through a causal analysis of their being, articulate what they are. (shrink)

During the Renaissance, psychology was enriched and refined by the recovery of ancient texts. The study of the soul became critical for the understanding of man and supportive to other fields of philosophy. Utopian texts refer to the soul and its significance for human nature. Almost all the writers of utopian texts focus their attention on the question of the immortality of the soul. In this position, they rely heavily on the happiness of their state, since, without (...) faith in the immortality of the soul, the citizens will be led to wrongdoing and illegality. It is interesting enough that these writers do not attempt to prove the immortality of the soul through rational argumentation. Their main concern is the imposition of this doctrine in order to strengthen the state. (shrink)

Roger Scruton is dismissed by those who do not care to study him as a conservative philosopher. This review shows how Scruton is in fact more a theologian than a philosopher. This review is contrarian in tone to the reviews of Scruton to be found online and restores him as the rightful heir to theologians like Barth, Bultmann etc.

The Parmenides is arguably the pivotal text for understanding the Platonic corpus as a whole. I offer a critical analysis that takes as its key the closely constructed dramatic context and mimetic irony of the dialogue. Read with these in view, the contradictory characterizations of the "one" in the hypotheses dissolve and reform as stages in a systematic response to the objections that Parmenides earlier posed to the young Socrates' notions of forms and participation, potentially liberating Socrates from his dependence (...) on sensible simile and yielding a distinctively conceptual articulation of the difference and relation of forms and their sensible participants. The dialogue as a whole thereby functions as the means for the "conversion" of the soul to eidetic being for which Plato has the elder Socrates call in Republic VII. (shrink)

The component structures of two distinct neuropsychological systems are described. "System-Y" depends upon "system-X" which, on the other hand, can operate independently of system-Y. System-X provides a matrix upon which system-Y must operate, and, system-Y is transformed by the operations of system-X. In addition these neuropsychological structures reverberate in political history and in the cosmos. The most fundamental structure in the soul, in society, and in the cosmos, has the form of a conical spiral. It can be described mathematically (...) as an harmonic system and mythologically in terms of the birth, marriage and death of the divine-king. ;System-Y corresponds to the neocortex. System-X corresponds to the region below the cortex including the limbic brain. Many of the essential structures of system-Y are captured by Plato's image of the helmsman: orientation, locomotion, manual control and dexterity, visual guidance, verbal command, intention, and volition. System-X on the other hand has been systematically neglected by Western culture, beginning with Plato. ;The dissertation builds upon Yakovlev's distinction between "teleokinesis," "ectokinesis" and "endokinesis." "Teleokinesis" refers to goal-directed action in external space, and belongs to system-Y. Ectokinesis and endokinesis are components of system-X. "Endokinesis" refers to movements within the body. "Ectokinesis" refers to the emotions, which are expressions of endokinesis. The mechanics of ectokinesis is that of an harmonic or vibrational system, as is the mechanics of a musical instrument. ;Within a trance the structure of system-Y is temporarily altered, such that system-X enters the foreground of awareness. Because ectokinesis is analogous to music cultures inspired by trance experience understand the universe in terms of music. The structure of ectokinesis in a trance is that of a conical spiral. Plato inherited the mystical traditions of the ancient Near East but replaced the spiral of emotions with a spiral of ideas , by understanding the axis of the cone as the paradigmatic dimension, and the angular rotation of the spiral as the syntagmatic dimension, of language. Finally I explain how the mythology and political structure of theocratic society imitated the neuropsychological structures of trance experience. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has shown Nietzsche to offer an original and insightful moral psychology centering on a motivational feature he calls ‘will to power.’ In many places, though, Nietzsche presents will to power differently, as the ‘essence of life,’ an account of ‘organic function,’ even offering it as a correction to physiologists. This paper clarifies the scope and purpose of will to power by identifying the historical physiological view at which Nietzsche directs his criticisms and by identifying his purpose in doing (...) so. Nietzsche’s criticism, it is argued, is a widespread and pre-Darwinian description of the basic dispositions of organisms and their internal processes. The purpose of this criticism is to undermine the efforts of Herbert Spencer and Arthur Schopenhauer to derive moral-psychological insights from that description. The paper concludes that Nietzsche’s proposal to conceive of ‘organic function’ in terms of will to power is of little import for his moral psychology besides clearing away competing views. (shrink)

A review of Joshua Farris's The Creation of Self: A Case for the Soul.

At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against (...) dualism fail, such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form (...) of Aristotelian discrimination (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

Without doubt already ‘higher’ animals which as such have phenomenal perception possess an animalic soul. The contrasting comparison of animal and robot proves to be revealing: What does the animal have that the robot does not? A key role here plays Hegel’s interpretation, which can be addressed as a phenomenology of the ‘animalic soul’. His dictum ‘Only what is living feels a lack’ refers to the principle of self-preservation which governs everything organic. Concerning higher animals this too appears (...) as the basis of the soul: Everything, which the animal perceives thus has existential sense, self-preservation-sense. At the same time it becomes clear that robot perception is not capable of a constitution of sense, but is characterized by dementia of sense. Concretely systemtheoretically regarded, the relatedness to sense of the animal subject is here interpreted as an emergence phenomenon of the system constituted by the cooperative of perception, valuation and behavior (perc-val-act-system). In this emergentist perspective, there is, as it were, the dualism of solely-physical being and of immaterial-mental being, which at the same time is a monism with regard to the physical basis alltogether. (shrink)

For many of our contemporaries, there is no more pressing issue than the acute ecological challenges facing the planet. Environmental degradation has reached a tipping point, but how have we fallen into such a predicament? At a deeper level, this critical situation can be seen as a mirror that reflects the spiritual crisis gripping the soul of humanity today. This commenced with the secularizing impetus of the Enlightenment project, which has led to a diminished understanding of the human psyche (...) and the cosmos itself. The anomaly of modern Western psychology is that it stems from the same desacralized and reductionistic outlook. By contrast, a deep-seated connection between sentient beings, the environment, and the Spirit has been recognized in all other times and places, throughout humanity’s traditional civilizations. By a resurrection of a “science of the soul” via a rehabilitated sacred cosmology, the spiritual roots of the ecological crisis can be restored and seen in a proper light. This essay examines the metaphysical dimension of the environmental crisis. The framework employed for this study is the “transpersonal” perspective of the perennial psychology—an application of the insights found in the world’s great wisdom traditions. The objective of the study is to propose a more holistic approach to understanding the essential relationship between our humanity and the natural environment—in all of its boundless and complex variety—seen as a manifestation of divine reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: A report on the pioneering of a new pedagogy designed to challenge students to use and improve their memory, increase their awareness of logical fallacies and tacitly embedded contradiction(s) and sensitize them to the deeply symbolic nature of thought in all its expressions (math, logos, music, picture and motor skills), as created, by the author, from in situ research at a senior level (ESL) course in Storytelling at one of East Asia’s premiere second languages university, and from teaching children (...) in several university summer programs. -/- As a Visiting Professor of Foreign Languages, I recently had a glorious opportunity to innovate curriculum and teaching techniques in an East Asian university classroom. Under the auspices of teaching senior level thematic courses in English as a Foreign Language, or more specifically, “storytelling,” I was blessed with the opportunity to innovate both on the level of curriculum and pedagogy. -/- But let me backtrack to set up my story from the start. All of this began in a children’s ESL class at a private language institute where I was given some newly formed intermediate level English classes for middle school students on a new campus that had yet to form a library. While waiting for my standard textbooks to arrive I began innovating with one of my own childrens’ stories titled The Tale of the Purple People Eater (a three page mythic story written in the late 90s. Please see appendix). In working with this story, because I envisioned presenting it orally (from memory) at first as a way to introduce students to memory arts exercises, I was compelled to read it over many times, which, to my surprise revealed a troubling feature: it was riddled with contradictions in every paragraph. At any rate, with the middle school aged students I only touched on this feature very briefly and focused more on language acquisition exercises. The tale nevertheless impressed upon me this bizarre aspect of language where a story can appear naturally cogent on the surface, but can also come apart at the seems if taken “literally.” Hence, later while teaching Storytelling in university with a rather dry textbook, I was invited to supplement the class with exercises of my own. Here I was curious to try work shopping the ‘Tale of The Purple People Eater’ with young adults. This involved three stages: 1) Memory work — or engaging with the unpublished story orally; 2) Exploring the contradictory nature of language and thought; 3) Probing the “deeply-symbolic” nature of meaning. -/- Of course, all of these levels have a long history of precedence in our civilization. Memory arts — though defunct now — had been highly developed in the ancient world, not least among bards who performed oral recitations from memory of the entire Illiad and Odyssey. Dialectics — now transmuted into the debate for show and prizes — had a deeper epistemological mission to discover truth and achieve enlightenment (i.e. Socrates, Boethius and St-Augustine). And if it could not be done via contradictory-prone rationality, it would do it by re-attaching or re-membering broken meanings via the sym-bol (“throwing together”), as per our lineage of platonic poets who created a world compelling enough to make us ask where Jesus went during his (underworld journey) three days in the crypt? Or, and, on what terrain did Dante travel? -/- Lets look at all three: Memory work can be very simple: it amounts to an oral recitation of the story in class followed by a homework assignment wherein the students are asked to reproduce the story (in writing) from memory. They can then compare ‘notes’ in class and by working in groups attempt to produce one version per group of the story in question. In this way we invite them to engage with ‘live’ stories as did our oral-history ancestors. Likewise, by writing it down (“for the first time”) they are re-living the act of our first bardic writer(s) who wove together a collection of competing versions of a popular legend to produce a standard. Very primal work! If Plato thought that writing meant the end of memory in his time, imagine what smart phones are doing to memory now. Contradictions too are easy to work with. It suffices to project a written version of the teacher’s story on the classroom screen — no note taking! — and let students have ample time to read it over and over, at first to check with their own memorized version, and later to seek out logical contradictions in the prose. Any way to ‘repair’ the story? Does it lose credibility because of contradictions? Can it be real without being true? Can it be true without being real? Do reality (L. res = matter) and truth (Gk. a-leithea = un-forgetting) etymologically speaking, share the same domain? -/- Further, if below the surface-meaning the story falls apart, its apparent mythical meaning immediately is called into question. This is a good time to ask the students to propose a (deeper) interpretation. On the surface, the obvious meaning of the Tale of the Purple People Eater, a world in which a purple ogre predatorily feasted on the purple race of the United Peoples of Benetton (a multi-racial nation representing every “skin colour of the rainbow”), revolves around racism, and indeed everyone save for one, thought the story was about racism. -/- I, the author, had the challenge of discovering the deeper meaning of my own story. Because it was written inspirationally one morning, the way we might record the memory of a dream from the night before in a journal, I also was ignorant of the story’s meaning. As luck would have it, a few days before I was to give my class feedback on their interpretations, a meditation on the color “purple” led to the book “The Color Purple” which I first heard of from a friend who, in my reply to a question about the book she was reading (in 1985), summarized it succinctly in one sentence about a black woman’s sexual awakening and liberation. I quickly got the book from the university library as well as the film which I viewed several times before my next class. -/- To my utter amazement, after reading the Tale of the Purple People Eater in light of the Color Purple and adjusting the meaning of color in the tale from the color of people’s complexion to the “color of people’s souls” (to commensurate with the film) as depicted in their clothing and other accoutrements (e.g. automobiles) as reflective of the “health of their souls” (white for revolt, purple for majesty, etc…) where the enslaved Celie is surrounded by drab lifeless colors in the beginning of the film in contrast to the liberated woman she has become in the end of the story symbolized by the extraordinary intensity of the purple shawl that bedecks her like an African queen, the tale can be considered, in part, as a kind of back story of the inner evolution of the book’s and film’s protagonist. -/- Many other cross-polenised metaphors come to the fore: Hippocrates in the tale is the mail man in the film; St-Yves anti-ageing gel is a metaphor for remaining in “childhood (sexual) slavery”; the Ex-Thrax vaccine is the spiritual laxative in the form of letters from Africa (from Ex-Lax and Thrace, a “wild place”) that eases Celie out of her yoke; the egg-shaped conference table with the pointy end in the tale is the kitchen table in the last meeting where Celie threatens her husband with the pointy end of the knife in the film… -/- Of course, the students could not be expected to decode the meaning of a story of this nature whose collective unconscious connotations the author himself had to go to great lengths to excavate almost like a detective of the subconscious. What was important here was the shared engagement between mind and narrative and how it acted as a vehicle for 1) re-membering, 2) becoming aware that all language is a metaphorical cover and 3) that the deep symbol and fused metaphor are divided not by external time and space but by external reality (in the Latin sense, res) and internal truth (in the Greek sense, aleithea). Myth then, in its highest meaning is a hybrid form (of these two) of narrative. Hence both parts real and true. (shrink)

I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to (...) the body’s influences. In the second section, I argue that every psychic disorder is a disruption of the motions of the inner psychic circles by the body; moreover, I defend my translation of 86b. In the final section, I argue that the goal of education is to restore the circles to their original orbits, and I disarm a possible objection that bad education is also a cause of psychic disorder. (shrink)

This paper concerns Plato’s characterization of the body as the soul’s tool. I take perception as an example of the body’s usefulness. I explore the Timaeus’ view that perception provides us with models of orderliness. Then, I argue that perception of confusing sensible objects is necessary for our cognitive development too. Lastly, I consider the instrumentality relationship more generally and its place in Plato’s teleological worldview.

Descartes claims that the passions of the soul are “all in their nature good” even though they exaggerate the value of their objects, have the potential to deceive us, and often mislead us. What, then, can he mean by this? In this paper, I argue that these effects of the passions are only problematic when we incorrectly take their goodness to consist in their informing us of harms and benefits to the mind-body composite. Instead, the passions are good in (...) their motivational function, which they carry out by representing objects and situations as having various properties and thereby appearing to be “reasons of goodness.” Further, I argue that the main way in which the passions are problematic is merely an occasional physiological byproduct of a well- functioning system. I show, therefore, that the passions’ motivational function, representationality, and accompanying physiology are all significant and interrelated aspects of their goodness. (shrink)

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (...) (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’? (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since they (...) minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism. (shrink)