Beauty By Dave Beech (Editor) Review by Jamie Buckland on Tue, Feb 9th 2010. |  | Beech's excellent anthology examines what he now considers to be the tense and estranged relationship between beauty and art in contemporary society. As he notes in his introduction, the collection is concerned with the politics of beauty after the development of Ricoeur's 'hermeneutics of suspicion' in which the subject of beauty, along with its subjective nature, has become dangerously controversial.
The controversy that gives to rise to this collection, then, is that of beauty's politicization; a controversy embedded in the relationship between an individual's subjective response to Click here to read the full review! |
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Medicine, Mental Health, Religion, Science and Well-Being Mens Sana Monographs, volume 6, issue 1 By Ajai R. Singh and Shankutala A. Singh (Editors) Review by Maria Niemi on Tue, Feb 9th 2010. | Mens Sana Monographs is a peer reviewed journal which has appeared bimonthly since 2003 and since 2007 as an annual. Medicine, Mental Health, Religion, Science and Well Being is its 6th volume with an ambitious and broad title that bears the risk of breeding high expectations in readers, which may not be easy to live up to. However, despite my initial skepticism, I found that it does indeed deliver a rich and inspiring, truly cross-disciplinary collection of monographs. The journal is "devoted to the understanding of medicine, mental health, man and their matrix" and to contributing to a healt Click here to read the full review! |  |
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Reasonably Vicious By Candace Vogler Review by Valérie Aucouturier on Tue, Feb 9th 2010. |  | How is it possible to act wrongly and rationally at the same time? It is one of the issues Reasonably Vicious addresses. To address it, Vogler chooses to follow the Aristotelian-Aquinian tradition (notably represented by Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse) and therefore focuses on practical reason on the one hand, and on the concept of the good on the other hand. She suggests an interesting way of rethinking practical reasoning within the framework of moral philosophy and reconsiders, with Aristotle, Aquinas and Anscombe, how the notion of the good could take a more cont Click here to read the full review! |
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The Imprinted Brain How Genes Set the Balance Between Autism and Psychosis By Christopher Badcock Review by Edmund O'Toole on Tue, Feb 9th 2010. | The single most predictive factor for many mental disorders is the sex of the individual, autistic spectrum disorders are more prevalent among males as are more severe forms of psychosis such as paranoid schizophrenia. Autism has long been associated with deficiencies of social cognition and self awareness but there have been autistic savants of prodigious abilities. It has often been suggested that autistic traits can be attributed to many men who have proved influential in various spheres of human endeavor, such as science, technology and mathematics. As Christopher Badcock Click here to read the full review! |  |
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Selves An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics By Galen Strawson Review by Phil Jenkins, Ph.D. on Tue, Feb 9th 2010. |  | Galen Strawson, analytic philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, tends to hold contrarian views about metaphysical subjects. While being one of England's—nay the world's—most respected analytic philosophers, in various places he argues against free will, for panpsychism, and here, in a debate that tends to be lopsided toward the view that selves don't exist, for the existence of selves. One might think that such bold moves yield interesting reading, and, perhaps counterintuitively for a 472 page work of metaphysics, one would be quite correct. However, Click here to read the full review! |
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Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism By David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Nola (Editors) Review by Paul Pfeilschiefter, M.A., on Tue, Feb 2nd 2010. | Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism is a collection of essays gathered together by editors David Braddon-Mitchell and Robert Nola, all of which are organized around a philosophical methodology that has come to be known as "The Canberra Plan." The Canberra Plan is the namesake of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and both offer solutions by way of compromises. In the case of the city, the compromise was to build an artificial city halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. The philosophical compromise, the compromise of the Canberra Planners (hereafter, "Planners"), employs conceptual Click here to read the full review! |  |
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Being Reduced New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation By Jakob Hohwy and Jesper Kallestrup (Editors) Review by Matthew M. Konig on Tue, Feb 2nd 2010. |  | It is your third date, and it has been another magical evening; one filled with sweet gestures, shared laughs, and wonderful conversation. The night culminates in your first kiss, and as you walk back to your car you are thinking, "I am in love!" The next day, as you relate your experience to your friend the neurochemist, he says, "ah, yes, oxytocin, the "love" chemical--wonderful stuff!" "What are you talking about?" you ask. He explains that oxytocin is the chemical that creates in us a sense of intimacy and connectedness, and that the production of it is increased wh Click here to read the full review! |
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The Crucible of Consciousness An Integrated Theory of Mind and Brain By Zoltan Torey Review by Joel Parthemore on Tue, Jan 26th 2010. | Zoltan Torey's new book is, in measures, exciting, provocative and infuriating. It is exciting because, contrary to what this review might be taken to imply, it has some really good ideas, not least that of a perspectival oscillation in conceptually structured thought between the observer being drawn into the foreground and pushed into the background. It is provocative because of the many strong claims that it makes, beginning with the claim that language is necessary not only for (self-) consciousness but for any meta-cognition. And it is infuriating for its failure to back up man Click here to read the full review! |  |
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