... in Descartes. The chapter explains how blocking out the world and refocusing attention on the mind's operations is a necessary step to separate the mind's contribution to perception and cognition. attention Bacon Francis Descartes René science dualism scholasticism intermediary attention as Exercitia...

... in cognition, biology, and morality. The chapter discusses how individuals make choices and take action, but do so within the confines of their cultural understandings and as these conform to the existing social order. Much of the work of educational institutions is therefore less concerned with teaching...

...This chapter discusses Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the metamorphoses of form. Goethe's biological and literary writings of the 1790s radicalize Kant's insights. On the one hand, he emphasizes the “metamorphic” fluidity of both natural forms and human cognition; on the other, he stresses...

...This chapter discusses the essence of words, which are the medium for human cognition. A word is the combination of the sounds of the voice and noises drawn out by our organs of speech, and it can be effectively pronounced or only indicated through a letter or by some other means, for example...

... Academic Skeptics knowledge cognition Platonism As we saw in the first chapter , one of the elements of UP is antiskepticism. Aristotle’s testimony strongly suggests that Plato was, for virtually his entire career, wedded to the view that knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) is possible and that it is not of sensible...

...This chapter considers the origin and development of Philanthropism, situating this pedagogical project within a line of antiauthoritarian epistemological and pedagogical thought reaching back to René Descartes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These thinkers advocate methods of cognition...

...This chapter examines how the physical and cognitive duality of surprise informs the moral poetics of John Milton's Paradise Lost. More specifically, it considers what it means to be “surprised by sin” as well as the cognitive and affective dimensions of Miltonic free will. It also...

...This chapter examines resources in Augustine of Hippo's thought for those wishing to counter skeptical attacks on sensation. Despite his unwillingness to countenance sensation as a means of apprehension, Augustine insists that the senses are reliable instruments of cognition. Most important, he...

...This chapter evaluates the relationship between language and thought. The distinction that accompanies the birth of a word is followed by the synthetic consciousness of what it in fact is: naming, judgment, cognition. What is cognoscible remains undiminished in its being, though it enters our...

... the reduction of pain. Another potential consequence is a shift in the decisions as to which species to protect, or in priorities among them, according to the levels of their cognitive capacities. The postscript considers how alternative approaches to traditional utilitarian animal ethics emerged against...

...This chapter raises an argument against distinctions between performative and authentic expressions of boredom. It explains how popular culture routinely associates boredom with creativity. However, philosophers of boredom have elaborated on the implications of boredom for cognition, freedom...