DSpace Collection:
https://hdl.handle.net/2440/15970
2024-03-28T22:28:21ZThought insertion and commitment
https://hdl.handle.net/2440/139628
Title: Thought insertion and commitment
Author: Fernandez, J.
Editor: López-Silva, P.; McClelland, T.
Abstract: Making thought insertion its central topic, this compilation gathers a series of essays that, taken as a whole, offer a broad and thoughtful approach to the clinical, phenomenological, conceptual, and experimental aspects of the systematic ...2023-01-01T00:00:00ZThe influence of classical Stoicism on Walt Whitman’s thought and work
https://hdl.handle.net/2440/139487
Title: The influence of classical Stoicism on Walt Whitman’s thought and work
Author: Chitrarasu, M.; Hill, L.
Abstract: Although scholars have long recognized that classical Stoicism affected Walt Whitman’s work, a full account of the extent of this debt has yet to be produced. Although he drew inspiration from many sources, we argue that Whitman’s “spinal ideas”—the ontological, moral, metaphysical and political threads of order in his thinking—are most consistently Stoic in origin. We do so by examining Whitman’s poetry, prose, correspondence, manuscripts, notebooks, and autobiography in the context of the primary and secondary Stoic material with which he was familiar. We demonstrate that a number of ideas at the heart of Whitman’s literary vision—his pantheism, materialism, cosmopolitanism, reconciliation of evil and death, and conceptions of both providence and virtue—were strongly indebted to Stoic thought. As background to this argument, we first explore the transmission of Stoicism to America and its reception among American readers. We also show how and why Whitman came under the influence of Stoic teachings.
Description: OnlinePubl2023-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Contents of Imagination
https://hdl.handle.net/2440/138996
Title: The Contents of Imagination
Author: Fernandez, J.
Abstract: Our imaginings seem to be similar to our perceiving and remembering episodes in that they all represent something. They all seem to have content. But what exactly is the structure and the source of the content of our imaginings? In this paper, I put forward an account of imaginative content. The main tenet of this account is that, when a subject tries to imagine a state of affairs by having some experience, their imagining has a counterfactual content. What the subject imagines is that perceiving the state of affairs would be, for them, like having that experience. I discuss three alternative views of imaginative content, and argue that none of them can account for two types of error in imagination. The proposed view, I suggest, can account for both types of error while, at the same time, preserving some intuitions which seem to motivate the alternative views.
Description: Published 28 July 20232023-01-01T00:00:00ZNaturalistic Entheogenics: Précis of Philosophy of Psychedelics
https://hdl.handle.net/2440/137882
Title: Naturalistic Entheogenics: Précis of Philosophy of Psychedelics
Author: Letheby, C.
Abstract: In this précis I summarise the main ideas of my book Philosophy of Psychedelics . The book discusses philosophical issues arising from the therapeutic use of classic psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD. The book is organised around what I call the Comforting Delusion Objection to psychedelic therapy: the concern that this novel and promising treatment relies essentially on the induction of non-naturalistic metaphysical beliefs, rendering it epistemically (and perhaps, therefore, ethically) objectionable. In the book I develop a new response to this Objection which involves showing that a popular conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality is both consistent with a naturalistic worldview and plausible in light of current scientific knowledge. Exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, but they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics cause therapeutic benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives--not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. Thus, an "Entheogenic Conception" of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth--even if no Cosmic Consciousness or divine Reality exists.
Description: This article is part of a symposium on Chris Letheby’s book “Philosophy of Psychedelics” (OUP 2021), edited by Chiara Caporuscio and Sascha Benjamin Fink.2022-01-01T00:00:00Z