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2019

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Articles 151 - 180 of 929

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Are Humans Natural? Part 2: Exploring Human-Nature Relational Values And The Balance Of Nature, Nathan Ruhl Sep 2019

Are Humans Natural? Part 2: Exploring Human-Nature Relational Values And The Balance Of Nature, Nathan Ruhl

Open Educational Resources

This learning module is part of a series of modules that seeks to help students develop human-nature relational values. Relational values are more readily developed when the methods employed reference species/environments/landscapes/situations that students are familiar with already and may encounter during their everyday lives. In this activity students are asked to consider whether nature is in balance. The idea that nature is in balance extends deep into human history, but modern scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that nature is not in balance. Despite scientific evidence, the perception that nature is stable or in balance persists in human culture. This activity challenges …

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Are Humans Natural? Part 3: Nature Relatedness And The American Dream, Nathan Ruhl, Taylor Dobson Sep 2019

Are Humans Natural? Part 3: Nature Relatedness And The American Dream, Nathan Ruhl, Taylor Dobson

Open Educational Resources

This learning module is part of a series of activities designed to encourage students to develop relational values with nature. In this activity, students reflect on their relationship with nature and consider the impact of their plans/goals for the future on the environment and the larger goal of sustainability. Students evaluate their relationship with nature through the Nature Relatedness (NR-6) Test (Nisbet and Zelenski, 2013), compare their NR-6 score to others, consider how their goals (“dreams”) are related to the American Dream, and speculate on the attainability of sustainability given our individually driven goals for the future. This activity challenges …

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Enduring The Long Take: Tsai Ming-Liang’S Stray Dogs And The Dialectical Image, Louis Lo Sep 2019

Enduring The Long Take: Tsai Ming-Liang’S Stray Dogs And The Dialectical Image, Louis Lo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay attempts to show that Tsai’s Stray Dogs (2013) offers a social critique of Taipei as a neoliberal, global, consumer city, and by so doing establishes a cinema of contemplation through such cinematic devices as the sustained long-take and slow, virtually still cinematic images. By developing Walter Benjamin’s formulation of the dialectical image, this essay explores the extent to which Tsai’s cinematic aesthetics reveals an aspect of the city which cannot be shown otherwise. It argues that his slow cinema creates a potentially revolutionary awakening in an audience accustomed to an immersive mode of cinematic experience which turns the …

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Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment And Tantric Responsibility In Michael Ondaatje’S Anil’S Ghost, Justin M. Hewitson Sep 2019

Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment And Tantric Responsibility In Michael Ondaatje’S Anil’S Ghost, Justin M. Hewitson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment and Tantric Responsibility in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost,” Justin Hewitson argues that the global mediation of suffering following human rights abuses creates the offender-victim binary. The way in which moral judgments drive urgent peacemaking is seldom connected to long-term victimhood narratives. This psychology can exacerbate cyclical patterns of anger, exploitation, and violence by deferring responsibility. Ondaatje’s controversial novel, Anil’s Ghost, which reflects these charged accusations, refuses to settle blame on any side of the Sri Lankan conflict; instead, it offers the troubling recognition that offenders, victims, and mediators are all causal agents. Hewitson …

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An Autoethnographic Narrative Of The Relation Between Sexuality And University In Post-Revolutionary Iran, Nassereddinali Taghavian Sep 2019

An Autoethnographic Narrative Of The Relation Between Sexuality And University In Post-Revolutionary Iran, Nassereddinali Taghavian

The Qualitative Report

The main question that is addressed in this presentation is how we can interpret the situation of sexual relations in the context of higher education in Iran. The article is formed as an autoethnography, focusing on the relationship between sexuality and university in post-revolutionary Iran. Data are gathered from my own lived experiences at university both as a student and as a lecturer during about 25 years of academic life and interpreted by the technique of systematic introspection. I explore specific problems regarding sexuality at Iranian universities, such as sexual harassment and the relationship between male university professors and their …

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Applying Gadamer’S “Prejudices” To A Grounded Theory Study, Claire Manton Sep 2019

Applying Gadamer’S “Prejudices” To A Grounded Theory Study, Claire Manton

The Qualitative Report

Interpretation and analysis of qualitative data inevitably involves a collision with one’s own lived experience. This paper reflects on a postgraduate research project that employed the methodology of grounded theory to determine themes around the meaning that individuals in a school community give to the term spirituality. Reflecting on the process has highlighted ways in which unexamined personal assumptions were at play as the researcher conducted analysis, influencing the interpretation of data. It is argued here that in researching the concept of spirituality, which is both nebulous and highly subjective, becoming aware of one’s own assumptions throughout the process is …

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Transhumanism (Dot) Mil: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Technoprogressive Terms In Military Publications, K. Durwood Evans Sep 2019

Transhumanism (Dot) Mil: A Bibliometric Analysis Of Technoprogressive Terms In Military Publications, K. Durwood Evans

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Has transhumanism influenced military thinking? Previous work found that transhumanist terms did not appear widely in military publications. The present work analyzes and improves on previous content analysis of transhumanist terms in military literature using the tools of library and information studies.

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Infidelity As Reality: Re-Staging The Global South With Abbas Kiarostami’S Close-Up, Sinan Richards Sep 2019

Infidelity As Reality: Re-Staging The Global South With Abbas Kiarostami’S Close-Up, Sinan Richards

Artl@s Bulletin

In this article, we contend that, in the fields of art and visual culture, the Global South is both an elaborate lie and a radical opportunity for transformation. We investigate Kiarostami’s Close-up alongside Lacan’s psychoanalysis to show how Close-up’s filmic narrative evokes the same ‘polyvalence’ and ‘slipperiness’ as the notion of the Global South. We argue that Kiarostami’s Close-up retroactively changed Sabzian’s fate, and in so doing, Kiarostami’s re-staging actively overwrites History itself. We read the same narrative move in the concept of the Global South to suggest that the Global South adopts the Kiarostamian strategy of infidelity as reality …

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The Historical Impossibility Of A Post-Truth Society, Diego Han Sep 2019

The Historical Impossibility Of A Post-Truth Society, Diego Han

The Liminal: Interdisciplinary Journal of Technology in Education

Since 2016 the notions of post-truth and fake news have been playing an important role in the world's social and political life. They developed with the political victories of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. However, what would have happened if they had lost their political gamble? Would be still talking about post-truth and fake news? In this Op-ed, I claim that these two concepts have only political value. Furthermore, through a short reasoning, I use a historical perspective to prove how biased and vague these two notions are and how wrong the approach of calling them so is.

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Relational Inquiry: Seven-Years Practicing Seven Relationships, Gregg Lahood Sep 2019

Relational Inquiry: Seven-Years Practicing Seven Relationships, Gregg Lahood

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Greetings from Byron Bay—what follows is a postcard version of a seven-year cycle of relational inquiry retrospectively nicknamed The Rainbow of Desire. I outline our practices, explore five basic fields in our approach to new paradigm research, and present an updated version of my seven relationships model as a heuristic for understanding and participating in relational inquiry. As a contemporary spiritual expression, with roots in the Greek-Socratic tradition of research, and informed by Gestalt practice (not psychotherapy), this account may also be of value for persons interested in further Gestalt-transpersonal inquiry, research, and learning.

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Transpersonal Dimensions In Islamic Spirituality, Nikos Yiangou Sep 2019

Transpersonal Dimensions In Islamic Spirituality, Nikos Yiangou

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The Sufi tradition that arose within Islam describes a compelling and varied map of the self and its transformations. Over the span of a millennium of practice and discourse, Sufis have explored and detailed the stages of the journey of selftransformation towards their ultimate aim of union with the One. Their models of the spiritual journey and of the emergent transpersonal self, extensively contextualized in phenomenology, epistemology, theology and ontology, offer singular insights into a richly detailed holistic psychology of self-realization and the making of the complete human.

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The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer Sep 2019

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

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From Romantic Jealousy To Sympathetic Joy: Monogamy, Polyamory, And Beyond, Jorge N. Ferrer Sep 2019

From Romantic Jealousy To Sympathetic Joy: Monogamy, Polyamory, And Beyond, Jorge N. Ferrer

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper explores how the extension of contemplative qualities to intimate relationships can transform human sexual/emotional responses and relationship choices. The paper reviews contemporary findings from the field of evolutionary psychology on the twin origins of jealousy and monogamy, argues for the possibility to transform jealousy into sympathetic joy (or compersion), addresses the common objections against polyamory (or nonmonogamy), and challenges the culturally prevalent belief that the only spiritually correct sexual options are either celibacy or (lifelong or serial) monogamy. To conclude, it is suggested that the cultivation of sympathetic joy in intimate bonds can pave the way to overcome …

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The Religious And Philosophical Characteristics In A Consensually Nonmonogamous Sample, Akhila E. A. Kolesar, Seth T. Pardo Sep 2019

The Religious And Philosophical Characteristics In A Consensually Nonmonogamous Sample, Akhila E. A. Kolesar, Seth T. Pardo

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Consensual nonmonogamy refers to the variety of ways people partner romantically and/or sexually with multiple others. This study examined the spiritual identities of people who self-identify as consensually and openly partnered with more than one person, as well as if and how these identities changed since childhood. Moreover, to deepen previous transpersonal research that investigated how nonmonogamous paradigms of loving contribute to spiritual development, the study also examined between group differences of whether nonmonogamous sexual behavior and spirituality are emotionally linked. Data were gathered from 484 participants; they were mostly college-educated, Caucasian, bisexual women in their 30s, who were raised …

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Sexual Ecstasy Scale: Conceptualizations And Measurement, John Elfers, Reid Offringa Sep 2019

Sexual Ecstasy Scale: Conceptualizations And Measurement, John Elfers, Reid Offringa

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article describes the development of the Sexual Ecstasy Scale, an instrument designed to measure the specific features that emerge when sexual arousal is the trigger for an ecstatic experience. Drawing from descriptions of features of sexual ecstasy in the phenomenological literature, the authors generated an initial survey of 31 items. In Study 1, the survey was completed by a wide demographic sample (N = 331). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a 4-factor solution that was replicated in Study 2 using confirmatory factor analysis with an independent sample (N = 331) that showed strong fit indices. Internal consistency for the overall …

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Toward A New Theory Of Gender Transcendence: Insights From A Qualitative Study Of Gendered Self-Concept And Self-Expression In A Sample Of Individuals Assigned Female At Birth, Seth T. Pardo Sep 2019

Toward A New Theory Of Gender Transcendence: Insights From A Qualitative Study Of Gendered Self-Concept And Self-Expression In A Sample Of Individuals Assigned Female At Birth, Seth T. Pardo

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Sex and gender are two concepts that are often conflated in popular culture. However, those who experience dissonance between their assigned sex and gender identity intimately understand the difference between sex, a biologicallybased distinction, and gender, a confluence of social and behavioral factors that contribute to understanding who one is as well as how one is seen by others. The gendered self-understanding and self-expression of 170 North Americans who selfidentified as gender nonconforming and who were assigned female at birth were explored using a transpersonal lens and thematic analysis. Data suggested a range and variety of gendered self-concepts that aligned …

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Erotic Mindfulness: A Core Educational And Therapeutic Strategy In Somatic Sexology Practices, Marie I. Thouin-Savard Sep 2019

Erotic Mindfulness: A Core Educational And Therapeutic Strategy In Somatic Sexology Practices, Marie I. Thouin-Savard

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Somatic sexology modalities such as sexual surrogacy, sexological bodywork, masturbation coaching, and orgasmic meditation have shown significant potential for helping individuals transcend sexual difficulties and grow into more fulfilling erotic lives. The use of an embodied state of consciousness similar to neo-traditional forms of mindfulness meditation may be a common factor contributing to therapeutic efficacy in a variety of somatic sexology methods. Comparing the structure of three somatic sexology modalities—sexual surrogacy, masturbation coaching, and orgasmic meditation—with recent evidence supporting the efficacy of neo-traditional mindfulness practices in promoting women’s sexual wellbeing reveals that somatic sexology practitioners use embodied mindfulness as a …

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Divine Kink: A Consideration Of The Evidence For Bdsm As Spiritual Ritual, Sam E. Greenberg Sep 2019

Divine Kink: A Consideration Of The Evidence For Bdsm As Spiritual Ritual, Sam E. Greenberg

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper reviews the limited empirical research supporting BDSM as a spiritual ritual that enables distinct altered states of consciousness. It expands upon Sagarin, Lee, and Klement’s (2015) preliminary comparison of BDSM to extreme ritual by suggesting that BDSM bears in common with spiritual ritual elements of pain or ordeal, spiritual meaning, and transformative potential. An increasing interest in BDSM in the West is considered in light of the spiritual and ritual roles BDSM fulfills for many practitioners. The relevance of BDSM to transpersonal psychology is discussed and BDSM is considered as an area for further research in transpersonal psychology.

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The Path To Enlightenment Of Sacred Married Home Life: Grihasthya Dharma As A Guiding Ideal For The Transpersonal Marriage Therapist, Stuart Sovatsky Sep 2019

The Path To Enlightenment Of Sacred Married Home Life: Grihasthya Dharma As A Guiding Ideal For The Transpersonal Marriage Therapist, Stuart Sovatsky

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper attempts to correct the unwitting reliance of much transpersonal psychology upon Indian texts that were indigenously specific to sannyasins (nonhouseholder, monastics). This includes teachings from advaita vedanta, yoga, and many Buddhist schools on releasement from desire, the diminishing role of the ego, guardedness toward “the mellow-drama” of “worldly” life (as Ram Dass famously cast relational involvements). Some forty years of the unwitting over-application of such teachings to modern non-monastic lives has helped create an artificial split in transpersonal and East-West spirituality teachings involving “engaged/ embodied” and implied “un-engaged/un-embodied” spiritual paths. This article describes the value system and lifelong …

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Table Of Contents—Masthead Sep 2019

Table Of Contents—Masthead

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

N/A

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Science And A Whole Person Psychology: Can Participatory Empiricism Ease The Way Forward?, Glenn Hartelius Sep 2019

Science And A Whole Person Psychology: Can Participatory Empiricism Ease The Way Forward?, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

N/A

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Intimations Of A Spiritual New Age: Iii. Martin Heidegger’S Phenomenology Of Numinous/Being Experience And The “Other Beginning” Of A Futural Planetary Spirituality, Harry T. Hunt Sep 2019

Intimations Of A Spiritual New Age: Iii. Martin Heidegger’S Phenomenology Of Numinous/Being Experience And The “Other Beginning” Of A Futural Planetary Spirituality, Harry T. Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The phenomenology of numinous or Being-experience in the later Heidegger is the focus in this third in a series of papers on a group of independent figures— also including Jung, Reich, Toynbee, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil—who beginning in the crisis years of the 1930s envisioned versions of a futural “New Age” spirituality to address a globalizing materialism and its disenchantments—and so also creating a context for much of contemporary transpersonal and consciousness studies. A preliminary consideration of Heidegger in the contexts of transpersonal psychology, religious studies, the macro-histories of Toynbee and Sorokin, James on “pure experience,” and spirituality …

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The Castrated Gods And Their Castration Cults: Revenge, Punishment, And Spiritual Supremacy, Jenny Wade Sep 2019

The Castrated Gods And Their Castration Cults: Revenge, Punishment, And Spiritual Supremacy, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Voluntary castration has existed as a religious practice up to the present day, openly in India and secretively in other parts of the world. Gods in a number of different cultures were castrated, a mutilation that paradoxically tended to increase rather than diminish their powers. This cross-cultural examination of the eunuch gods examines the meaning associated with divine emasculation in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, the Roman Empire, India, and northern Europe to the degree that these meanings can be read from the wording of myths, early accounts, and the castration cults for some of these gods. Three distinct patterns of …

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Meaning-Making Among Intentionally Childless Women, Christine Brooks Sep 2019

Meaning-Making Among Intentionally Childless Women, Christine Brooks

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper is a summary of a qualitative research project that focused upon meaningmaking processes as described by intentionally childless women. A grounded theory exploration, it involved semi-structured interviews with 30 cisgendered women aged 27–61 who chose childlessness early in life. Based on principles inherent to social constructivism and feminist theories, the subjective voices of the participants were analyzed as normative expressions of female identity. The main category that accompanied intentional childlessness was a sense of freedom. In addition, two additional thematic categories focused on ways the women view their contributions to their communities and experience belonging and a sense …

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Comparative Philosophy And Decolonial Struggle: The Epistemic Injustice Of Colonization And Liberation Of Human Reason, Grant J. Silva Sep 2019

Comparative Philosophy And Decolonial Struggle: The Epistemic Injustice Of Colonization And Liberation Of Human Reason, Grant J. Silva

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This essay explores the extent to which comparative philosophy can assist decolonial struggle. In order to accomplish this task, I offer not only a description of philosophy's colonization but also an account of how this discipline remains subject to the coloniality of knowledge. In short, insofar as race, gender, class, and sexuality are considered irrelevant or accidental to the production of philosophical knowledge, professional philosophy replicates, if not continues, what Rajeev Bhargava terms the epistemic injustice of colonialism. One response to the colonization of philosophy is “diversification” by means of putting into conversation philosophers, systems, and ideas from differing cultures …

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Introduction To The Special Topic Section On Transpersonal Sexuality: Bringing Sexy Back To Transpersonal Studies, Samuel A. Malkemus, Marie I. Thouin-Savard Sep 2019

Introduction To The Special Topic Section On Transpersonal Sexuality: Bringing Sexy Back To Transpersonal Studies, Samuel A. Malkemus, Marie I. Thouin-Savard

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

N/A

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Amigeist: A New Extreme Love Phenomenon, Jeffrey Sundberg Sep 2019

Amigeist: A New Extreme Love Phenomenon, Jeffrey Sundberg

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Falling in love may begin with an inescapable, uncontrollable, transformative experience of intense emotions and intrusive thoughts, such as limerence. Romantic love researchers have tended to lump extreme love into pathology. Transpersonal psychology was chosen as the lens to examine an extreme occurrence of falling in love for its transformational and spiritual potential using a phenomenological approach. Twenty-five U.S. born participants, age 30 or older, reported experiencing a highly intense and deeply significant romantic love occurrence. Results revealed a unique experience with limited correlations to limerence. The new phenomenon is called amigeist, characterized by immediate, intense soul-mate bonding, such as …

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Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik Sep 2019

Darkness And Light: Absence And Presence In Heidegger, Derrida, And Daoism, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The light metaphor is a perpetual favorite for philosophers, both East and West. I seek to revaluate its opposite, darkness. I claim that there are good reasons to favor darkness over light, or at least to not see them as mutually incompatible or in hierarchical fashion. In recent Western philosophy, both Heidegger and Derrida argue that what the light metaphor represents, the promise of clarity and objectivity, is exactly what makes Western metaphysics problematic. In Chinese philosophy, classical Daoism offers a thinking that does not favor the light metaphor over its opposite. Daoists have the good sense to acknowledge darkness …

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A Volitional Theory Of Aesthetic Value, John Dyck Sep 2019

A Volitional Theory Of Aesthetic Value, John Dyck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I defend a volitionalist theory of aesthetic value. The volitionalist theory is a species of response-based models of aesthetic value: It holds that aesthetic value is based in a kind of human response. Traditional response-based theories of aesthetic value hold that value is based in responses of cognition, perception, desire, or pleasure. The volitional theory offers a new response as the home of aesthetic value: the will. We find things beautiful, I argue, because we orient our selves towards them; we find things ugly, I argue, because we orient our selves against them. The volitionalist theory I …

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Mentality And Fundamentality, Christopher D. Brown Sep 2019

Mentality And Fundamentality, Christopher D. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Extant well-considered problems with physicalism primarily come from two sources: philosophers of mind arguing that subjective experience does not fit into a physicalist world-picture, and metaphysicians trying to figure out the particular commitments of the view. I examine the thesis of physicalism in order to produce a clearer notion of the physical and to help straighten out physicalism’s entailments, while simultaneously providing a strategy for physicalists to sidestep well known anti-physicalist arguments concerning consciousness. This involves both a critical and a positive effort: on the critical side, I expose an issue with a popular way of understanding physicalism called “via …

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