Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label metaphysics. Show all posts

Sense of Being Stared at Review

Sense of Being Stared at
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Sense of Being Stared at ReviewAs ever with topics of this sort, opinions tend to be polarised. Sheldrake's supporters tend to be 'up-beat' about his ideas, the sceptics - well, they'll just have to remain sceptical. If you haven't read this book - it is certainly worth looking at. For his own part, Sheldrake claims nothing - that is not already there, waiting to be acknowledged.He would be the happiest of all, if you discovered the basic truth of what he is saying, in your own experience, without pre-meditation.
It strikes me that many people are predisposed to recognise or experience - what Sheldrake is getting at. In common parlance, it used to be called 'sixth sense' - with a kind of tacit understanding that it is more marked, in some people. The title of this book (The Sense of Being Stared At) - was selected because it is a sensation which almost all of us have felt, at some time. For any perceptive person, it is probably a daily occurrence (not to be confounded with paranoia, owing to a sense of shyness). Needless to say, the obvious way to 'test' the theory - is to tackle it in the active, rather than passive sense. Try staring at someone's back on the tube or bus, and see how long it takes before they turn their heads, in the direction of the gaze. Eight times out of ten, it 'works' within 90 seconds. The strange thing, is that it also works, if you focus on a person's image reflected in a train/bus window, the curious thing being that they look in the direction of the gaze, as mediated by the reflection. It is as if they pick up a node of energy.
Of course, the whole point here, is that if minds operates with 'fields' - that there is kind of 'extended mind,' it has all sorts of dimensions, ramifications and implications. It was nice to hear one reviewer saying that Sheldrake's book had changed him, and that he'd decided to be kinder to other people. The 'sense of being stared at' is simply a test case.
Sheldrake has extended his experiments to the animal kingdom, especially the inter-action or rapport between pets and owners. There may be limitations to the 'biological' bases that Sheldrake uses to justify his experiments, not least because the powers or energies he is dealing with seem to be psychic, or psycho-physical, rather than physical. Still, I object to the remarks of certain reviewers, who suggest that there is an element of academic posing in Sheldrake's work. Luckly, I had a chance to meet Sheldrake last year - at the British Library. He struck me as a modest man, unpretentious, genuinely curious about life and its mysteries. He shew videos in the lecture theatre at the B.L., giving ample illustration to his theories -about pets who know when their owners are returning home, even when separated by hundreds of miles.
An Australian friend of mine, who had once endeavoured to educate Aborigines in the ways of the white man, returned from Ayer's Rock, totally changed in outlook, after discovering that the Aborigines invariably knew - days in advance, when someone was coming - and even the day of their arrival, without the use of a telephone or any other visible means. For them, it was a matter of fact that they could discern such things.
During my brief encounter with Sheldrake, I mentioned J.W. Dunne's book - 'An Experiment with Time' - in which Dunne related details of dreams, which concerned future events. It led Dunne to postulate his own theory of the 'extended mind' and minds as fields. Moving out of the fixed 'spatial' boundary i.e. the idea of consciousness as 'in here' - is one step. Moving beyond temporal boundaries - the idea of time as strictly 'linear' - is another.
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What is this thing called Metaphysics? Review

What is this thing called Metaphysics
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What is this thing called Metaphysics ReviewI used this book for my text in Metaphysics last semester. Brian Garrett is quite a good philosopher, maybe not such a great expositor. One of his epigrams is "Omit needless words," but while I agree that brevity is often conducive to clarity, this book, meant to be an introductory text in metaphysics, is often too compressed. I needed to find more material for the last three weeks of the semester because we had got through it. He also has a taste for deconstructing pseudoproblems, an important and useful thing to do, but this is not a particularly positive take on the subject for undergraduates. For example, why finish with "Realism and anti-realism" if one thinks that there is nothing to this discussion? Why not just leave it out? Chapter sequencing reflects no discernible narrative plan. I thought the best chapters were the ones on "Existence," "Causation," and "Personal Identity." "Time" is a fascinating topic that deserves more than McTaggart and Russell. "God" is not at this point a required chapter in a metaphysics book, if one has nothing interesting to say. I did benefit from his deflationary account of the problem of fate, as I say he is a good philosopher. As a teacher I have been much happier with Michael Loux's book Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, which is much stronger on the relevance of metaphysics for contemporary philosophy. Carter's Elements of Metaphysics has flaws but is also quite a bit sexier for teaching than this one.What is this thing called Metaphysics Overview

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