Just after World War II and near the halfway mark of the 20th century, philosopher Gilbert Ryle published The Concept of Mind, a book widely credited with ending the philosophical division between physical and mental realms of reality. Continue reading “Gilbert Ryle, Reconnecting Mind and Body”
A question-and-answer format may summarize free will most simply. We’ll start with some general questions first and then recall very briefly what has been contributed by specific thinkers over time.
What is free will? Continue reading “Does Free Will Exist? Summary Q & A”
“Science knows nothing of the unique fact; it can deduce laws only from facts which recur again and again…. We can understand then how it is that the person always eludes objective investigation, that it is only the personage that one finds.”
Another author writing in French, the Swiss physician and psychiatrist Paul Tournier, shaped my early search for GSOT even more than Albert Camus. Tournier wrote from a dual perspective of science and religious faith.[1] His medical training imbued respect for science, but he developed a clinical approach called médicine de la personne that moved beyond science to promote holistic healing in the person who sought his help. Continue reading “The Meaning of Persons – Paul Tournier”
Learn this: “The I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I-It.”
I first read Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Ich und Du in the original German) some 45 years ago. It sat on my shelf with little attention until I made my way back to a new understanding of Buber’s central premise – the importance of the relation expressed when I acknowledge you in meeting. Buber probes this relation in far greater depth than I managed in a previous blog. Continue reading “Ich und Du”
Searching for GSOT 