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Jan Westerhoff

Autor(a) de Reality: A Very Short Introduction

9+ Works 279 Membros 6 Reviews

Obras de Jan Westerhoff

Associated Works

The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy (2011) — Contribuinte — 25 cópias

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Conhecimento Comum

Nome padrão
Westerhoff, Jan
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author

Membros

Resenhas

This would work as an advanced undergraduate textbook. It doesn't assume much of the reader, but it does require some ability to think through details. It's a bit of a slog - it probably took me two months to crawl through. There is a lot of information here. This is all material that I have studied repeatedly over the decades, Abhidharma, Madhyamaka, Yogacara - it's pretty much a view that parallels the Tibetan perspective. It seems like East Asian Buddhism assigns different works to e.g. Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu. I don't recall Westerhoff reviewing that difference, between Tibetan and Chinese views of Indian Buddhism.

Even though the basic trajectory of ideas here is quite familiar to me, I got a lot out of reading this book. Westerhoff does a great job of inviting the reader, coaxing the reader, to thing through these ideas, to bring them to life.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
kukulaj | 1 outra resenha | Jul 9, 2023 |
The two great mysteries of philosophy have been the nature of the world and the nature of mind, and this Very Short Intro tackles their tangled relationship under four headings. First: is the world itself real? Second: is the stuff, i.e. matter, that world seems to be made from real? Third: is the mind looking out at that world real? And fourth: what about the “now” in which we’re asking these questions—is time real?
    The first of these compares the ancient “You’re dreaming all this, and will eventually wake” idea with its modern descendants: the horror-movie “You are an isolated brain in a tank” scenario (with wires and tubes feeding you a false picture of the world); and “reality” as a complete simulation, including you (and your unswerving conviction that you’re not one). Any of these could be true too: in the very near future, for instance, it will become possible to create a simulation of the entire planet at any chosen period or specific date in the past—and that is what we all are (although there’s actually a lot more to this idea than I’d realised).
    The next section, dealing with matter, takes us from Johnson “refuting” Berkeley by kicking that stone, to the quantum physics of today.
    The third, about whether you’re real yourself, specifically means that sense of a personal “I” we all seem to have. It has four main features: that it gives the appearance of existing inside the body, yet is in some way distinct from it; that while everything else comes and goes around it, this “I” seems to remain throughout an entire lifetime; that it integrates the moment-to-moment bombardment of information from both outside and inside that it’s subject to; and that it is the driver of your bodily vehicle, so to speak, the entity that thinks, remembers, feels, decides and acts. All of these may seem too obvious for words, but sadly (or perhaps not sadly at all) it’s extremely likely that not one of them is even true.
    And lastly, time, which is infernally difficult to pin down and riddled with contradictions as a concept—philosophical ones, yes, but difficulties now exacerbated by some of the findings of modern neuroscience in particular.
    Of course, our subject being the nature of reality, we first need to be crystal-clear about what we mean by “real”—like “illusion”, the word “real” is used in a wide variety of ways. The author does get round to this (gives us a list of five definitions in the chapter about matter) but I think I’d have started with those myself. Interesting read all the same.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
justlurking | outras 2 resenhas | Jun 27, 2022 |
Tibetan Buddhist writings frequently state that many of the things we perceive in the world are in fact illusory, as illusory as echoes or mirages. In Twelve Examples of Illusion, Jan Westerhoff offers an engaging look at a dozen illusions--including magic tricks, dreams, rainbows, and reflections in a mirror--showing how these phenomena can give us insight into reality. For instance, he offers a fascinating discussion of optical illusions, such as the wheel of fire (the "wheel" seen when a torch is swung rapidly in a circle), discussing Tibetan explanations of this phenomenon as well as the findings of modern psychology, and significantly clarifying the idea that most phenomena--from chairs to trees--are similar illusions. The book uses a variety of crystal-clear examples drawn from a wide variety of fields, including contemporary philosophy and cognitive science, as well as the history of science, optics, artificial intelligence, geometry, economics, and literary theory. Throughout, Westerhoff makes both Buddhist philosophical ideas and the latest theories of mind and brain come alive for the general reader.… (mais)
 
Marcado
Langri_Tangpa_Centre | Feb 5, 2021 |
Jan Westerhoff unfolds the story of one of the richest episodes in the history of Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy in the first millennium CE. He starts from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the common era and continues up to the time of Dharmakirti in the sixth century. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka's theory of emptiness, Yogacara idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual and cultural context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahayana sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main focus is the period up to the sixth century CE, Westerhoff also discusses some important thinkers who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His aim is that the historical presentation will also allow the reader to get a better systematic grasp of key Buddhist concepts such as non-self, suffering, reincarnation, karma, and nirvana.… (mais)
 
Marcado
Langri_Tangpa_Centre | 1 outra resenha | May 24, 2019 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
9
Also by
1
Membros
279
Popularidade
#83,281
Avaliação
½ 3.6
Resenhas
6
ISBNs
30
Idiomas
1

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