My intention in this chapter and the next is to give a persuasive account of the way in which the... more My intention in this chapter and the next is to give a persuasive account of the way in which the concept of spirit or spiritual being entered the human imaginary. As we shall see there is not one such concept, or perhaps it would be better to say that many different kinds of thing fall under the one concept. But since it is tedious to keep pluralizing I will speak of the concept in the singular. All, or nearly all, religions have some such concept and it is fundamental to them. The account that I will give of the invention of the concept is naturalistic in that it is in terms of human psychology and cultural processes that do not presuppose supernatural or non-natural interventions or conceptions. In so far as it succeeds it is a step towards naturalizing religion, that mixed class of complex constellations of beliefs, practices and institutions. We know that spirits entered human life some time in the Palaeolithic era, probably quite late in the Upper Palaeolithic, that in the course of time there emerged many different and elusive conceptions of what they are,
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 2018
The concept of wish-fulfilment as a substitutive mode of satisfying wish or desire was one of Fre... more The concept of wish-fulfilment as a substitutive mode of satisfying wish or desire was one of Freud’s most important and singular psychoanalytic innovations. In his view dreams, neurotic symptoms, conscious and unconscious phantasies, delusions, hallucinations, jokes, much art, parapraxes, omnipotent thinking, illusions such as religion, the institutions of morality and social organization are all wish-fulfilling phenomena or attempts at wish-fulfilment. Although its remit is more circumscribed in contemporary psychoanalysis, wish-fulfilment can be seen to underlie such important conceptions as omnipotent phantasy, projective identification, actualization, and so on. This chapter exposes in detail Freud’s singular innovation, relates it to some recent neuroscientific work, and shows how Freud’s initial model of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment in dream and infant phantasy gratification, together with his conception of symbolism, can be extended to explain a range of symptoms as intenti...
Many of the leading ‘new atheists’, especially those who are biological or social scientists, but... more Many of the leading ‘new atheists’, especially those who are biological or social scientists, but also some philosophers and others, have been concerned to provide naturalistic explanations of how religion evolved and of the factors that continue to sustain it. These explanations are intended to displace, and weaken the appeal of, the sorts of traditional accounts the religious themselves are apt to provide. The accounts are framed mostly in the terms of evolutionary psychology, of evolved cognitive mechanisms, genetic predisposition and neuroscience. Often they are little more than plausible conjecture, but that is not the project’s chief difficulty. Although some of the mechanisms invoked probably do play a part in the evolution of religious tendencies and the appeal of religion, they are insignificant compared to the psychosocial factors, especially the influence of the interactions between child and parental caretakers, which the new atheists almost completely ignore. Not unders...
In writing the writer does many things. He or she may make money, instruct, entertain, express ph... more In writing the writer does many things. He or she may make money, instruct, entertain, express philosophical ideas or observations, exorcise ghosts, shame or alarm the community, depict character, render scene, articulate sentences, inscribe words, waste paper and so on. The writer produces a public text and becomes the vehicle for a culture. There are a great many true descriptions of the action-events which constitute the physical process of writing, and under some of these descriptions the action-events are intentional, under others, not. Thus I may set out intentionally to earn some money, but non-intentionally, perhaps unconsciously, exorcise dying ghosts. Or, it may go the other way. The ontology of fiction is difficult, but it seems possible to divide the various descriptions of the action-events which constitute its production into the following three groups. Such things as producing sentences, framing paragraphs could be said to be for, or to go towards, the making of the w...
tag=1 data=Euthanasia, human dignity and decency. by Tamas Pataki tag=2 data=Pataki, Tamas tag=3 ... more tag=1 data=Euthanasia, human dignity and decency. by Tamas Pataki tag=2 data=Pataki, Tamas tag=3 data=Quadrant, tag=4 data=39 tag=5 data=318 tag=6 data=No. 7/8 July/Augusty 1995 tag=7 data=26,27. tag=8 data=EUTHANASIA tag=10 data=There are people who want to die because they are suffering great physical or mental pain and because death is already very near and there is no prospect of reprieve. tag=11 data=1995/1/6 tag=12 data=95/0311 tag=13 data=CAB
PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singular... more PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singularity of Freudian wish-fulfilment. A very brief history of our subject with polemical remarks. Some basic concepts for the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Four aporia and the outline of an argument. The psychoanalysis of philosophy. Notes. 2. Freud's conception of wish-fulfilment. Freud's originality. Drive and wish. The basic model of Freudian wish-fulfilment. Engrossment and belief. An aside on belief. Belief and phantasy.Some grounds for intentionalism. Notes. 3. Problems with non-intentionalism. Reprise. Some general problems with non-intentionalism. More problems for non-intentionalism. Wish-fulfilment without belief. Wish-fulfilment and 'belief-like' representations. Increasing complexity: enactment. The omnipotence of thought. Wish-fulfilment restricted. Wish-fulfilment declined. Notes. 4. Intention and deliberation in Freudian wish-fulfilment. Towards intentionalism. ...
PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singular... more PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singularity of Freudian wish-fulfilment. A very brief history of our subject with polemical remarks. Some basic concepts for the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Four aporia and the outline of an argument. The psychoanalysis of philosophy. Notes. 2. Freud's conception of wish-fulfilment. Freud's originality. Drive and wish. The basic model of Freudian wish-fulfilment. Engrossment and belief. An aside on belief. Belief and phantasy.Some grounds for intentionalism. Notes. 3. Problems with non-intentionalism. Reprise. Some general problems with non-intentionalism. More problems for non-intentionalism. Wish-fulfilment without belief. Wish-fulfilment and 'belief-like' representations. Increasing complexity: enactment. The omnipotence of thought. Wish-fulfilment restricted. Wish-fulfilment declined. Notes. 4. Intention and deliberation in Freudian wish-fulfilment. Towards intentionalism. Unconscious intention. Unconscious deliberation. Unconscious deliberation and dissociation. Unconscious deliberation and symbolism. Dissociation again. Sartre's censor argument resolved. Notes. 5. The self in self-solicitude. Reprise. A very brief history of the divided self. Freud and the structure of mind. Indulging in metaphor, hypostatising phantasy? Fairbairn. Egos, selves and personations. Personation, self-solicitude and Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. PART 2. APPLICATIONS. 6. Self-deception and delusion. Self-deception. Subintentionalism again. Self-deception and Freudian wish-fulfilment. Delusion. Delusion as Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. 7. Religion. Freud on religion. Distinctions. The religious and the religiose. Fundamentalism and the religiose. The religiose mind. Religion as Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. 8. Writing as redemption. Exhibits of loss. Some psychoanalytic approaches to loss in art. Illusion and the internal audience. Notes. 9. The insanity defence. Intention and excuse. Mental illness and excuse. A very brief history of intention in insanity. McNaughtan. Intention in madness. Notes. A word on psychiatry.
My intention in this chapter and the next is to give a persuasive account of the way in which the... more My intention in this chapter and the next is to give a persuasive account of the way in which the concept of spirit or spiritual being entered the human imaginary. As we shall see there is not one such concept, or perhaps it would be better to say that many different kinds of thing fall under the one concept. But since it is tedious to keep pluralizing I will speak of the concept in the singular. All, or nearly all, religions have some such concept and it is fundamental to them. The account that I will give of the invention of the concept is naturalistic in that it is in terms of human psychology and cultural processes that do not presuppose supernatural or non-natural interventions or conceptions. In so far as it succeeds it is a step towards naturalizing religion, that mixed class of complex constellations of beliefs, practices and institutions. We know that spirits entered human life some time in the Palaeolithic era, probably quite late in the Upper Palaeolithic, that in the course of time there emerged many different and elusive conceptions of what they are,
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 2018
The concept of wish-fulfilment as a substitutive mode of satisfying wish or desire was one of Fre... more The concept of wish-fulfilment as a substitutive mode of satisfying wish or desire was one of Freud’s most important and singular psychoanalytic innovations. In his view dreams, neurotic symptoms, conscious and unconscious phantasies, delusions, hallucinations, jokes, much art, parapraxes, omnipotent thinking, illusions such as religion, the institutions of morality and social organization are all wish-fulfilling phenomena or attempts at wish-fulfilment. Although its remit is more circumscribed in contemporary psychoanalysis, wish-fulfilment can be seen to underlie such important conceptions as omnipotent phantasy, projective identification, actualization, and so on. This chapter exposes in detail Freud’s singular innovation, relates it to some recent neuroscientific work, and shows how Freud’s initial model of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment in dream and infant phantasy gratification, together with his conception of symbolism, can be extended to explain a range of symptoms as intenti...
Many of the leading ‘new atheists’, especially those who are biological or social scientists, but... more Many of the leading ‘new atheists’, especially those who are biological or social scientists, but also some philosophers and others, have been concerned to provide naturalistic explanations of how religion evolved and of the factors that continue to sustain it. These explanations are intended to displace, and weaken the appeal of, the sorts of traditional accounts the religious themselves are apt to provide. The accounts are framed mostly in the terms of evolutionary psychology, of evolved cognitive mechanisms, genetic predisposition and neuroscience. Often they are little more than plausible conjecture, but that is not the project’s chief difficulty. Although some of the mechanisms invoked probably do play a part in the evolution of religious tendencies and the appeal of religion, they are insignificant compared to the psychosocial factors, especially the influence of the interactions between child and parental caretakers, which the new atheists almost completely ignore. Not unders...
In writing the writer does many things. He or she may make money, instruct, entertain, express ph... more In writing the writer does many things. He or she may make money, instruct, entertain, express philosophical ideas or observations, exorcise ghosts, shame or alarm the community, depict character, render scene, articulate sentences, inscribe words, waste paper and so on. The writer produces a public text and becomes the vehicle for a culture. There are a great many true descriptions of the action-events which constitute the physical process of writing, and under some of these descriptions the action-events are intentional, under others, not. Thus I may set out intentionally to earn some money, but non-intentionally, perhaps unconsciously, exorcise dying ghosts. Or, it may go the other way. The ontology of fiction is difficult, but it seems possible to divide the various descriptions of the action-events which constitute its production into the following three groups. Such things as producing sentences, framing paragraphs could be said to be for, or to go towards, the making of the w...
tag=1 data=Euthanasia, human dignity and decency. by Tamas Pataki tag=2 data=Pataki, Tamas tag=3 ... more tag=1 data=Euthanasia, human dignity and decency. by Tamas Pataki tag=2 data=Pataki, Tamas tag=3 data=Quadrant, tag=4 data=39 tag=5 data=318 tag=6 data=No. 7/8 July/Augusty 1995 tag=7 data=26,27. tag=8 data=EUTHANASIA tag=10 data=There are people who want to die because they are suffering great physical or mental pain and because death is already very near and there is no prospect of reprieve. tag=11 data=1995/1/6 tag=12 data=95/0311 tag=13 data=CAB
PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singular... more PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singularity of Freudian wish-fulfilment. A very brief history of our subject with polemical remarks. Some basic concepts for the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Four aporia and the outline of an argument. The psychoanalysis of philosophy. Notes. 2. Freud's conception of wish-fulfilment. Freud's originality. Drive and wish. The basic model of Freudian wish-fulfilment. Engrossment and belief. An aside on belief. Belief and phantasy.Some grounds for intentionalism. Notes. 3. Problems with non-intentionalism. Reprise. Some general problems with non-intentionalism. More problems for non-intentionalism. Wish-fulfilment without belief. Wish-fulfilment and 'belief-like' representations. Increasing complexity: enactment. The omnipotence of thought. Wish-fulfilment restricted. Wish-fulfilment declined. Notes. 4. Intention and deliberation in Freudian wish-fulfilment. Towards intentionalism. ...
PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singular... more PART 1. THEORY. 1. Wish and wish-fulfilment. Introduction: wish and wish-fulfilment. The singularity of Freudian wish-fulfilment. A very brief history of our subject with polemical remarks. Some basic concepts for the philosophy of psychoanalysis. Four aporia and the outline of an argument. The psychoanalysis of philosophy. Notes. 2. Freud's conception of wish-fulfilment. Freud's originality. Drive and wish. The basic model of Freudian wish-fulfilment. Engrossment and belief. An aside on belief. Belief and phantasy.Some grounds for intentionalism. Notes. 3. Problems with non-intentionalism. Reprise. Some general problems with non-intentionalism. More problems for non-intentionalism. Wish-fulfilment without belief. Wish-fulfilment and 'belief-like' representations. Increasing complexity: enactment. The omnipotence of thought. Wish-fulfilment restricted. Wish-fulfilment declined. Notes. 4. Intention and deliberation in Freudian wish-fulfilment. Towards intentionalism. Unconscious intention. Unconscious deliberation. Unconscious deliberation and dissociation. Unconscious deliberation and symbolism. Dissociation again. Sartre's censor argument resolved. Notes. 5. The self in self-solicitude. Reprise. A very brief history of the divided self. Freud and the structure of mind. Indulging in metaphor, hypostatising phantasy? Fairbairn. Egos, selves and personations. Personation, self-solicitude and Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. PART 2. APPLICATIONS. 6. Self-deception and delusion. Self-deception. Subintentionalism again. Self-deception and Freudian wish-fulfilment. Delusion. Delusion as Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. 7. Religion. Freud on religion. Distinctions. The religious and the religiose. Fundamentalism and the religiose. The religiose mind. Religion as Freudian wish-fulfilment. Notes. 8. Writing as redemption. Exhibits of loss. Some psychoanalytic approaches to loss in art. Illusion and the internal audience. Notes. 9. The insanity defence. Intention and excuse. Mental illness and excuse. A very brief history of intention in insanity. McNaughtan. Intention in madness. Notes. A word on psychiatry.
Chapter in 'New atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates' edited by Christopher Co... more Chapter in 'New atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates' edited by Christopher Cotter and Philip Quadrio (Springer 2017). The spell of evolutionary psychology has distorted the understanding of motivations to religion and led prominent new atheists to ignore the deeper psychological and social functions of religion. Misunderstanding religion they adopt polemical measures that alienate the moderate centres of religion and are especially ineffective against those extreme religious manifestations which really do need to be countered. Their intellectualist and nativist accounts of religion’s origins and persistence are, in paradoxical concert with most religions, assaults on emotional insight. It is safer to construct subpersonal cognitive models than to recognize with psychodynamic theorists the sensual currents in religious practices and the ways in which relations to divine figures represent unconscious relations, often difficult, with parents.
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The spell of evolutionary psychology has distorted the understanding of motivations to religion and led prominent new atheists to ignore the deeper psychological and social functions of religion. Misunderstanding religion they adopt polemical measures that alienate the moderate centres of religion and are especially ineffective against those extreme religious manifestations which really do need to be countered. Their intellectualist and nativist accounts of religion’s origins and persistence are, in paradoxical concert with most religions, assaults on emotional insight. It is safer to construct subpersonal cognitive models than to recognize with psychodynamic theorists the sensual currents in religious practices and the ways in which relations to divine figures represent unconscious relations, often difficult, with parents.