Background
Kolak, Daniel was born on June 30, 1955 in Zagreb, Croatia. Son of Miro Kolak and Rajka (Ivosevic) Ungerer.
( Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them trem...)
Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons. Do the borders between us - physical, psychological, neurological, causal, spatial, temporal, etc. - merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded them? The central thesis of I Am You is that our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person. Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the ages (the Upanishads, Averroës, Giordano Bruno, Josiah Royce, Schrödinger, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson). In presenting his arguments, the author relies on detailed analyses of recent formal work on personal identity, especially that of Derek Parfit, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert Nozick, David Wiggins, Daniel C. Dennett and Thomas Nagel, while incorporating the views of Descartes, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kant, Husserl and Brouwer. His development of the implied moral theory is inspired by, and draws on, Rawls, Sidgwick, Kant and again Parfit. The traditional, commonsense view that we are each a separate person numerically identical to ourselves over time, i.e., that personal identity is closed under known individuating and identifying borders - what the author calls Closed Individualism - is shown to be incoherent. The demonstration that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of two new directions: either there are no continuously existing, self-identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood - the sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha, Hume and most recently Derek Parfit, what the author calls Empty Individualism - or else you are everyone, i.e., personal identity is not closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls Open Individualism. In making his case, the author: - offers a new explanation both of consciousness and of self-consciousness - constructs a new theory of Self - explains psychopathologies (e.g. multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia) - shows Open Individualism to be the best competing explanation of who we are - provides the metaphysical foundations for global ethics. The book is intended for philosophers and the philosophically inclined - physicists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, economists, and communication theorists. It is accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1402029993/?tag=2022091-20
(This book should be of interest to inroductory coures in ...)
This book should be of interest to inroductory coures in philosophy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534145981/?tag=2022091-20
(IN SEARCH OF GOD is the only book designed specifically t...)
IN SEARCH OF GOD is the only book designed specifically to move students into a true philosophical position of unknowing, not just abstractly, but by using a hands-on, practical method the author has developed over many years of teaching. Thus, the book is designed not to present reason and argument for one side and then the other, so that students can then just make up their minds and then go cheer for their side, but to use reason and argument to guide students to a center from whose unprejudiced and open-minded vantage point they are ready to engage and do philosophy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534195369/?tag=2022091-20
(Invites students to get excited about philosophy and to e...)
Invites students to get excited about philosophy and to explore how philosophy affects them. Fourteen lively chapters take students deep into the world of philosophical thinking and challenge them to grapple with lifes big questions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/053425974X/?tag=2022091-20
(Philosophy arises from the attempt to understand and answ...)
Philosophy arises from the attempt to understand and answer questions of ultimate concern: Who am I? Where do I-and everything else-come from? What, if anything is the meaning of my life? Initial answers to such questions tend to be handed down from religious and cultural authorities. How your respond can make a great difference to how you lead your life. This book helps you understand your questions and how to deal with them.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0030541972/?tag=2022091-20
(This lively, succinct history tells philosophy’s big stor...)
This lively, succinct history tells philosophy’s big story by relating developments through chronological time to the theme that philosophy is about unifying insights, not opposing systems of thought. A primary or secondary text for courses in introductory philosophy or the history of philosophy, From the Pre-Socratics to the Present presents the philosophers whose insights have had the greatest impact in the discipline.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559349751/?tag=2022091-20
(By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, ...)
By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, this text invites students to get excited about philosophy and to explore how philosophy affects them. Fourteen lively chapters take students deep into the world of philosophical thinking and challenge them to ponder life's big questions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534533701/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8430957677/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012UU4HUQ/?tag=2022091-20
(This is the most exciting and comprehensive text with int...)
This is the most exciting and comprehensive text with integrated readings for introducing students to philosophy. It presents the big picture with all the right details. The central idea is to embed the best excerpts from the most important writings of the most important philosophers into one seamless, coherent adventure story in such a way that the reader takes part in the process of discovery. Instead of reading about philosophy, readers acquire philosophical insights into themselves and the world by acquiring a knowledge of philosophical ideas presented in their original contexts. Organized both historically and topically, the book can be used either chronologically or by topics, and to facilitate this for instructors it contains two separate tables of contents. The book covers all the major philosophers from the pre-Socratics to twentieth-century philosophy with a scope wide enough to embrace all schools and traditions-from the analytic and continental to non-western. This approach enables readers to understand the connection between many different ways of looking at ourselves and the world, to obtain a broad and multi-perspectival vision of all the best that philosophy has had to offer, by building philosophical bridges across national, cultural, religious, historical, and scholarly borders.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534541461/?tag=2022091-20
(That what we are directly in contact with is not the obje...)
That what we are directly in contact with is not the objective mind-independent world out there but our own mind is the most difficult insight for philosophy students to grasp. The representational nature of perception, the interpretive elements in our experience, the functional of the relationship between concepts and percepts, the inner workings of the mind, are so close and ever-present to us that we hardly notice them. The gradual awakening to the presence and workings of our own minds, the contributions our own thoughts and concepts make to the world we experience, required many centuries of gradual development. Giving just the philosophical results outside of their context, without working through their historical development, tends to remove the philosophical power of the very realizations about mind that have been involved in the progress of philosophy over the last twenty-five centuries. Currently there is no other book on the market that fills this historical gap. This is a volume of original sources organized chronologically to give students a sense of the evolution of the concept of mind over the last twenty-five hundred years.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534214207/?tag=2022091-20
( Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them trem...)
Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons. Do the borders between us - physical, psychological, neurological, causal, spatial, temporal, etc. - merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded them? The central thesis of I Am You is that our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person. Variations on this heretical theme have been voiced periodically throughout the ages (the Upanishads, Averroës, Giordano Bruno, Josiah Royce, Schrödinger, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson). In presenting his arguments, the author relies on detailed analyses of recent formal work on personal identity, especially that of Derek Parfit, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert Nozick, David Wiggins, Daniel C. Dennett and Thomas Nagel, while incorporating the views of Descartes, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Kant, Husserl and Brouwer. His development of the implied moral theory is inspired by, and draws on, Rawls, Sidgwick, Kant and again Parfit. The traditional, commonsense view that we are each a separate person numerically identical to ourselves over time, i.e., that personal identity is closed under known individuating and identifying borders - what the author calls Closed Individualism - is shown to be incoherent. The demonstration that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of two new directions: either there are no continuously existing, self-identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood - the sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha, Hume and most recently Derek Parfit, what the author calls Empty Individualism - or else you are everyone, i.e., personal identity is not closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls Open Individualism. In making his case, the author: - offers a new explanation both of consciousness and of self-consciousness - constructs a new theory of Self - explains psychopathologies (e.g. multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia) - shows Open Individualism to be the best competing explanation of who we are - provides the metaphysical foundations for global ethics. The book is intended for philosophers and the philosophically inclined - physicists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, economists, and communication theorists. It is accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9048167647/?tag=2022091-20
(By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, ...)
By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, this text invites students to get excited about philosophy and to explore how philosophy affects them. Fourteen lively chapters take students deep into the world of philosophical thinking and challenge them to ponder life's big questions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534534651/?tag=2022091-20
(Not so much a text as a philosophical adventure story, th...)
Not so much a text as a philosophical adventure story, this book explores questions of consciousness, dreams vs. reality, the nature of the self, the search for wisdom, and the meaning of life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534239285/?tag=2022091-20
Kolak, Daniel was born on June 30, 1955 in Zagreb, Croatia. Son of Miro Kolak and Rajka (Ivosevic) Ungerer.
Bachelor, University Maryland, 1978. Master of Arts, University Maryland, 1981. Doctor of Philosophy, University Maryland, 1986.
Instructor, University College, Maryland., 1983-1986; assistant professor, Towson (Maryland.) State University, 1986-1987; assistant professor, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, 1987-1989; assistant professor, William Paterson U., Wayne, New Jersey, 1989-1995; professor, chairman, director Cognitive Science Laboratory, William Paterson U., Wayne, New Jersey, since 1995. Theatrical director Source Theater, Washington, 1980-1985, composer, musician, 1980-1985. Musician with various jazz artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Byrd, since 1976.
(Philosophy arises from the attempt to understand and answ...)
(IN SEARCH OF GOD is the only book designed specifically t...)
(This lively, succinct history tells philosophy’s big stor...)
(That what we are directly in contact with is not the obje...)
(By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, ...)
(By speaking directly to the students in a personal tone, ...)
(This is the most exciting and comprehensive text with int...)
(Not so much a text as a philosophical adventure story, th...)
(Invites students to get excited about philosophy and to e...)
(This book should be of interest to inroductory coures in ...)
( Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them trem...)
( Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them trem...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
Married Wendy Zentz, July 28, 1991. Children: Julia, Sophia.
