Imprint Academic

Recent Titles

Against Sortition?

The Problem with Citizens' Assemblies
Geoffrey Grandjean

This book presents the institutionalization of sortition while questioning its political consequences in terms of representation and deliberation. Several examples are used, such as the Citizens' Climate Convention in France and the Conference on the Future of Europe.



Philosophers and the Meaning of Life

Paul W.B. Marsden

What is 'the meaning of life'? This book aims to summarise and discuss 3,500 years of philosophy on the topic in order to make these ideas accessible to the layperson. It aims to cover the most important thinkers who addressed the meaning of and in life in their work, and from their ideas emerges a possible model of a 'Best Self'.



Humberto Maturana

Reflections on Bringing Forth Worlds
Frederick Steier

This volume is grounded in a deep appreciation of the rich and cohesive constellation of ideas developed by Humberto Maturana which, taken as a whole, can be understood as a biocultural matrix of human understanding.



Mary Catherine Bateson

Compositions in Living Cybernetics
Frederick Steier

This collection of essays from authors representing a range of disciplines from anthropology to design to creativity and spirituality, as well as transdisciplinary perspectives that are at the heart of cybernetics, honours Mary Catherine Bateson's life and work.



The Hope of the Poor

Philosophy, Religion and Economic Development
Gordon Graham

Is economic development the best hope for the world's poor? This book aims to add a philosophical dimension to the debate about this question. The author argues in favour of replacing quantitative assessments of wealth and poverty with a qualitative account of the ways in which human lives can be enriched or impoverished.



The Keys to Democracy

Sortition as a New Model for Citizen Power
Maurice Pope

In this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about democracy, Maurice Pope presents a new model of governance that replaces elected politicians with assemblies selected by lot. The re-introduction of sortition, he believes, offers a way out of gridlock, apathy, alienation and polarisation by giving citizens back their voice.



The Tango of Ethics

Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering
Jonathan Leighton

A key paradigm in The Tango of Ethics is the conflict and interplay between two fundamentally different ways of seeing and being in the world — that of the intuitive human being who wants to lead a meaningful life and thrive, and that of the detached, rational agent who wants to prevent unbearable suffering from occurring.



Is Consciousness Everywhere?

Essays on Panpsychism
Philip Goff

This volume, originally a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, uses the recent writings of Philip Goff as a jumping-off point for discussions of panpsychism — the idea that consciousness is a fundamental and pervasive aspect of our universe that cannot be understood in other, more basic, terms.



The Sentient Robot

The Last Two Hurdles in the Race to Build Artificial Superintelligence
Rupert Robson

Rupert Robson argues that we are now just two conceptual hurdles away from developing artificial superintelligence. The first of the two hurdles is to embed consciousness in AI, thereby giving us the sentient robot. The second is about the developmental step needed in AI design so as to achieve human-level flexibility in thought.



The Architecture of Ideas

The Life and Work of Ranulph Glanville, Cybernetician
Bill Seaman

This book contains a collection of writings related to the work of Ranulph Glanville. The editor, Bill Seaman, includes a piece titled 'Composing Composing' which explores a number of Glanville's texts. Also included is an interview with Glanville titled 'A Long Conversation', and a text by Aartle Hulstein, Ranulph's wife.



Character and Virtues

10 Years of the Jubilee Centre
Aidan P. Thompson

This book captures the key areas of focus of the Jubilee Centre's work over the past ten years. It would be of interest to those who have followed any part of the Jubilee Centre’s journey since 2012, as well as researchers into character and virtues and character educators in schools and universities.



Rethinking Thinking

Problem Solving from Sun Tzu to Google
Martin Cohen

Everyone, as the French philosopher René Descartes pointed out long ago, thinks. That's the easy bit. The harder part, and what this book is really about, is how to make your thinking original and effective. The focus here is on practical suggestions about ways to think better.



Democracy in Crisis

Lessons from Ancient Athens
Jeff Miller

From the storming of the Capitol and the rise of authoritarian rhetoric and politicians to the challenge of global warming, liberal democracy faces a twin crisis of legitimacy and efficacy. Democracy in Crisis points to long neglected resources from the world's first democracy - Ancient Athens - prompting us to think beyond our current practices.



Idealism & Experience

The Philosophy of Guido de Ruggiero
Bruce Haddock

Idealism & Experience: The Philosophy of Guido de Ruggiero comprises eight new critical essays, as well as English translations of five of de Ruggiero's most important shorter writings, which chart the development of his thought between 1914 and 1946.



Dylan at 80

It used to go like that, and now it goes like this
Gary Browning

2021 marks Bob Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. The essays in this book explore the Nobel laureate's masks, collectively reflecting upon their meaning through time, change, movement, and age.



Shadow, Self, Spirit

Essays in Transpersonal Psychology
Michael Daniels

Transpersonal Psychology concerns the study of those states and processes in which people experience a deeper sense of who they are, or a greater sense of connectedness with others, with nature, or the spiritual dimension. This book brings together the author's writings on the topic over recent years in a new and enlarged edition.



Quality of Life

A Post-Pandemic Philosophy of Medicine
Robin Downie

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the need for a fresh look at health and health care. This book offers a philosophical critique of medicine as applied science, but more positively it stresses the social causes of disease and argues for greater equity in the distribution of resources and the benefits of a wider evidence-base for medical treatments.



Selfhood, Autism and Thought Insertion

Mihretu P. Guta

This book, a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, highlights some excellent examples of the complex nature of first-person thoughts as they figure in linguistics, autism, thought insertion in schizophrenia, and the phenomenon of mental autonomy.



Radical Transformation

The Unexpected Interplay of Consciousness and Reality
Imants Barušs

In Radical Transformation, Imants Barušs leads the reader out of the receding materialist paradigm into an emerging post-materialist landscape in which new questions present themselves. The book contains discussions of meaning, radical transformation, and subtle activism, revealing the unexpected interplay of consciousness and reality.



The Blind Guardians of Ignorance

Covid-19, Sustainability, and Our Vulnerable Future
Mats Larsson

Politicians, business leaders, and sustainability experts have assumed that market forces will drive the transformation to sustainability. This book explains in clear language why this view is wrong and what we need to do to prepare for the future of humanity. Governments will have a key role to play in this process, and they need a wake-up call.



Becoming Artificial

A Philosophical Exploration into Artificial Intelligence and What it Means to be Human
Danial Sonik

Becoming Artificial is a collection of essays about the nature of humanity, technology, artifice, and the irreducible connections between them. Is there something fundamental to being human or are humans simply biological computers?



The Rupture

On Knowledge and the Sublime
Olivia Fane

This book views the sublime as the radically other, revealing to us our own finitude, and compares it with ideas of negative theology and post-modernism. Fane argues that art and religion attempt to break through the 'hermeneutic circle of knowledge', turning sleepwalkers into people who are alive to an (unknowable) truth.



The Psychology of the Bible

Explaining Divine Voices and Visions
Brian J. McVeigh

The Psychology of the Bible explores how the Old Testament provides perspective into the tumultuous transition from an earlier mentality to a new paradigm of interiorized psychology and introspective religiosity that came to characterize the first millennium BCE.



British Idealism and International Thought

The Development of Human Rights
Nazli Pinar Kaymaz

This book gives a comprehensive account of the British Idealist approach to international relations from the 1880s to 1930s. In an attempt to historically contextualise the shifts in several British Idealists' approaches to the nature of international relations and human rights, it focuses on on the 2nd Boer War, WWI and the League of Nations.



Laws of Form: Spencer-Brown at Esalen, 1973

Louis H. Kauffman

This Special Issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing contains rare material related to G. Spencer-Brown's book Laws of Form and its contents. In 1973 there was a conference at Big Sur at which Spencer-Brown discussed his calculus with a group of scientists. In this issue we print Walter Barney’s transcripts of the conference.



Sortition and Democracy

History, Tools, Theories
Liliane Lopez-Rabatel

This book offers a historical analysis of sortition. It brings together a number of the best specialists on political sortition from antiquity to contemporary experiments, in Europe but also in the Ancient Middle East and in imperial China. It demonstrates that sortition has been a crucial device in political history.



Seeing

Beyond Dreaming to Religious Experiences of Light
George Gillespie

After years of lucid dreaming, the author spontaneously experiences a series of religious encounters with intense light which bring an awareness of the presence of God. He describes a number of these encounters in detail. The greater part of the book then presents an analysis of these experiences.



Michael Oakeshott as a Philosopher of the "Creative"

And Other Essays
Wendell John Coats, Jr.

This book is a collection of eight essays on the work of the twentieth-century English philosophic essayist, Michael Oakeshott. Six of them advance the view in different ways that Oakeshott's multifarious lifework may be understood as variations on a singular insight — that the structure of experiential reality is 'creative' or 'poetic'.



The Life and Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

John Haldane

This volume in the St Andrews series contains a collection of essays from leading authors regarding the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, in particular issues in mind and metaphysics, and can be considered a partner work to 2016's The Moral Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe (also published by Imprint Academic).



Lady Mary Shepherd

Selected Writings
Deborah Boyle

A collection of works published by Lady Mary Shepherd, brought together in one volume with an introduction by the editor and published as part of the Library of Scottish Philosophy series.



Immigration Control in a Warming World

Realizing the Moral Challenges of Climate Migration
Johannes Graf Keyserlingk

In the 21st century, climate change is projected to increase the already significant immigration pressures that rich countries in Europe and North America face. However, the willingness of citizens in destination countries to let further foreigners immigrate is unlikely to keep pace with that increase. These issues are discussed in this book.



Laws of Form

Commentary and Remembrance for George Spencer-Brown
Louis H. Kauffman

This volume is a collection of articles on themes related to the book Laws of Form by George Spencer-Brown.



A Hospitable Universe

Addressing Ethical and Spiritual Concerns in Light of Recent Scientific Discoveries
Rodolfo Gambini

This book argues that new developments in the sciences, in particular twentieth-century physics and twenty-first-century biology, suggest revising several pessimistic outlooks for the development of a scientific understanding of the relationship of humans with the universe.



The 'Other' Psychology of Julian Jaynes

Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities
Brian J. McVeigh

Brian J. McVeigh, a student of Jaynes, points out the blind spots of mainstream, establishment psychology by providing empirical support for Jaynes's ideas on sociohistorical shifts in cognition. He argues that from around 3500 to 1000 BCE the archaeological and historical record reveals features of hallucinatory super-religiosity.



The Jaynes Legacy

Shining New Light Through the Cracks of the Bicameral Mind
Lawrence Wile

Following on from Jaynes, this book suggests that the evolution of the relationship between consciousnesses, mass, energy, and spacetime radically changed nearly 6,000 years ago during the epigenetic, evolutionary degeneration of a little-known, threadlike structure originating from the center of the central nervous system called Reissner's fiber.



Illusionism

as a theory of consciousness
Keith Frankish

Illusionism is the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. This book is a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to this topic. It takes the form of a target paper by the editor, followed by commentaries from various thinkers representing various academic disciplines.



Arthur Balfour's Ghosts

An Edwardian Elite and the Riddle of the Cross-Correspondence Automatic Writings
Trevor Hamilton

This book tells the incredible story of the cross-correspondence automatic writings, described by one leading scholar of the field, Alan Gauld, 'as undoubtedly the most extensive, the most complex and the most puzzling of all ostensible attempts by deceased persons to manifest purpose...'



Michael Oakeshott: Notebooks, 1922-86

Michael Oakeshott

The sixth volume in the series Michael Oakeshott: Selected Writings. From the 1920s to the 1980s Oakeshott filled dozens of notebooks with his private reflections, both personal and intellectual. Their contents range from aphorisms to miniature essays, forming a unique record of his intellectual trajectory over his entire career.



Freedom's Progress?

A History of Political Thought
Gerard Casey

Freedom's Progress is a history of Western political thought, a conceptual map as it were, tracking the fitful journey of one particular concept — liberty — through time. The book covers the full philosophical canon — from Plato to Rawls — but is written from the perspective of the libertarian tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.



Thomas Reid on Religion

James J.S. Foster

This volume — a companion to Thomas Reid: Selected Philosophical Writings (2012) — makes available material from Thomas Reid's autograph manuscripts and student notes of his lectures. It includes an introductory essay by Nicholas Wolterstorff.



The Many Faces of Coincidence

Laurence Browne

The Many Faces of Coincidence proposes an inclusive categorisation for coincidences of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, some of the implications arising from the various explanations are explored, including the possibility of an underlying unity of mind and matter constituting the ground of being.



The Place of Michael Oakeshott in Contemporary Western and Non-Western Thought

Noël O'Sullivan

Essays by contributors from Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and the USA provide a comprehensive critical assessment of the principal aspects of Oakeshott's thought that account for his contemporary relevance.



Art, Morality and Human Nature

Writings by Richard W. Beardsmore
John Haldane

This collection brings together the text of the monograph Art and Morality by the philosopher Richard Beardsmore along with fourteen other essays (both published and previously unpublished) in which he explores further some of the themes of his seminal book.



Metapsychology of the Creative Process

Continuous Novelty as the Ground of Creative Advance
Jason W. Brown

This book discusses a process (microgenetic) theory of the mental state of creativity that differs markedly from mainstream (cognitive) psychology, but with the potential to clarify many features of thought and imagery, normal and exceptional. Creativity is not an isolated problem but touches many central issues in philosophical psychology.



Before Consciousness

In Search of the Fundamentals of Mind
Zdravko Radman

This book aims to integrate the non-conscious as a constitutive dimension of the mind and also to outline how it is indispensable in virtually everything we do.



Lord Kames

Selected Writings
Andreas Rahmatian

Library of Scottish Philosophy volume containing selected writings of Henry Home, Lord Kames, judge, jurist and philosopher.



The Singularity

Could artificial intelligence really out-think us (and would we want it to)?
Uziel Awret

Volume combining two special issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on the philosophical aspects of a possible artificial intelligence singularity.



What is Wrong with Us?

Essays in Cultural Pathology
Eric Coombes

The pieces collected in this volume are not presented as amounting to an overall account or theory of our cultural condition. They are offered merely as examples of serious criticism, of what we need if we are to begin to think more profitably about our condition.



Insides and Outsides

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Animate Nature
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Insides and Outsides brings together diverse aspects of animate nature, showing that scientific understandings of animate nature are — or can be — complementary to philosophical understandings.



Ranulph Glanville and How to Live the Cybernetics of Unknowing

Soren Brier

A festschrift issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing focusing on the work of Ranulph Glanville, cybernetician, design researcher, theorist, educator and multi-platform artist/designer/performer.



The Moral Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

Luke Gormally

In this collection of new essays deriving from a conference held in Oxford aspects of Elizabeth Anscombe's moral philosophy are examined. Anyone interested in Anscombe's work all want to read this volume.



Spinoza

Basic Concepts
Andre Santos Campos

Spinoza: Basic Concepts explores key concepts involved in Spinoza's thinking, relating it to his understanding of philosophy, outlining the arguments and explaining the implications of each concept. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Spinoza’s interdisciplinary system of philosophy.



Logic, Truth and Meaning

Writings of G.E.M. Anscombe
Mary Geach

This fourth and final volume of writings by Elizabeth Anscombe reprints her Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, together with a number of later essays on thought and language in which she explores issues of reason, representation, truth and existence.



Paradigm Shift

How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything
Martin Cohen

This book offers vital clues for understanding not only the way knowledge develops, but also into the dangers of accepting too readily or too uncritically the claims of experts of all kinds — even philosophical ones! The claims are invariably presented as objective fact, yet are rooted in human subjectivity.



Social Radicalism and Liberal Education

Lindsay Paterson

The book examines why social radicals supported liberal education, why they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of an intellectually stimulating and culturally literate education.



In Their Right Minds

The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses
Carole Brooks Platt

Based on nearly twenty years of scientific and literary research, this book enters the atypical minds of poetic geniuses — Blake, Keats, Hugo, Rilke, Yeats, Merrill, Plath and Hughes — by way of the visible signs in their lives, beliefs, and shared practices.



The Decision Trap

Genetic Education and Its Social Consequences
Silja Samerski

The Decision Trap questions a dogma of our time: the assumption that genetic education empowers citizens and increases their autonomy.



Thought Thinking

The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile
Bruce Haddock

This book comprises eleven essays on Gentile's thought. Seven of these are new pieces written especially for Thought Thinking, supplemented by new English translations of four of Gentile's shorter works, selected to offer some direct insight into his ideas and style of writing.



Beyond the Subjectivity Trap

Martin O'Dea

Beyond the Subjectivity Trap challenges the paradigm of the hard problem of consciousness by contesting the relevance and primacy of human thought.



Orwell's Faded Lion

The Moral Atmosphere of Britain 1945-2015
Anthony James

This book confronts the actual direction taken by British society against the background of the high hopes of the generation that survived the war.