Contents -- Preface -- 1. Critical Thought, Science, and Justice -- Justice Is an Essential Motivating Human Concern -- Avoidable Failures of Critical Thought in a Modern Community -- Mass Hysteria: A Society's Failure of Critical Thought -- 2. The Eyes of Oedipus, the Cave of Plato -- Humanistic Concern: The Common Thread in the Arts and Sciences of Ancient Greece -- The Tragic Situation of Oedipus -- The Unreliability of the Senses -- Science, Knowledge, and Wisdom, Then and Now -- Notes -- 3. The Illusion Organ -- The Brain Must Construct a Subjective Reality -- The Temptation of the Generic Philosophical Argument -- Evolution Produces Adequacy, Not Perfection -- Levels of Information Modification by the Brain -- The Subjective Illusion Is Regarded as Perfectly Normal -- Imagine the Destruction of Imagination -- Constructions of Ego -- Sometimes Even Physical Reality Can Be Uncertain -- Difficulty, Not Relativity Implied -- Human Nature -- Notes -- 4. Inner Realities -- Fashions in Passion -- Social Synchrony and the Individual -- Cross-Cultural Issues -- Honest Communication Can Be a Deceiving Mirror -- On Being Vulnerable and Manipulated -- Bridging Internal Realities -- Cultural Pluralism and Utopias -- Notes -- 5. Fragile Common Sense -- What Is Common Sense? -- Common Sense Is Culturally Shaped -- Masculinization through Semen Transfer -- Common Sense May Dismiss Evidence -- Common Sense and Stable World Views -- Scientists and Scholars Are Also Vulnerable -- Notes -- 6. Philosophy as Perceptual Template: Readings of Nature -- The Intimate Politics of Nature -- The Teleological World of Classical Greece -- Teleological Design Overtly Crumbles, Covertly Survives -- The Perception of Inferiority and Exclusion -- A Few Metaphysical Elements in Modern Science -- Notes -- 7. Language and the Construction of Reality.

Language Informs and Misinforms -- Convenience Redefines Words -- Language and Power Relationships -- Individual Word Games -- Style Is Not Content -- Language and Manipulation -- Tacit Philosophical Indoctrination -- Plato's Rationality and Truth -- Does Language Diminish Personal Experience? -- Notes -- 8. Diverse Searches for Wisdom -- All Organ Systems Have Limitations -- The Death and Rebirth of Empiricism in Europe -- Direct Ventures beyond the Senses -- "Scientific" Divination -- Formal Philosophical Systems -- Modern Empirical Science -- Corporate Science of the Multiversity -- Notes -- 9. Is Relatively Good Individual Objectivity Possible? -- Thinking Individuals or Social Puppets? -- Individual Objectivity or Emotional Self-Reliance? -- Economic Determinism -- Historicism -- Any Guides from Science? -- Notes -- 10. Intuition in Science and Eastern Disciplines -- Disciplined Intuition Is Vital in Science -- Facades of Wisdom East and West Compared -- 11. The Language of Proof -- Reality in Western Philosophy and Science Is Abstract -- The General Substrates for Critical Thought -- Monism and Calendars -- The Modernization of Science, Critical Thought, and Western Religion -- A Lexicon in Disarray? -- Some Contemporary Disappointment with the System That the Language of Proof Was Used to Build -- A Feminist Observation of Science -- Notes -- 12. The Liberal Arts Agenda Reconsidered -- An Incredibly Resourceful Species -- It Is Not a Matter of Simple Technique to Become a Whole and Thoughtful Person -- Negotiating the Knowledge Establishment -- Psychology -- History -- Cultural Comparisons -- Science -- The Crisis in Educational Vision -- Pioneering Self-Development -- Writing and Self-Study -- Notes -- Epilogue -- Additional Readings -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U.

V -- W -- Y -- Z.