Download or read book Mind Before Matter written by Trish Pfeiffer and published by Iff Books. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Materialism is the dominant worldview in the West today. But it is only one worldview, and it doesn't completely work, even, ironically, being gradually undermined by the science that gave rise to it. Containing the last unpublished writing of Pulitzer prize-winning author and scholar, the late John Mack, this anthology of essays from significant figures in the world of science and consciousness studies sketches the framework for a new model of realit--one based on the primacy of consciousness rather than of matter. It is a model we will need for survival on this planet. Mind Before Matter represents the first concerted salvo in a debate that could affect the worldview held by the modern, dominant culture.
Download or read book Before Consciousness written by Zdravko Radman and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without consciousness we would not have the experientially flavoured world we have, but without the non-conscious we would not have it at all; for we would not be able to breathe, eat, move, walk, feel, mimic, gesture, laugh, etc., and even see, talk, remember, reason, understand, think, imagine, and make myriad spontaneous decisions as we continuously do in all life situations, from trivial to existential ones. Without consciousness we would not be the kind of creatures we are, but what makes us really unique is our specific non-conscious constellation - a basis from which all mentality germinates and which is irreducible, that is, not representable or in any way simulable. This collection of essays by leading scholars in consciousness aims to show that in order to understand mind as a whole we have to also consider its non-conscious part. Obtaining a more thorough insight into the non-conscious is indispensable for a better understanding of consciousness - the two spheres are to be perceived not as separated but rather as interconnected. The non-conscious is habitually associated with automatized motor behaviour, skills, and habits, but even in their most elementary forms these aspects of mind require a high level of sophistication and cognitive competence. Most complex cognitive tasks, such as perception, memory, decision making, etc. also rely heavily on non-conscious processing, which is not only faster but also proves to be in many respects more fundamental. The investigations included in this volume point to the conclusion that we can behave in a cognitively competent way without recourse to consciousness; that we may act in a reasoned manner even away from awareness; that thinking can be instantiated without engaging the sober conscious reasoner; that our coping in the world is meaningful and fulfilling even when conscious control and volition are dormant. 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.
Download or read book Before Consciousness written by Zdravko Radman and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without consciousness we would not have the experientially flavoured world we have, but without the non-conscious we would not have it at all; for we would not be able to breathe, eat, move, walk, feel, mimic, gesture, laugh, etc., and even see, talk, remember, reason, understand, think, imagine, and make myriad spontaneous decisions as we continuously do in all life situations, from trivial to existential ones. Without consciousness we would not be the kind of creatures we are, but what makes us really unique is our specific non-conscious constellation - a basis from which all mentality germinates and which is irreducible, that is, not representable or in any way simulable. This collection of essays by leading scholars in consciousness aims to show that in order to understand mind as a whole we have to also consider its non-conscious part. Obtaining a more thorough insight into the non-conscious is indispensable for a better understanding of consciousness - the two spheres are to be perceived not as separated but rather as interconnected. The non-conscious is habitually associated with automatized motor behaviour, skills, and habits, but even in their most elementary forms these aspects of mind require a high level of sophistication and cognitive competence. Most complex cognitive tasks, such as perception, memory, decision making, etc. also rely heavily on non-conscious processing, which is not only faster but also proves to be in many respects more fundamental. The investigations included in this volume point to the conclusion that we can behave in a cognitively competent way without recourse to consciousness; that we may act in a reasoned manner even away from awareness; that thinking can be instantiated without engaging the sober conscious reasoner; that our coping in the world is meaningful and fulfilling even when conscious control and volition are dormant. 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.
Download or read book Prior to Consciousness written by Nisargadatta and published by . This book was released on 1997-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Download or read book The River of Consciousness written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the best-selling author of Gratitude, On the Move, and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. Oliver Sacks, a scientist and a storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories (Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars) in which he introduced and explored many now familiar disorders--autism, Tourette's syndrome, face blindness, savant syndrome. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable and strange encounters and experiences that shaped him (Uncle Tungsten, On the Move, Gratitude). Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
Download or read book Neural Correlates of Consciousness written by Thomas Metzinger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together an international group of neuroscientists and philosophers who are investigating how the content of subjective experience is correlated with events in the brain. The fundamental methodological problem in consciousness research is the subjectivity of the target phenomenon--the fact that conscious experience, under standard conditions, is always tied to an individual, first-person perspective. The core empirical question is whether and how physical states of the human nervous system can be mapped onto the content of conscious experience. The search for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) has become a highly active field of investigation in recent years. Methods such as single-cell recording in monkeys and brain imaging and electrophysiology in humans, applied to such phenomena as blindsight, implicit/explicit cognition, and binocular rivalry, have generated a wealth of data. The same period has seen the development of a number of theories about NCC location. This volume brings together the leading experimentalists and theoreticians in the field. Topics include foundational and evolutionary issues, global integration, vision, consciousness and the NMDA receptor complex, neuroimaging, implicit processes, intentionality and phenomenal volition, schizophrenia, social cognition, and the phenomenal self. Contributors Jackie Andrade, Ansgar Beckermann, David J. Chalmers, Francis Crick, Antonio R. Damasio, Gerald M. Edelman, Dominic ffytche, Hans Flohr, N.P. Franks, Vittorio Gallese, Melvyn A. Goodale, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, Beena Khurana, Christof Koch, W.R. Lieb, Erik D. Lumer, Thomas Metzinger, Kelly J. Murphy, Romi Nijhawan, Joëlle Proust, Antti Revonsuo, Gerhard Roth, Thomas Schmidt, Wolf Singer, Giulio Tononi
Download or read book Consensus on Peirce s Concept of Habit written by Donna E. West and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the first treatment of C. S. Peirce’s unique concept of habit. Habit animated the pragmatists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who picked up the baton from classical scholars, principally Aristotle. Most prominent among the pragmatists thereafter is Charles Sanders Peirce. In our vernacular, habit connotes a pattern of conduct. Nonetheless, Peirce’s concept transcends application to mere regularity or to human conduct; it extends into natural and social phenomena, making cohesive inner and outer worlds. Chapters in this anthology define and amplify Peircean habit; as such, they highlight the dialectic between doubt and belief. Doubt destabilizes habit, leaving open the possibility for new beliefs in the form of habit-change; and without habit-change, the regularity would fall short of habit – conforming to automatic/mechanistic systems. This treatment of habit showcases how, through human agency, innovative regularities of behavior and thought advance the process of making the unconscious conscious. The latter materializes when affordances (invariant habits of physical phenomena) form the basis for modifications in action schemas and modes of reasoning. Further, the book charts how indexical signs in language and action are pivotal in establishing attentional patterns; and how these habits accommodate novel orientations within event templates. It is intended for those interested in Peirce’s metaphysic or semiotic, including both senior scholars and students of philosophy and religion, psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as mathematics, and the natural sciences.
Download or read book Future Consciousness written by Thomas Lombardo and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do our unique conscious minds reflect and amplify nature’s vast evolutionary process? This book provides a scientifically informed, psychologically holistic approach to understanding and enhancing our future consciousness, serving as a guide for creating a realistic, constructive, and ethical future. Thomas Lombardo reveals how we can flourish in the flow of evolution and create a prosperous future for ourselves, human society and the planet.
Download or read book Inner Speech written by Peter Langland-Hassan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inner speech lies at the chaotic intersection of several difficult questions in contemporary philosophy and psychology. On the one hand, these episodes are private mental events. On the other, they resemble speech acts of the sort used in interpersonal communication. Inner speech episodes seem to constitute or express sophisticated trains of conceptual thought but, at the same time, they are motoric in nature and draw on sensorimotor mechanisms for speech production and perception more generally. By using inner speech, we seem to both regulate our bodily actions and gain a unique kind of access to our own beliefs and desires. Inner Speech: New Voices explores this familiar and yet mysterious element of our daily lives, bringing together contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In response to renewed interest in the general connections between thought, language, and consciousness, these leading thinkers develop a number of important new theories, raise questions about the nature of inner speech and its cognitive functions, and debate the current controversies surrounding the 'little voice in the head.'
Download or read book Being You written by Anil Seth and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of 2021—Bloomberg Businessweek; A Best Science Book of 2021—The Guardian; A Best Science Book of 2021—Financial Times; A Best Philosophy Book of 2021—Five Books; A Best Book of 2021—The Economist Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science. What does it mean to “be you”—that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood. Now, internationally renowned neuroscience professor, researcher, and author Anil Seth is offers a window into our consciousness in BEING YOU: A New Science of Consciousness. Anil Seth is both a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness and one of most prominent spokespeople for this relatively new field of science. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness. Seth has been interviewed for documentaries aired on the BBC, Netflix, and Amazon and podcasts by Sam Harris, Russell Brand, and Chris Anderson, and his 2017 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed over 11 million times, a testament to his uncanny ability to make unimaginably complex science accessible and entertaining.
Download or read book Waking Dreaming Being written by Evan Thompson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.
Download or read book Consciousness written by Susan Blackmore and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness written by Bernard J. Baars and published by Bradford Book. This book was released on 2003 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current thinking and research on consciousness and the brain.
Download or read book Altered States of Consciousness written by Marc Wittmann and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking study of what altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness, perfect for readers interested in psychedelics, brain science, and meditation. During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been ignored by mainstream science, or considered crazy fantasies. Recent research, however, has located the neural underpinnings of these altered states of mind. In this book, neuropsychologist Marc Wittmann shows how experiences that disturb or widen our everyday understanding of the self can help solve the mystery of consciousness. Wittmann explains that the relationship between consciousness of time and consciousness of self is close; in extreme circumstances, the experiences of space and self-intensify and weaken together. He considers the emergence of the self in waking life and dreams; how our sense of time is distorted by extreme situations ranging from terror to mystical enlightenment; the experience of the moment; and the loss of time and self in such disorders as depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. Dostoyevsky reported godly bliss during epileptic seizures; neurologists are now investigating the phenomenon of the epileptic aura. Wittmann describes new studies of psychedelics that show how the brain builds consciousness of self and time, and discusses pilot programs that use hallucinogens to treat severe depression, anxiety, and addiction. If we want to understand our consciousness, our subjectivity, Wittmann argues, we must not be afraid to break new ground. Studying altered states of consciousness leads us directly to the heart of the matter: time and self, the foundations of consciousness.
Download or read book Perplexities of Consciousness written by Eric Schwitzgebel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-28 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher argues that we know little about our own inner lives. Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s researchers found that most people reported dreaming in black and white. In the 1960s, when most movies were in color and more people had color television sets, the vast majority of reported dreams contained color. The most likely explanation for this, according to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, is not that exposure to black-and-white media made people misremember their dreams. It is that we simply don't know whether or not we dream in color. In Perplexities of Consciousness, Schwitzgebel examines various aspects of inner life (dreams, mental imagery, emotions, and other subjective phenomena) and argues that we know very little about our stream of conscious experience. Drawing broadly from historical and recent philosophy and psychology to examine such topics as visual perspective, and the unreliability of introspection, Schwitzgebel finds us singularly inept in our judgments about conscious experience.
