Download or read book Consciousness and Mental Life written by Daniel N. Robinson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Begins with Aristotle and the ancient Greeks and continues through to René Descartes, David Hume, William James, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Derek Parfit. Approaching the issue from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective, Robinson identifies what makes the study of consciousness so problematic and asks whether cognitive neuroscience can truly reveal the origins of mental events, emotions, and preference, or if these occurrences are better understood by studying the whole person, not just the brain. He corrects many claims made about the success of brain science and provides a valuable historical context for the study of human consciousness. From publisher catalog.
Download or read book Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health written by Colleen Ward and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1989-10-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents various perspectives on altered states of consciousness and mental health and places them within the boundaries of cross-cultural psychology. Part One considers theoretical and methodological issues in the study of altered states of consciousness; Parts Two and Three link altered states of consciousness and mental health by focusing on both its therapeutic and pathological aspects. The final section concentrates on models highlighting a variety of paradigms and diverse methodological approaches.
Download or read book The Evolution of Consciousness written by Bjørn Grinde and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives the reader an understanding of what consciousness is about, and of how to make conscious experiences more pleasant. It expands on a new theory that describes the evolutionary trajectory leading to conscious life forms. In short, the evidence suggests that consciousness first evolved some 300 million years ago as a consequence of the introduction of feelings. Feelings offer a strategy for making behavioural decisions. Besides playing a crucial role in the evolution of the human mind, they are a key factor in regard to mental health and quality of life. Fortunately, the human brain is plastic. By exploiting available options for modulating the mind, it is therefore possible to impact on what sort of experiences the brain serves. More specifically, you can strengthen the capacity for positive feelings and reduce the sway of negative feelings. The text covers biological, neurological, psychological, and philosophical aspects of the mind.
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.
Download or read book The Hidden Spring A Journey to the Source of Consciousness written by Mark Solms and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime’s quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain’s obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience.
Download or read book Emotion and Consciousness written by Lisa Feldman Barrett and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2007-01-10 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting state-of-the-art work on the conscious and unconscious processes involved in emotion, this integrative volume brings together leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. Carefully organized, tightly edited chapters address such compelling questions as how bodily responses contribute to conscious experience, whether "unconscious emotion" exists, how affect is transmitted from one person to another, and how emotional responses are produced in the brain. Bringing a new level of coherence to lines of inquiry that often remain disparate, the book identifies key, cross-cutting ideas and themes and sets forth a cogent agenda for future research.
Download or read book Life Consciousness written by J. R. Ench and published by J. R. Ench Books. This book was released on 2000-02-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Narrative and Consciousness written by Gary D. Fireman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems (its phenomenology), with what mental labor it does (its psychology), and how it is realized (its neurobiology). Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality (the human body). The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.
Download or read book Brave New Mind written by P. C. Dodwell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at how scientists investigate the nature of the mind and the brain, providing answers to these, and other, important questions."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Where Does Mind End written by Marc Seifer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities • Recasts psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness • Shows that we have consciousness for a reason; it is humanity’s unique contribution to the cosmos • Integrates the work of Freud, Jung, Gurdjieff, Tony Robbins, Rudolf Steiner, the Dalai Lama as well as ESP, the Kabbalah, tarot, dreams, and kundalini yoga The culmination of 30 years of research, Where Does Mind End? takes you on an inward journey through the psyche--exploring the highest states of consciousness; the insights and theories of ancient and modern philosophers, psychologists, and mystics; the power of dreams, chi energy, tarot, and kundalini yoga; and proof of telepathy and other facets of parapsychology--to explain the mystery of consciousness and construct a comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities. Starting with the ancients and early philosophers such as Zoroaster, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, the author examines models of mind that take into account divine and teleological components, the problem and goal of self-understanding, the mind/body conundrum, and holographic paradigms. Seifer then moves to modern times to explain the full range of Freud’s psychoanalytic model of mind, exploring such ideas as the ego, superego, and id; the unconscious; creativity; and self-actualization. Using Freud’s psychoanalytical model as framework, he reveals an overarching theory of mind and consciousness that incorporates such diverse concepts as Jung’s collective psyche; ESP; the Kabbalah; Gurdjieff’s ideas on behaviorism and the will; the philosophies of Wilhelm Reich, P. D. Ouspensky, and Nikola Tesla; the personality redevelopment strategies of Tony Robbins; and the Dalai Lama’s and Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the highest states of consciousness. Recasting psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness, he shows that by casting off the mechanical mental operation of day-to-day life, we naturally attain the self-integration to which traditional psychology has long aspired. By entering the true path to fulfillment of the soul’s will, we help the planet by transforming ourselves and raising our energy to a higher realm.
Download or read book Guiding Principles for Life Beyond Victim Consciousness written by Lynne Forrest and published by . This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn 14 guiding principles to help liberater the mind from victim consciousness, by doing so let go of any resistance to life and stop fighting the future and agonizing over the past.
Download or read book The Rise of Consciousness and the Development of Emotional Life written by Michael Lewis and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthesizing decades of influential research and theory, Michael Lewis demonstrates the centrality of consciousness for emotional development. At first, infants' competencies constitute innate reactions to particular physical events in the child's world. These "action patterns" are not learned, but are readily influenced by temperament and social interactions. With the rise of consciousness, these early competencies become reflected feelings, giving rise to the self-conscious emotions of empathy, envy, and embarrassment, and, later, shame, guilt, and pride. Focusing on typically developing children, Lewis also explores problems of atypical emotional development. Winner/m-/William James Book Award, Society for General Psychology (APA Division 1)
Download or read book The Feeling of Life Itself written by Christof Koch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness written by Graham Little and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mind in Life written by Evan Thompson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is life related to the mind? The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan Thompson explores in Mind in Life. Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela). Endlessly interesting and accessible, Mind in Life is a groundbreaking addition to the fields of the theory of the mind, life science, and phenomenology.
Download or read book Consciousness Explained written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Dennett's "brilliant" exploration of human consciousness — named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times — is a masterpiece beloved by both scientific experts and general readers (New York Times Book Review). Consciousness Explained is a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life — of people, animal, even robots — are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book. "Dennett is a witty and gifted scientific raconteur, and the book is full of fascinating information about humans, animals, and machines. The result is highly digestible and a useful tour of the field." —Wall Street Journal
Download or read book Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science written by Sunny Y. Auyang and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sunny Auyang tackles what she calls "the large pictures of the human mind," exploring the relevance of cognitive science findings to everyday mental life. Auyang proposes a model of an "open mind emerging from the self-organization of infrastructures," which she opposes to prevalent models that treat mind as a disembodied brain or computer, subject to the control of external agents such as neuroscientists and programmers. Although cognitive science has obtained abundant data on neural and computational processes, it barely explains such ordinary experiences as recognizing faces, feeling pain, or remembering the past. In this book Sunny Auyang tackles what she calls "the large pictures of the human mind," exploring the relevance of cognitive science findings to everyday mental life. Auyang proposes a model of an "open mind emerging from the self-organization of infrastructures," which she opposes to prevalent models that treat mind as a disembodied brain or computer, subject to the control of external agents such as neuroscientists and programmers. Her model consists of three parts: (1) the open mind of our conscious life; (2) mind's infrastructure, the unconscious processes studied by cognitive science; and (3) emergence, the relation between the open mind and its infrastructure. At the heart of Auyang's model is the mind that opens to the world and makes it intelligible. A person with an open mind feels, thinks, recognizes, believes, doubts, anticipates, fears, speaks, and listens, and is aware of I, together with it and thou. Cognitive scientists refer to the "binding problem," the question of how myriad unconscious processes combine into the unity of consciousness. Auyang approaches the problem from the other end—by starting with everyday experience rather than with the mental infrastructure. In so doing, she shows both how analyses of experiences can help to advance cognitive science and how cognitive science can help us to understand ourselves as autonomous subjects.
