Download or read book Is Consciousness Primary written by Marjorie H Woollacott Phd and published by Waterside Productions. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this path-breaking book, ten founding members of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (www.AAPSglobal.com) explain how they came to the provocative conclusion that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe that exists apart from the physical brain, and that consciousness plays a central role in the existence and evolution of the physical world. These scientists and physicians share examples from their personal lives and scientific careers about how they became postmaterialist thinkers and researchers. Experiments and data are mixed with direct personal experiences and clinical cases to illustrate the breadth and depth of this emerging expansion (some would say revolution) in science and society. Some of the ideas and evidence present in this book are inherently controversial, especially to conventional science, although in agreement with the majority interpretation of quantum physics. At the same time, they are visionary and inspirational. Scientists and lay-persons alike can enjoy the perspectives and predictions expressed in this first volume of the Academy's Advances in Postmaterialist Sciences series. Marjorie Woollacott, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Human Physiology, past chair of the Dept. of Human Physiology, and a member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the U. of Oregon. In addition to teaching courses on neuroscience and rehabilitation, she taught courses on complementary and alternative medicine and meditation. She has published over 200 papers and received over $7.2 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health and other research agencies.Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona. In addition to teaching courses on health and spiritual psychology, he is the Director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and the Academy for Behavioral Medicine Research. He has published more than 450 scientific papers and has received over $20 million in grant funding.
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 Consciousness written by Antti Revonsuo and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of consciousness is recognized as one of the biggest remaining challenges to the scientific community. This book provides a fascinating introduction to the new science that promises to illuminate our understanding of the subject. Consciousness covers all the main approaches to the modern scientific study of consciousness, and also gives the necessary historical, philosophical and conceptual background to the field. Current scientific evidence and theory from the fields of neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, brain imaging and the study of altered states of consciousness such as dreaming, hypnosis, meditation and out-of-body experiences is presented. Revonsuo provides an integrative review of the major existing philosophical and empirical theories of consciousness and identifies the most promising areas for future developments in the field. This textbook offers a readable and timely introduction to the science of consciousness for anyone interested in this compelling area, especially undergraduates studying psychology, philosophy, cognition, neuroscience and related fields.
Download or read book Consciousness Demystified written by Todd E. Feinberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demystifying consciousness: how subjective experience can be explained by natural brain and evolutionary processes. Consciousness is often considered a mystery. How can the seemingly immaterial experience of consciousness be explained by the material neurons of the brain? There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between understanding the brain as an objectively observed biological organ and accounting for the subjective experiences that come from the brain (and life processes). In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt attempt to demystify consciousness—to naturalize it, by explaining that the subjective, experiencing aspects of consciousness are created by natural brain processes that evolved in natural ways. Although subjective experience is unique in nature, they argue, it is not necessarily mysterious. We need not invoke the unknown or unknowable to explain its creation. Feinberg and Mallatt flesh out their theory of neurobiological naturalism (after John Searle's biological naturalism) that recognizes the many features that brains share with other living things, lists the neural features unique to conscious brains, and explains the subjective–objective barrier naturally. They investigate common neural features among the diverse groups of animals that have primary consciousness—the type of consciousness that experiences both sensations received from the world and affects such as emotions. They map the evolutionary development of consciousness and find an uninterrupted progression over time, without inserting any mysterious forces or exotic physics. Finally, bridging the previously unbridgeable, they show how subjective experience, although different from objective observation, can be naturally explained.
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 Human and Machine Consciousness written by David Gamez and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2018-03-07 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.
Download or read book Feeling Knowing written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.
Download or read book Consciousness and Its Place in Nature written by Galen Strawson and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Panpsychism is the philosophical view that consciousness, mentality, or 'mindedness' in some form is fundamental in the universe. The idea has existed for centuries, but only recently has it had a serious resurgence. Galen Strawson has been on the front line of the battlefield on the topic of panpsychism since the 1990s. His paper on ‘realistic monism’, contained in this volume and originally published in 2006, is now considered something of a classic and a catalyst for panpsychism’s recent revival. This long overdue new edition of the book gives the original commentators, where they feel they have something more to add, an opportunity to update their thinking on the topic of panpsychism in general and Strawson’s realistic monism in particular. Seven new postscripts are included, which aim to enhance the original collection and push the discussion onwards. Eighteen years have passed since the first edition of this groundbreaking volume, and Strawson remains a distinctive and important voice in the field — the new edition is a must-read for all who are interested in consciousness studies.
Download or read book The Division of Consciousness written by Peter Novak and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on mythology, psychology, religion and science, as well as past-life regression and near-death experiences, Peter Novak explores the nuances of what really happens to the soul after death. Eastern and Western philosophies have disagreed on this point for centuries. After ten years of intensive investigation, his conclusions are a ground-breaking blend of east and west, explaining how this division may have arisen and how it is likely to be resolved.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object written by Franklin Merrell-Wolff and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ancient Origins of Consciousness written by Todd E. Feinberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-03-25 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.
Download or read book A Universe Of Consciousness written by Gerald M. Edelman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What goes on in our head when we have a thought? Why do the physical events that occur inside a fistful of gelatinous tissue give rise to the world of conscious experience? In The Universe of Consciousness , Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi present for the first time a full-scale theory of consciousness based on direct observation of the human brain in action. Their pioneering work, presented here in an elegant style, challenges much of the conventional wisdom about consciousness. The Universe of Consciousness has enormous implications for our understanding of language, thought, emotion, and mental illness.
Download or read book The Mind of Consciousness written by Ray Morose and published by Books by Ray Morose. This book was released on 2011 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mind of Consciousness The Mind of Consciousness is a book unfolding a new way, with new process methods to evaluate your existence. It is an experiential work written in textbook format that analytically delineates how and why consciousness and mind interface and function, exposing the inter-connective dependency of non-biological consciousness and the biologically created mind. Knowing how that interconnectivity interrelates provides avenues of exploration that reveal the fundamental nature of existence, unveiling an innate purpose and direction embedded within consciousness. This book works through all the major questions of existence, using reproducible and experiential logic, allowing everyone to experience the results of that exploration. Throughout your life you have two realities at war with one another: the primary ‘I am’ reality, formed from non-biological consciousness, and the secondary ‘I am this or that’ reality, formed by the biological mind. You may not be aware of, or even appreciate, the internal conflict these two inter-connective and inter-dependent realities create. However, you experience the resultant turmoil and confusion their subliminal battles establish by not having an experiential appreciation of how those realities are formed, function and potentially control your life. The text delineates causation for those ongoing internal battles and outlines processes to help overcome the sense of frustration, isolation and discord they generate. This experiential method of examination creates empirical processes that afford you the opportunity to make an informed choice, rather than a conditioned reaction: providing a more secure, productive, directional and enjoyable life. This book takes you into the core of your being, turning it inside out, exposing who and what you are by revealing a self-created shadow-world controlling your life without you being aware that control exists.
Download or read book Altered States of Consciousness written by Charles T. Tart and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Consciousness written by Susan Blackmore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself an illusion? Am I conscious now? Now considered the 'last great mystery of science', consciousness was once viewed with extreme scepticism and rejected by mainstream scientists. It is now a significant area of research, albeit a contentious one, as well as a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. This edition of Consciousness, revised by author team Susan Blackmore and Emily Troscianko, explores the key theories and evidence in consciousness studies ranging from neuroscience and psychology to quantum theories and philosophy. It examines why the term ‘consciousness’ has no recognised definition and provides an opportunity to delve into personal intuitions about the self, mind, and consciousness. Featuring comprehensive coverage of all core topics in the field, this edition includes: Why the problem of consciousness is so hard Neuroscience and the neural correlates of consciousness Why we might be mistaken about our own minds The apparent difference between conscious and unconscious Theories of attention, free will, and self and other The evolution of consciousness in animals and machines Altered states from meditation to drugs and dreaming Complete with key concept boxes, profiles of well-known thinkers, and questions and activities suitable for both independent study and group work, Consciousness provides a complete introduction to this fascinating field. Additional resources are available on the accompanying companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/blackmore
Download or read book The Immortal Mind written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific evidence for the continual presence of consciousness with or without connection to a living organism • Examines findings on the survival of consciousness beyond life, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, and reincarnation • Explains how this correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics theories on superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices • Reveals how consciousness manifests in living beings to continue its evolution Evidence now points to consciousness existing beyond the brain, such as when the brain is temporarily incapacitated, as well as to the survival of consciousness after death. Conventional science prefers to dismiss these findings because they cannot be accommodated by a materialist view of reality. Spirituality and religion embrace the continuity of consciousness and ascribe it to a nonmaterial spirit or soul that is immortal. As such, spirituality/religion and science continually find conflict in their views. But what if there truly is no conflict? Based on a new scientific paradigm in sync with experience-based spirituality, Ervin Laszlo and Anthony Peake explore how consciousness is continually present in the cosmos and can exist without connection to a living organism. They examine the rapidly growing body of scientific evidence supporting the continuity of consciousness, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, reincarnation, and neurosensory information received in altered states. They explain how the persistence of consciousness beyond the demise of the body means that, in essence, we are not mortal--we continue to exist even when our physical existence has come to an end. This correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics, which posits that things in our plane of time and space are not intrinsically real but are manifestations of a hidden dimension where they exist in the form of superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices. With proof that consciousness is basic to the cosmos and immortal in its deeper, nonmanifest realm, Laszlo and Peake reveal the purpose of consciousness is to manifest in living beings in order to continuously evolve.
Download or read book Mayo Clinic Medical Neurosciences written by Eduardo E. Benarroch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully updated and revised according to student feedback, the sixth edition of Mayo Clinic Medical Neurosciences: Organized by Neurologic System and Level provides a systematic approach to anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the nervous system inspired by the neurologist's approach to solving clinical problems. This volume has 4 sections: 1) an overview of the neurosciences necessary for understanding anatomical localization and pathophysiologic characterization of neurologic disorders; 2) an approach to localizing lesions in the 7 longitudinal systems of the nervous system; 3) an approach to localizing lesions in the 4 horizontal levels of the nervous system; and 4) a collection of clinical problems. This book provides the neuroscience framework to support the neurologist in a clinical setting and is also a great resource for neurology and psychiatry board certifications. This is the perfect guide for all medical students and neurology, psychiatry, and physical medicine residents at early stages of training. New to This Edition - A chapter devoted to multiple-choice questions for self-assessment - Discussion of emerging concepts in molecular, cellular, and system neurosciences - New chapters on emotion and consciousness systems - Incorporation of new discoveries in neuroimaging and an appendix for tables of medications commonly used to treat neurologic disorders
