Download or read book Nature s Mind written by Michael Gazzaniga and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1994-04-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The co-discoverer of the “split brain” theory tells how science is recasting the age-old question of nature versus nurture to create a startling new view of human behavior. Recent discoveries suggest that natural selection affects not only physical characteristics but also mental processes, from learning to substance abuse.
Download or read book Nature in Mind written by Roger Duncan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature in Mind explores a kind of madness at the core of the developed world that has separated the growth of human cultural systems from the destruction of the environment on which these systems depend. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the contemporary Western lifestyle not only has a negative impact on the ecosystems of the earth but also has a detrimental effect on human health and psychological wellbeing. The book compares the work of Gregory Bateson and Henry Corbin and shows how an understanding of the "imaginal world" within the practice of systemic psychotherapy and ecopsychology could provide a language shared by both nature and mind. This book argues the case for bringing nature-based work into mainstream education and therapy practice. It is an invitation to radically reimagine the relationship between humans and nature and provides a practical and epistemological guide to reconnecting human thinking with the ecosystems of the earth.
Download or read book Mind and Nature written by Hermann Weyl and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new study of the mathematical-physical mode of cognition.
Download or read book The Consciousness Instinct written by Michael S. Gazzaniga and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The father of cognitive neuroscience” illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problem How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff”—atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells—create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness. The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. Gazzaniga asserts that this model has it backward—brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind. Captivating and accessible, with insights drawn from a lifetime at the forefront of the field, The Consciousness Instinct sets the course for the neuroscience of tomorrow.
Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book Mind and Nature written by Gregory Bateson and published by Hampton Press (NJ). This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.
Download or read book With People in Mind written by Rachel Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 1998-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with techniques for consulting the public, the authors describe and examine the natural areas, like parks and nature reserves, that so often vary in quality and show how to improve them in ways that are compatible with the environment.
Download or read book A Neurocomputational Perspective written by Paul M. Churchland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Bradford book."Includes index. Bibliography: p. [305]-313.
Download or read book Mind Matter and Nature written by James D. Madden and published by Catholic University of America Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written for students, Mind, Matter, and Nature presumes no prior philosophical training on the part of the reader. The book nevertheless holds the arguments discussed to rigorous standards and is conversant with recent literature, thus making it useful as well to more advanced students and professionals interested in a resource on Thomistic hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind.
Download or read book Reflections on Reality The Three Natures and Non Natures in the Mind Only School written by Jeffrey Hopkins and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-08-05 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second volume in Jeffrey Hopkins's valuable series on the Mind-Only School of Buddhism. Dzong-ka-ba (1357-1419) is generally regarded as one of the greatest Tibetan philosophers, and his "Mind-Only" discourse on emptiness is considered a landmark in Buddhist philosophy. In Volume 2, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, Hopkins provided a translation of the introduction and section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence. The present volume places this enigmatic and influential exposition in its historical and philosophical contexts. Reflections on Reality conveys the intellectual vibrancy of the different cultural interpretations of this text and expands the key philosophical issues it addresses.
Download or read book Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature written by Peter Godfrey-Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature.
Download or read book The Nature Fix Why Nature Makes Us Happier Healthier and More Creative written by Florence Williams and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Highly informative and remarkably entertaining." —Elle From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.
Download or read book Hegel s Naturalism written by Terry Pinkard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terry Pinkard draws on Hegel's central works as well as his lectures on aesthetics, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of history in this deeply informed and original exploration of Hegel's naturalism. As Pinkard explains, Hegel's version of naturalism was in fact drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical physics as its presupposition. As a result, Hegel found that, although modern nature must be understood as a whole to be non-purposive, there is nonetheless a place for Aristotelian purposiveness within such nature. Such a naturalism provides the framework for explaining how we are both natural organisms and also practically minded (self-determining, rationally responsive, reason-giving) beings. In arguing for this point, Hegel shows that the kind of self-division which is characteristic of human agency also provides human agents with an updated version of an Aristotelian final end of life. Pinkard treats this conception of the final end of "being at one with oneself" in two parts. The first part focuses on Hegel's account of agency in naturalist terms and how it is that agency requires such a self-division, while the second part explores how Hegel thinks a historical narration is essential for understanding what this kind of self-division has come to require of itself. In making his case, Hegel argues that both the antinomies of philosophical thought and the essential fragmentation of modern life are all not to be understood as overcome in a higher order unity in the "State." On the contrary, Hegel demonstrates that modern institutions do not resolve such tensions any more than a comprehensive philosophical account can resolve them theoretically. The job of modern practices and institutions (and at a reflective level the task of modern philosophy) is to help us understand and live with precisely the unresolvability of these oppositions. Therefore, Pinkard explains, Hegel is not the totality theorist he has been taken to be, nor is he an "identity thinker," à la Adorno. He is an anti-totality thinker.
Download or read book Structuring Mind written by Sebastian Watzl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective.
Download or read book Steps to an Ecology of Mind written by Gregory Bateson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.
Download or read book The Nature of the Mind written by Peter Carruthers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of the Mind is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to major themes in the philosophy of mind. It carefully explores the conflicting positions that have arisen within the debate and locates the arguments within their context. It is designed for newcomers to the subject and assumes no previous knowledge of the philosophy of mind. Clearly written and rigorously presented, this book is ideal for use in undergraduate courses in the philosophy of mind. Main topics covered include: * the problem of other minds * the dualist/physicalist debate * the nature of personal identity and survival * mental-state concepts The book closes with a number of pointers towards more advanced work in the subject. Study questions and suggestions for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter. The Nature of the Mind is based on Peter Carruthers' book, Introducing Persons, also published by Routledge (1986).
Download or read book What s Left of Human Nature written by Maria Kronfeldner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against dehumanization, Darwinian, and developmentalist challenges. Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What's Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development result from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether.
