Download or read book The Life of the Mind written by Christine Smallwood and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, The Atlantic, Electric Lit, Thrillist, LitHub, Kirkus Reviews • A witty, intelligent novel of an American woman on the edge, by a brilliant new voice in fiction—“the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) “[A] jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying.”—Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with little hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels “like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise.” No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s just had a miscarriage—not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them). She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be a mother. So why does Dorothy feel like a failure? The Life of the Mind is a book about endings—of youth, of ambition, of possibility, but also of the meaning that an inquiring mind can find in the mess of daily experience. Mordant and remorselessly wise, this jewel of a debut cuts incisively into life as we live it, and how we think of it.
Download or read book The Book of Minds written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.
Download or read book Why We Read Fiction written by Lisa Zunshine and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson s Clarissa, Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, and Austen s Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett s The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine's surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture.
Download or read book The Mind written by E. Bruce Goldstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. The mind encompasses everything we experience, and these experiences are created by the brain--often without our awareness. Experience is private; we can't know the minds of others. But we also don't know what is happening in our own minds. In this book, E. Bruce Goldstein offers an accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. He takes as his starting point two central questions--what is the mind? and what is consciousness?--and leads readers through topics that range from conceptions of the mind in popular culture to the wiring system of the brain. Throughout, he draws on the latest research, explaining its significance and relevance.
Download or read book Out of My Mind written by Sharon M. Draper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.
Download or read book Writing the Mind written by Hannah Walser and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Novels are often said to help us understand how others think--especially when those others are profoundly different from us. When interpreting a character's behavior, readers are believed to make use of "Theory of Mind," the general human capacity to attribute mental states to other people. In many well-known nineteenth-century American novels, however, characters behave in ways that are opaque to readers, other characters, and even themselves, undermining efforts to explain their actions in terms of mental states like beliefs and intentions. Writing the Mind dives into these unintelligible moments to map the weaknesses of Theory of Mind and explore alternative frameworks for interpreting behavior. Through readings of authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Herman Melville, Martin Delany, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain, Hannah Walser explains how experimental models of cognition lead to some of the strangest formal features of canonical American texts. These authors' attempts to found social life on something other than mental states not only invite us to revise our assumptions about the centrality of mind reading and empathy to the novel as a form; they can also help us understand more contemporary concepts in social cognition, including gaslighting and learned helplessness, with more conceptual rigor and historical depth.
Download or read book All in the Mind written by Alastair Campbell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Sturrock desperately needs a psychiatrist. The problem? He is one. Emily is a traumatised burns victim, and Arta a Kosovan refugee recovering from a rape. Very different Londoners, but they share one thing: every week they spend an hour at the Prince Regent hospital, revealing the secrets of their psyche to Professor Martin Sturrock. Little do they know that Sturrock's own mind is not the reassuring place they believe it to be. For years he has hidden in his work, ignoring his demons. But now his life is falling apart, and as his ghosts come back to haunt him, the only person he can turn to is a patient.
Download or read book Battlefield of the Mind written by Joyce Meyer and published by FaithWords. This book was released on 2008-03-25 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: !--StartFragment-- In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister Joyce Meyer shows readers how to change their lives by changing their minds. Joyce Meyer teaches how to deal with thousands of thoughts that people think every day and how to focus the mind the way God thinks. And she shares the trials, tragedies, and ultimate victories from her own marriage, family, and ministry that led her to wondrous, life-transforming truth--and reveals her thoughts and feelings every step of the way. Download the free Joyce Meyer author app.
Download or read book Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn written by Sarah Miller and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the thoughts and feelings of New England prep school student Gideon Rayburn through the narration of one of Gideon's female classmates, who is inside his mind and sees events through his perspective.
Download or read book How the Mind Works written by Steven Pinker and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.
Download or read book Shadows of the Mind written by Roger Penrose and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the author's thesis that consciousness, in its manifestation in the human quality of understanding, is doing something that mere computation cannot; and attempts to understand how such non-computational action might arise within scientifically comprehensive physical laws.
Download or read book Close Quarters written by Larry Heinemann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment his first novel was published, Larry Heinemann joined the ranks of the great chroniclers of the Vietnam conflict--Philip Caputo, Tim O’Brien, and Gustav Hasford.In the stripped-down, unsullied patois of an ordinary soldier, draftee Philip Dosier tells the story of his war. Straight from high school, too young to vote or buy himself a drink, he enters a world of mud and heat, blood and body counts, ambushes and firefights. It is here that he embarks on the brutal downward path to wisdom that awaits every soldier. In the tradition of Naked and the Dead and The Thin Red Line, Close Quarters is the harrowing story of how a decent kid from Chicago endures an extraordinary trial-- and returns profoundly altered to a world on the threshold of change.
Download or read book The Darkest Minds written by Alexandra Bracken and published by Disney Electronic Content. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book one in the blockbuster Darkest Minds series —now with key art from the major motion picture that's hitting theaters September 2018! When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that got her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that killed most of America's children, but she and the others emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. But when the truth about Ruby's abilities—the truth she's hidden from everyone, even the camp authorities—comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. On the run, she joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp: Zu, a young girl haunted by her past; Chubs, a standoffish brainiac; and Liam, their fearless leader, who is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can't risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents. While they journey to find the one safe haven left for kids like them—East River—they must evade their determined pursuers, including an organization that will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. But as they get closer to grasping the things they've dreamed of, Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.
Download or read book The Mind Parasites written by Colin Wilson and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilson has blended H.P. Lovecraft's dark vision with his own revolutionary philosophy and unique narrative powers to produce a stunning, high-tension story of vaulting imagination. A professor makes a horrifying discovery while excavating a sinister archaeological site. For over 200 years, mind parasites have been lurking in the deepest layers of human consciousness, feeding on human life force and steadily gaining a foothold on the planet. Now they threaten humanity's extinction. They can be fought with one weapon only: the mind, pushed to--and beyond--its limits. Pushed so far that humans can read each other's thoughts, that the moon can be shifted from its orbit by thought alone. Pushed so that man can at last join battle with the loathsome parasites on equal terms.
Download or read book With a Mind to Kill written by Anthony Horowitz and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s third James Bond novel, after Forever and a Day. It is M's funeral. One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M's murder—James Bond. Behind the Iron Curtain, a group of former Smersh agents want to use the British spy in an operation that will change the balance of world power. Bond is smuggled into the lion's den—but whose orders is he following, and will he obey them when the moment of truth arrives? In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself. But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be.
Download or read book A Strangeness in My Mind written by Orhan Pamuk and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karatas has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he'd hoped, at the age of twelve, he comes to Istanbul-"the center of the world"-and is immediately enthralled both by the city being demolished and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father's trade, selling boza on the street, and hopes to become rich like other villagers who have settled on the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But chance seems to conspire against him. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, his relations all make their fortunes while his own years are spent in a series of jobs leading nowhere; he is sometimes attracted to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the lodge of a religious guide. But every evening, without fail, he still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the "strangeness" in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for. Told from the perspectives of many beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, and a mesmerizing narrative sure to take its place among Pamuk's finest achievements.
Download or read book Journey of the Mind How Thinking Emerged from Chaos written by Ogi Ogas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two neuroscientists reveal why consciousness exists and how it works by examining eighteen increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind—and beyond. Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind—to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos. The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the universe’s simplest possible mind. From there, the book explores the nanoscopic archaeon, whose thinking machinery consists of a handful of molecules, then advances through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and humans, explaining what each “new” mind could do that previous minds could not. Though they admire the triumph of human consciousness, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam argue that humans are hardly the most sophisticated minds on the planet. The same physical principles that produce human self-awareness are leading cities and nation-states to develop “superminds,” and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness. Written in lively, accessible language accompanied by vivid illustrations, Journey of the Mind is a mind-bending work of popular science, the first general book to share the cutting-edge mathematical basis for consciousness, language, and the self. It shows how a “unified theory of the mind” can explain the mind’s greatest mysteries—and offer clues about the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.
