Download or read book Cortex and Mind written by Joaquin M. Fuster and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a unique synthesis of the current neuroscience of cognition by one of the world's authorities in the field. The guiding principle to this synthesis is the tenet that the entirety of our knowledge is encoded by relations, and thus by connections, in neuronal networks of our cerebral cortex. Cognitive networks develop by experience on a base of widely dispersed modular cell assemblies representing elementary sensations and movements. As they develop cognitive networks organize themselves hierarchically by order of complexity or abstraction of their content. Because networks intersect profusely, sharing commong nodes, a neuronal assembly anywhere in the cortex can be part of many networks, and therefore many items of knowledge. All cognitive functions consist of neural transactions within and between cognitive networks. After reviewing the neurobiology and architecture of cortical networks (also named cognits), the author undertakes a systematic study of cortical dynamics in each of the major cognitive functions--perception, memory, attention, language, and intelligence. In this study, he makes use of a large body of evidence from a variety of methodologies, in the brain of the human as well as the nonhuman primate. The outcome of his interdisciplinary endeavor is the emergence of a structural and dynamic order in the cerebral cortex that, though still sketchy and fragmentary, mirrors with remarkable fidelity the order in the human mind.
Download or read book Unifying the Mind written by David Danks and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel proposal that the unified nature of our cognition can be partially explained by a cognitive architecture based on graphical models. Our ordinary, everyday thinking requires an astonishing range of cognitive activities, yet our cognition seems to take place seamlessly. We move between cognitive processes with ease, and different types of cognition seem to share information readily. In this book, David Danks proposes a novel cognitive architecture that can partially explain two aspects of human cognition: its relatively integrated nature and our effortless ability to focus on the relevant factors in any particular situation. Danks argues that both of these features of cognition are naturally explained if many of our cognitive representations are understood to be structured like graphical models. The computational framework of graphical models is widely used in machine learning, but Danks is the first to offer a book-length account of its use to analyze multiple areas of cognition. Danks demonstrates the usefulness of this approach by reinterpreting a variety of cognitive theories in terms of graphical models. He shows how we can understand much of our cognition—in particular causal learning, cognition involving concepts, and decision making—through the lens of graphical models, thus clarifying a range of data from experiments and introspection. Moreover, Danks demonstrates the important role that cognitive representations play in a unified understanding of cognition, arguing that much of our cognition can be explained in terms of different cognitive processes operating on a shared collection of cognitive representations. Danks's account is mathematically accessible, focusing on the qualitative aspects of graphical models and separating the formal mathematical details in the text.
Download or read book Neurophilosophy written by Patricia Smith Churchland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Bradford book." Bibliography: p. [491]-523. Includes index.
Download or read book Quantum Mind and Social Science written by Alexander Wendt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique contribution to the understanding of social science, showing the implications of quantum physics for the nature of human society.
Download or read book Unified Theories of Cognition written by Allen Newell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Newell introduces Soar, an architecture for general cognition. A pioneer system in AI, Soar is the first problem-solver to create its own subgoals and learn continuously from its own experience. Its ability to operate within the real-time constraints of intelligent behavior illustrates important characteristics of human cognition.
Download or read book Thought in Action written by Barbara Gail Montero and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does thinking affect doing? It is widely held that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. But is this true? Barbara Gail Montero explores real-life examples and draws on psychology, neuroscience, and literature to develop a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action.
Download or read book Mind Body World written by Michael R. W. Dawson and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field's immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science. Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools? What are the relationships between these different sets of core assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying framework for students of cognitive science.
Download or read book Integral Consciousness and Sport written by Scott Ford and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every so often, a rather remarkable disclosure reveals itself that can change our worldview. It can occur through contemplation, reverie, insight, revelation, reading, writing, or for many, actual physical practice. Scott Ford has had such a moment of practice, and his world has never been the same. After reading Scott’s book, perhaps our world will be permanently altered as well. In using his Parallel Mode Process, we are taken into one of the most revered and hallowed places in sports. Ford’s work allows us to abide in the living, breathing essence of the zone, dance in the flow state, and train into it. The book is both a technical as well as intuitive discussion of a new way of contextualizing one’s athletic experience, engaging both left and right brain consciousness, and resulting in nothing less than a satori experience. By engaging in the practice of living in ever-present moment-to-moment awareness, the author creates a non-local consciousness experience that is life-changing. Thus, through Scott’s highly refined work, we enter into the Witness state, a revered state of consciousness that is both unitive and integrated. Sport is the great Western metaphor, a potent medium that teaches us how to realize our sometimes dormant capacities, and at the same time translate the learning into everyday situations. The lessons learned from this book apply directly to all walks of life. Hence, Scott’s discoveries take us into the union of East and West, the spirit and the flesh, through tennis, sport and life. You may never look at a tennis ball in the same way. Barry Robbins, Vice President of ITP International- Senior Teacher and Lineage Holder of ITP (Integral Transformative Practice) Founding Member: Sports, Energy, and Consciousness Group
Download or read book A Sentimentalist Theory of the Mind written by Michael Slote and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Slote argues that emotion is involved in all human thought and action on conceptual grounds, rather than merely being causally connected with other aspects of the mind. This kind of general sentimentalism about the mind goes beyond that advocated by Hume, and the book's main arguments are only partially anticipated in German Romanticism and in the Chinese philosophical tendency to avoid rigid distinctions between thought and emotion. The new sentimentalist philosophy of mind Slote proposes can solve important problems about the nature of belief and action that other approaches -- including Pragmatism -- fail to address. In arguing for the centrality of emotion within philosophy of the mind, A Sentimentalist Theory of the Mind continues the critique of rationalist philosophical views that began with Slote's Moral Sentimentalism (OUP, 2010) and continued in his From Enlightenment to Receptivity (OUP, 2013). This new book also delves into what is distinctive about human minds, arguing that there is a greater variety to ordinary human motives than has been recognized and that emotions play a central role in this complex psychology.
Download or read book Desire Self Mind and the Psychotherapies written by R. Coleman Curtis and published by Jason Aronson. This book was released on 2009 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noam Chomsky has made major contributions to three fields: political history and analysis, linguistics, and the philosophies of mind, language, and human nature. In this thoroughly revised and updated volume, James McGilvray provides a critical introduction to Chomsky's work in these three key areas and assesses their continuing importance and relevance for today. In an incisive and comprehensive analysis, McGilvray argues that Chomsky's work can be seen as a unified intellectual project. He shows how Chomsky adapts the tools of natural science to the study of mind and of language in particular and explains why Chomsky's "rationalist" approach to the mind continues to be opposed by the majority of contemporary cognitive scientists. The book also discusses some of Chomsky's central political themes in depth, examining how Chomsky's view of the good life and the ideal form of social organization is related to and in part dependent on his biologically based account of human nature and the place of language within it. As in the first edition, McGilvray emphasizes the distinction between common sense and science and the difference between rationalist and empiricist approaches to the mind, making clear the importance of these themes for understanding Chomsky's work and showing that they are based on elementary observations that are accessible to everyone. This edition has been extensively re-written to emphasize Chomsky's recent work, which increasingly 'biologizes' the study of language and mind and - by implication - the study of human nature. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, linguistics, and politics, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers writing today.
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 Stairway to the Mind written by Alwyn Scott and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human consciousness has perplexed philosophers, artists and scientists for centuries. Some hold it to be purely physical, while others believe it transcends the material world. Now comes a book that offers a new perspective - based entirely on evidence from the natural sciences - whereby materialism and dualism co-exist. The author - a distinguished pioneer of nonlinear dynamics - bases his argument on a hierarchical view of mental organization; a stairway. Atoms give rise to molecules, neurons form the brain and individual consciousness leads to shared culture. All steps are needed to complete the picture and each level derives from the previous one. The book shows specialists how each of their fields adds to the overall picture, while providing general readers with an introduction to this investigation.
Download or read book The Mind Illuminated written by Culadasa and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mind Illuminated is a comprehensive, accessible and - above all - effective book on meditation, providing a nuts-and-bolts stage-based system that helps all levels of meditators establish and deepen their practice. Providing step-by-step guidance for every stage of the meditation path, this uniquely comprehensive guide for a Western audience combines the wisdom from the teachings of the Buddha with the latest research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Clear and friendly, this in-depth practice manual builds on the nine-stage model of meditation originally articulated by the ancient Indian sage Asanga, crystallizing the entire meditative journey into 10 clearly-defined stages. The book also introduces a new and fascinating model of how the mind works, and uses illustrations and charts to help the reader work through each stage. This manual is an essential read for the beginner to the seasoned veteran of meditation.
Download or read book Conscious Mind Resonant Brain written by Stephen Grossberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does your mind work? How does your brain give rise to your mind? These are questions that all of us have wondered about at some point in our lives, if only because everything that we know is experienced in our minds. They are also very hard questions to answer. After all, how can a mind understand itself? How can you understand something as complex as the tool that is being used to understand it? This book provides an introductory and self-contained description of some of the exciting answers to these questions that modern theories of mind and brain have recently proposed. Stephen Grossberg is broadly acknowledged to be the most important pioneer and current research leader who has, for the past 50 years, modelled how brains give rise to minds, notably how neural circuits in multiple brain regions interact together to generate psychological functions. This research has led to a unified understanding of how, where, and why our brains can consciously see, hear, feel, and know about the world, and effectively plan and act within it. The work embodies revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarify how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved. It provides mechanistic explanations of multiple mental disorders, including symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, autism, amnesia, and sleep disorders; biological bases of morality and religion, including why our brains are biased towards the good so that values are not purely relative; perplexing aspects of the human condition, including why many decisions are irrational and self-defeating despite evolution's selection of adaptive behaviors; and solutions to large-scale problems in machine learning, technology, and Artificial Intelligence that provide a blueprint for autonomously intelligent algorithms and robots. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, unifying insights also emerge about shared laws that are found in all living cellular tissues, from the most primitive to the most advanced, notably how the laws governing networks of interacting cells support developmental and learning processes in all species. The fundamental brain design principles of complementarity, uncertainty, and resonance that Grossberg has discovered also reflect laws of the physical world with which our brains ceaselessly interact, and which enable our brains to incrementally learn to understand those laws, thereby enabling humans to understand the world scientifically. Accessibly written, and lavishly illustrated, Conscious Mind/Resonant Brain is the magnum opus of one of the most influential scientists of the past 50 years, and will appeal to a broad readership across the sciences and humanities.
Download or read book The Multitasking Mind written by Dario D. Salvucci and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the theory of threaded cognition, a theory that aims to explain the multitasking mind. The theory states that multitasking behavior can be expressed as cognitive threads-independent streams of thought that weave through the mind's processing resources to produce multitasking behavior, and sometimes experience conflicts to produce multitasking interference. Grounded in the ACT-R cognitive architecture, threaded cognition incorporates computational representations and mechanisms used to simulate and predict multitasking behavior and performance.
Download or read book The Mind Illuminated written by John Yates and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mind Illuminated is the first how-to meditation guide from a neuroscientist who is also an acclaimed meditation master. This innovative book offers a 10-stage program that is both deeply grounded in ancient spiritual teachings about mindfulness and holistic health, and also draws from the latest brain science to provide a roadmap for anyone interested in achieving the benefits of mindfulness. Dr. John Yates offers a new and fascinating model of how the mind works, including steps to overcome mind wandering and dullness, extending your attention span while meditating, and subduing subtle distractions. This groundbreaking manual provides illustrations and charts to help you work through each stage of the process, offering tools that work across all types of meditation practices.
Download or read book Soul Mind Body Science System written by Zhi Gang Sha and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a soul? Are miracles real? When the soul is healed, how does the body respond? Throughout history, there have been countless cases of "miracle" healings, unexplainable by modern science. Dr. and Master Zhi Gang Sha has personally healed thousands of patients, usually in front of dozens of witnesses. Hundreds of videos of these healings can be seen on YouTube. But how can these healings be explained? Soul Mind Body Science System is the first book to explore the scientific explanations for why soul healing miracles are genuine. Written with Dr. Rulin Xiu, an expert on string theory and quantum physics who trained at The University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Sha shares, for the first time, the scientific theories that explain why all actions on Earth are guided by the reality of the soul. In Soul Mind Body Science System, the complex and fascinating relationships present between matter, density, information, soul, and consciousness are thoroughly examined. Written for armchair and professional scientists alike, this book makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debate about the true nature of reality. As the lines between "science" and "spirit" blur, this investigation becomes ever more important. The groundbreaking Soul Mind Body Science System is for all readers who have contemplated the fundamental scientific laws of the universe and sought answers beyond those offered by popular science and mainstream faith.
