Download or read book Being Conscious A Book about Consciousness and Consciousness of Consciousness written by Roger Taylor and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical work on the theory of consciousness. This book gives a new dimension to 'the hard problem' confronting the myopia of smart, scientific and philosophical accounts of consciousness.The author Roger Taylor writes: "Well I am not saying to consciousness GBWY, it is just, as my years advance, I am closing in on not being conscious, ever again, and, in Cartesian spirit, it is tempting to say, if I am not conscious ever again then I am not (not now but when I am never conscious again). This though just like the Cogito is not conclusive. We say 'she is not conscious she is asleep'. But if she is dreaming to an extent she is conscious. If asleep and not dreaming, a loud noise or a shaking will awaken her and how is this possible unless to an extent she is conscious, or is this like there being an on and off switch. What though if she is in a coma? We do not know but she may well not be capable of dreaming at all, and a loud noise will not restore her to consciousness, yet it is not that she is not. And what if from being in a coma she goes on to die? We cannot say that while in the coma she was not. 'If I am dead I am not' is the stronger candidate. But if I am not conscious, ever again, this surely is tantamount to not being. Perhaps my point is that saying 'hello' to consciousness and saying 'goodbye' to consciousness depends on consciousness: without consciousness neither is possible. And of course, as previous remarks imply, the existence of consciousness does not depend upon such higher-order abilities as being able to say 'hello' or 'goodbye'. But for physical things of a certain kind, having consciousness is a discovery within consciousness and this allows a consciousness of the end of consciousness, and so to an inclination to understand what it is one has but will sometime lose, not in the sense of being intact but missing a limb but in the sense of a complete self-erasure, erasure of the self. But this language of the self is dangerous although convenient, like Allen Ginsberg talking of the soul but going on to say 'I mean that which differs man from thing, i.e. person -not mere mental consciousness- but feeling bodily consciousness.' Ginsberg, TLS, August 6, 1964."
Download or read book Being You written by Anil Seth and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of 2021—Bloomberg Businessweek; A Best Science Book of 2021—The Guardian; A Best Science Book of 2021—Financial Times; A Best Philosophy Book of 2021—Five Books; A Best Book of 2021—The Economist Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science. What does it mean to “be you”—that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood. Now, internationally renowned neuroscience professor, researcher, and author Anil Seth is offers a window into our consciousness in BEING YOU: A New Science of Consciousness. Anil Seth is both a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness and one of most prominent spokespeople for this relatively new field of science. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness. Seth has been interviewed for documentaries aired on the BBC, Netflix, and Amazon and podcasts by Sam Harris, Russell Brand, and Chris Anderson, and his 2017 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed over 11 million times, a testament to his uncanny ability to make unimaginably complex science accessible and entertaining.
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 Consciousness Attention and Conscious Attention written by Carlos Montemayor and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work supporting the argument that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated. In this book, Carlos Montemayor and Harry Haladjian consider the relationship between consciousness and attention. The cognitive mechanism of attention has often been compared to consciousness, because attention and consciousness appear to share similar qualities. But, Montemayor and Haladjian point out, attention is defined functionally, whereas consciousness is generally defined in terms of its phenomenal character without a clear functional purpose. They offer new insights and proposals about how best to understand and study the relationship between consciousness and attention by examining their functional aspects. The book's ultimate conclusion is that consciousness and attention are largely dissociated. Undertaking a rigorous analysis of current empirical and theoretical work on attention and consciousness, Montemayor and Haladjian propose a spectrum of dissociation—a framework that identifies the levels of dissociation between consciousness and attention—ranging from identity to full dissociation. They argue that conscious attention, the focusing of attention on the contents of awareness, is constituted by overlapping but distinct processes of consciousness and attention. Conscious attention, they claim, evolved after the basic forms of attention, increasing access to the richest kinds of cognitive contents. Montemayor and Haladjian's goal is to help unify the study of consciousness and attention across the disciplines. A focused examination of conscious attention will, they believe, enable theoretical progress that will further our understanding of the human mind.
Download or read book Consciousness and the Social Brain written by Michael S. A. Graziano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
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 Conscious Recovery written by TJ Woodward and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conscious Recovery is a ground breaking and eective approach to viewing and treating addiction that will transform your life. Author and spiritual teacher TJ Woodward is changing the conversation about addiction, because he recognizes that underneath all addictive behavior is an essential self that is whole and perfect. TJ Woodward's Conscious Recovery moves beyond simply treating behaviors and symptoms. It focuses on the underlying root causes that drive destructive patterns, while providing clear steps for letting go of core false beliefs that lead to addictive tendencies. Whether it is unresolved trauma, spiritual disconnection, or toxic shame, these challenges need to addressed in order to achieve true and permanent freedom. Conscious Recovery oers a pathway toward liberation that can assist you in creating a life lled with love and connection. It explores methods for changing the ways of thinking that keep you stuck in a pattern of hopelessness, so you can come into alignment with an existence overowing with compassion and purpose. TJ Woodward calls this the "great remembering" reclaiming the truth of who and what you essentially are.
Download or read book The Mystery of Consciousness written by John R. Searle and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy, and it is now, John Searle writes, "the most important problem in the biological sciences": What is consciousness? Is my inner awareness of myself something separate from my body? In what began as a series of essays in The New York Review of Books, John Searle evaluates the positions on consciousness of such well-known scientists and philosophers as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, and Israel Rosenfield. He challenges claims that the mind works like a computer, and that brain functions can be reproduced by computer programs. With a sharp eye for confusion and contradiction, he points out which avenues of current research are most likely to come up with a biological examination of how conscious states are caused by the brain. Only when we understand how the brain works will we solve the mystery of consciousness, and only then will we begin to understand issues ranging from artificial intelligence to our very nature as human beings.
Download or read book Consciousness written by Adam Zeman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the nature of consciousness This engaging and readable book provides an introduction to consciousness that does justice both to the science and to the philosophy of consciousness, that is, the mechanics of the mind and the experience of awareness. The book opens with a general discussion of the brain and of consciousness itself. Then, exploring the areas of brain science most likely to illuminate the basis of awareness, Zeman focuses on the science of sleep and waking and on the science of vision. He describes healthy states and disorders--epilepsy, narcolepsy, blindsight and hallucinations after stroke--that provide insights into the capacity for consciousness and into its contents. And he tracks the evolution of the brain, the human species, and human culture and surveys the main current scientific theories of awareness, pioneering attempts to explain how the brain gives rise to experience. Zeman concludes by examining philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness. A practicing neurologist, he animates his text with examples from the behavioral and neurological disorders of his patients and from the expanding mental worlds of young children, including his own. His book is an accessible and enlightening explanation of why we are conscious.
Download or read book The Consciousness Paradox written by Rocco J. Gennaro and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defense of a version of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness with special attention to such topics as concepts and animal consciousness. Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro's integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers.
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 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 Conscious Mind written by Zoltan Torey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-08-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the emergence of the mind: how the brain acquired self-awareness, functional autonomy, the ability to think, and the power of speech. How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and linguistics, Torey reconstructs the sequence of events by which Homo erectus became Homo sapiens. He describes the augmented functioning that underpins the emergent mind—a new (“off-line”) internal response system with which the brain accesses itself and then forms a selection mechanism for mentally generated behavior options. This functional breakthrough, Torey argues, explains how the animal brain's “awareness” became self-accessible and reflective—that is, how the human brain acquired a conscious mind. Consciousness, unlike animal awareness, is not a unitary phenomenon but a composite process. Torey's account shows how protolanguage evolved into language, how a brain subsystem for the emergent mind was built, and why these developments are opaque to introspection. We experience the brain's functional autonomy, he argues, as free will. Torey proposes that once life began, consciousness had to emerge—because consciousness is the informational source of the brain's behavioral response. Consciousness, he argues, is not a newly acquired “quality,” “cosmic principle,” “circuitry arrangement,” or “epiphenomenon,” as others have argued, but an indispensable working component of the living system's manner of functioning.
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 The Paradox of Self consciousness written by José Luis Bermúdez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Jos� Luis Berm�dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Berm�dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.
Download or read book Actual Consciousness written by Ted Honderich and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it for you to be conscious? There is no consensus in philosophy or science: it has remained a mystery. Ted Honderich develops a brand new theory of consciousness, according to which perceptual consciousness is external to the perceiver. It exists in a subjective physical world dependent on both you and the objective physical world.
