Download or read book Human and Animal Minds written by Peter Carruthers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Claims about consciousness in animals are often made in support of their moral standing. Peter Carruthers argues that there is no fact of the matter about animal consciousness and it is of no scientific or ethical significance. Sympathy for an animal can be grounded in its mental states, but should not rely on assumptions about its consciousness.
Download or read book Animals in Translation written by Temple Grandin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-08-11 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With unique personal insight, experience, and hard science, Animals in Translation is the definitive, groundbreaking work on animal behavior and psychology. Temple Grandin’s professional training as an animal scientist and her history as a person with autism have given her a perspective like that of no other expert in the field of animal science. Grandin and coauthor Catherine Johnson present their powerful theory that autistic people can often think the way animals think—putting autistic people in the perfect position to translate “animal talk.” Exploring animal pain, fear, aggression, love, friendship, communication, learning, and even animal genius, Grandin is a faithful guide into their world. Animals in Translation reveals that animals are much smarter than anyone ever imagined, and Grandin, standing at the intersection of autism and animals, offers unparalleled observations and extraordinary ideas about both.
Download or read book MANIPULATIVE MONKEYS written by Susan PERRY and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Perry and Manson have followed four generations of capuchins. The authors describe behavior as entertaining--and occasionally as alarming--as it is recognizable: competition and cooperation, jockeying for position and status, peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations are the authors' colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork.
Download or read book Science and the Akashic Field written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-03 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the unifying world-concept long sought by scientists, mystics, and sages: an Integral Theory of Everything • Explains how modern science has rediscovered the Akashic Field of perennial philosophy • New edition updates ongoing scientific studies, presents new research inspired by the first edition, and includes new case studies and a section on animal telepathy Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic Field is real and has its equivalent in science’s zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness. This zero-point Akashic Field is the constant and enduring memory of the universe. It holds the record of all that has happened on Earth and in the cosmos and relates it to all that is yet to happen. In Science and the Akashic Field, philosopher and scientist Ervin Laszlo conveys the essential element of this information field in language that is accessible and clear. From the world of science he confirms our deepest intuitions of the oneness of creation in the Integral Theory of Everything. We discover that, as philosopher William James stated, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
Download or read book The Self Actualizing Cosmos written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-02 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the current revolution in scientific thought and the newest scientific findings in support of the Akashic field • Explains how the new Akasha paradigm recognizes the interconnection of all things in space and time through the quantum resonance of the Akashic field • Reveals the cosmos to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole, bringing forth life and consciousness in countless universes • Explores the latest discoveries in the sciences of life, mind, and cosmos Science evolves through alternating phases of “normal science” and radical shifts that create scientific revolutions. We saw this at the turn of the 20th century, when science shifted from a Newtonian worldview to Einstein’s relativity paradigm, and again with the shift to the quantum paradigm. Now, as we recognize the nonlocal interconnection of all things in space and time, we find our scientific worldview shifting once again. With contributions by physicists Paul A. LaViolette and Peter Jakubowski, pioneering systems scientist Ervin Laszlo explores the genesis of the current revolution in scientific thought and the latest findings in support of the Akashic field. He explains how the burgeoning Akasha paradigm returns our way of thinking to an integral consciousness, a nonlinear mode of understanding that enables us to accept the reality of nonlocal interconnection throughout the world. This new inclusive way of understanding reaffirms the age-old instinctive comprehension of deep connections among people, societies, and nature, and it integrates and transcends classical religious and scientific paradigms. Providing examples from cutting-edge science of quantum-resonance-based interactions among all living systems, Laszlo shows the cosmos of the Akasha to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole, where each part is in coherence with all others and all parts together create the conditions for the emergence of life and consciousness. The advent of the Akasha paradigm marks a new stage in science’s understanding of the fundamental nature of the world and offers unique guidance for contemporary efforts to create a peaceful and sustainable world.
Download or read book The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins written by Hal Whitehead and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on their own research as well as scientific literature including evolutionary biology, animal behavior, ecology, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, two cetacean biologists submerge themselves in the unique environment in which whales and dolphins live. --Publisher's description.
Download or read book Mind Shift written by John Parrington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Parrington argues that social interaction and culture have deeply shaped the exceptional nature of human consciousness. The mental capacities of the human mind far outstrip those of other animals. Our imaginations and creativity have produced art, music, and literature; built bridges and cathedrals; enabled us to probe distant galaxies, and to ponder the meaning of our existence. When our minds become disordered, they can also take us to the depths of despair. What makes the human brain unique, and able to generate such a rich mental life? In this book, John Parrington draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. And he argues that this 'shift', enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool - language. The complex social interaction brought by language opened up the possibility of shared conceptual worlds, enriched with rhythmic sounds, and images that could be drawn on cave walls. This transformation enabled modern humans to leap rapidly beyond all other species, and generated an exceptional human consciousness, a sense of self that arises as a product of our brain biology and the social interactions we experience. Our minds, even those of identical twins, are unique because they are the result of this extraordinarily plastic brain, exquisitely shaped and tuned by the social and cultural environment in which we grew up and to which we continue to respond through life. Linking early work by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to the findings of modern neuroscience, Parrington explores how language, culture, and society mediate brain function, and what this view of the human mind may bring to our understanding and treatment of mental illness.
Download or read book Minds Of Their Own written by Lesley J Rogers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do Animals have ideas? Do they experience pain like humans? Do they think about objects that they cannot see? About situations that have occurred in the past? Do they consciously make plans for the future or do they simply react unthinkingly to objects as they appear and situations as they arise? All of these questions have bearing on whether or not animals have consciousness. The advent of computers that ?think? has lead us to consider ?intelligence? in a way we never thought possible a decade ago. But when and how does information processing in the brain become automatic?In Minds of Their Own, Lesley J. Rogers examines the issue of animal thought both sympathetically and critically by looking at the different behavior characteristics of a variety of animals, the evolution of the brain and when consciousness might have evolved. To most people, to be conscious means to be aware of oneself as well as to be aware of others. But does this hold true for animals? The answer may have implications which transcend mere scientific inquiry: if animals are cognizant creatures, what, if any, moral responsibility do humans have to assure their rights? This timely book examines this issue and others by emphasizing comparisons between humans and animals: how we evolved; how we remember; how we learn.
Download or read book Beyond Words written by Carl Safina and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed conservationist Carl Safina examines animal personhood as told through the inspired narrative portraits of elephants, wolves, and dolphins
Download or read book Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering written by B. Kyle Keltz and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of animal suffering is the atheistic argument that an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God would not use millions of years of animal suffering, disease, and death to form a planet for human beings. This argument has not received as much attention in the philosophical literature as other forms of the problem of evil, yet it has been increasingly touted by atheists since Charles Darwin. While several theists have attempted to provide answers to the problem, they disagree with each other as to which answer is correct. Also, some of these theists have given in to the problem and believe it entails that God is limited in certain ways. B. Kyle Keltz seeks to provide a classical answer to the problem of animal suffering inspired by the medieval philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas. In doing so, Keltz not only utilizes the wisdom of Aquinas, but also contemporary insights into non-human animal minds from contemporary philosophy and science. Keltz provides a compelling neo-Thomistic answer to the problem of animal suffering and explains why the classical God of theism would create a world that includes animal death.
Download or read book The Curse of the Self written by Mark R. Leary and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the capacity for self-awareness is an essential aspect of human nature, self-reflection comes at a high price. Self-awareness and its accompanying egoism profoundly affect people's lives, interfering with their success, polluting their relationships with other people, and undermining their happiness. Drawing from work in psychology and other behavioral sciences, in The Curse of the Self, Mark Leary explores personal and social problems that are created by the human capacity for self-reflection and offers insights regarding how these problems may be minimized.
Download or read book What It s Like to Be a Dog written by Gregory Berns and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dog lovers and neuroscientists should both read this important book." -- Dr. Temple Grandin What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist and bestselling author Gregory Berns and his team did something nobody had ever attempted: they trained dogs to go into an MRI scanner -- completely awake -- so they could figure out what they think and feel. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns takes us into the minds of wild animals: sea lions who can learn to dance, dolphins who can see with sound, and even the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. Berns's latest scientific breakthroughs prove definitively that animals have feelings very much like we do -- a revelation that forces us to reconsider how we think about and treat animals. Written with insight, empathy, and humor, What It's Like to Be a Dog is the new manifesto for animal liberation of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Out of Our Heads written by Alva Noë and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alva Noë is one of a new breed—part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist—who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the two hundred-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain. Our culture is obsessed with the brain—how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It's widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious—how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity—has emerged unchallenged: We don't have a clue. In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us.
Download or read book The Animal Mind written by Kristin Andrews and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they cut across animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology.
Download or read book Stalking the Wild Pendulum written by Itzhak Bentov and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1988-02-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his exciting and original view of the universe, Itzhak Bentov has provided a new perspective on human consciousness and its limitless possibilities. Widely known and loved for his delightful humor and imagination, Bentov explains the familiar world of phenomena with perceptions that are as lucid as they are thrilling. He gives us a provocative picture of ourselves in an expanded, conscious, holistic universe.
Download or read book Original Thinking written by Glenn Aparicio Parry and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Original Thinking, Glenn Aparicio Parry delves into the evolution of Western thought to recover the living roots of wisdom that can correct the imbalances in our modern worldview. Inspired by groundbreaking dialogues that the author organized between Native American elders and leading-edge Western scientists to explore the underlying principles of the cosmos, this book offers a radical revisioning of how we think. Asking questions such as, Is it possible to come up with an original thought?, What does it mean to be human?, and How has our thinking created our world today?, Parry challenges us to consider many of our most basic assumptions. To think originally--as in thinking new thoughts that have never been thought or said before--is according to Parry, largely an illusion. So, too, is the idea of linear human progress. Most of us have traveled far from our ancestral lands, and in so doing, lost connection with place, the origin of our consciousness. Original Thinking offers a radical revisioning of how we think and what it means to be human. It invites us to reintegrate our hearts with our heads and to expand our self-imposed narrowing of consciousness. In doing so we reconnect with the living, original source--nature and her interconnected elements and cycles--and embrace the communion of old and new, rational and intuitive, and masculine and feminine. Ultimately, Parry shows us how to create the tapestry of truly original thinking and to restore thought as a blessing, as a whole and complete transmission from Spirit. Contents PART ONE (ORIGIN): Is it possible to come up with an original thought? Chapter 1. Original Thought, Time, and the Unfolding of Consciousness Chapter 2. Looking Backward to Go Forward Chapter 3. Wheels Within Wheels Chapter 4. It's About Time PART TWO (DEPARTURE): What does it mean to be human? Chapter 5. Purpose, Potential, and Responsibility of Being Human Chapter 6. Rational Thought and Human Identity Chapter 7. Re-thinking Language Chapter 8. Beyond Rationality Chapter 9. A Tale of Two Directions PART THREE (RETURN): How has our thinking created the world today, and what is emerging? Chapter 10. The Essence of Thought Chapter 11. To Make Thought Whole Again Chapter 12. To Think Without Separation Chapter 13. Re-Thinking the "Dismal Science" Chapter 14. Toward An Original Economics PART FOUR (RENEWAL): Can education promote the renewal of original thinking? Chapter 15. Education as Renewal Chapter 16. Childhood and Education Chapter 17. Higher Education Chapter 18. A New (and Ancient) Vision Chapter 19. A Vision for Higher Education
Download or read book Deconstructing Behavior Choice and Well being written by Edward R. Morey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-03 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neoclassical economists assume that people act to maximize their well-being: they choose based on their desires and only desire what they will like. Neuroscientists and psychologists disagree. Their research demonstrates that cues and evolutionary quirks cause people to act against their best interests, even choosing alternatives they will not like. In this book, Edward R. Morey contrasts neoclassical choice theory with behavioral models and findings in psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior. The book addresses the fundamental idea within economics that behaviors are chosen, and it explains why other disciplines disagree. The chapters touch on modeling behavior, judging behavior, and policies. Morey breaks down judgment using the ethics of welfare economics, and it compares and contrasts this recognized approach with others, including Mill’s liberalism, virtue ethics, duty-based ethics, Buddhist ethics, and utilitarianism.
