Download or read book Our Minds Our Selves written by Keith Oatley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Oatley provides [a] ... history of modern psychology told through the stories of its most important breakthroughs and the men and women who made them, [discussing] conscious and unconscious knowledge, brain physiology, emotion, mental development, language, memory, mental illness, creativity, human cooperation, and much more"--Back cover.
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 Aquinas on Human Self Knowledge written by Therese Scarpelli Cory and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Aquinas's theory of self-knowledge, situated within the mid-thirteenth-century debate and his own maturing thought on human nature.
Download or read book Our Own Minds written by Radu J. Bogdan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that in response to sociocultural pressures, human minds develope self-consciousness by activating a complex machinery of self-regulation. In Our Own Minds, Radu Bogdan takes a developmental perspective on consciousness--its functional design in particular--and proposes that children's functional capacity for consciousness is assembled during development out of a variety of ontogenetic adaptations that respond mostly to sociocultural challenges specific to distinct stages of childhood. Young human minds develop self-consciousness--in the broad sense of being conscious of the self's mental and behavioral relatedness to the world--because they face extraordinary and escalating sociocultural pressures that cannot be handled without setting in motion a complex executive machinery of self-regulation under the guidance of an increasingly sophisticated intuitive psychology. Bogdan suggests that self-consciousness develops gradually during childhood. Children move from being oriented toward the outside world in early childhood to becoming (at about age four) oriented also toward their own minds. Bogdan argues that the sociocultural tasks and practices that children must assimilate and engage in competently demand the development of an intuitive psychology (also known as theory of mind or mind reading); the intuitive psychology assembles a suite of executive abilities (intending, controlling, monitoring, and so on) that install self-consciousness and drive its development. Understanding minds, first the minds of others and then our own, drives the development of self-consciousness, world-bound or extrovert at the beginning and later mind-bound or introvert. This asymmetric development of the intuitive psychology drives a commensurate asymmetric development of self-consciousness.
Download or read book Our Minds Our Selves written by Keith Oatley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original history of psychology told through the stories of its most important breakthroughs and the people who made them Advances in psychology have revolutionized our understanding of the human mind. Imaging technology allows researchers to monitor brain activity, letting us see what happens when we perceive, think, and feel. But technology is only part of how ideas about the mind and brain have developed over the past century and a half. In Our Minds, Our Selves, distinguished psychologist and writer Keith Oatley provides an engaging, original, and authoritative history of modern psychology told through the stories of its most important breakthroughs and the men and women who made them. Our Minds, Our Selves traverses a fascinating terrain: forms of conscious and unconscious knowledge; brain physiology; emotion; stages of mental development from infancy to adulthood; language acquisition and use; the nature of memory; mental illness; morality; free will; creativity; the mind at work in art and literature; and, most important, our ability to cooperate with one another. Controversial experiments--such as Stanley Milgram's investigation of our willingness to obey authority and inflict pain and Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues' study of behavior in a simulated prison—are covered in detail. Biographical sketches illuminate the thinkers behind key insights and turning points: historical figures such as Hermann Helmholtz, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, B. F. Skinner, and Alan Turing; leading contemporaries such as Geoffrey Hinton, Michael Tomasello, and Tania Singer; and influential people from other fields, including Margaret Mead, Noam Chomsky, Jane Goodall, and Gabrielle Starr. Enhancing our understanding of ourselves and others, psychology holds the potential to create a better world. Our Minds, Our Selves tells the story of this most important of sciences in a new and appealing way.
Download or read book The Opacity of Mind written by Peter Carruthers and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have introspective access to our own thoughts? Peter Carruthers challenges the consensus that we do: he argues that access to our own thoughts is always interpretive, grounded in perceptual awareness and sensory imagery. He proposes a bold new theory of self-knowledge, with radical implications for understanding of consciousness and agency.
Download or read book Changing Our Mind written by David P. Gushee and published by Read the Spirit Books. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Every generation has its hot-button issue,” writes David P. Gushee, “For us, it’s the LGBT issue.” In Changing Our Mind, Gushee takes the reader along his personal and theological journey as he changes his mind about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion in the Church. With 19 books to his name, Gushee is no stranger to the public arena. He is the author of the “Evangelical Declaration Against Torture” and drafted the “Evangelical Climate Initiative. “For decades now, David Gushee has earned the reputation as America's leading evangelical ethicist. In this book, he admits that he has been wrong on the LGBT issue.” writes Brian D. McLaren, author and theologian. In the definitive third edition of this book, David Gushee issues a scholarly response to his critics. Brian D. McLaren says it best: “Not only is David Gushee's work deep, thoughtful and brilliant; and not only is David philosophically and theologically careful and astute; he is also refreshingly clear and understandable by ‘common people’ who know neither philosophical nor theological mumbo jumbo.”
Download or read book Strangers to Ourselves written by Rachel Aviv and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller One of the top ten books of the year at The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vulture/New York magazine A best book of the year at Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus The acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity. Strangers to Ourselves poses fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Rachel Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman celebrated as a saint who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s gripping exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does. Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives—and our identities, too. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.
Download or read book Train Your Mind Change Your Brain written by Sharon Begley and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-11-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cutting-edge science and the ancient wisdom of Buddhism have come together to reveal that, contrary to popular belief, we have the power to literally change our brains by changing our minds. Recent pioneering experiments in neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change in response to experience—reveal that the brain is capable of altering its structure and function, and even of generating new neurons, a power we retain well into old age. The brain can adapt, heal, renew itself after trauma, compensate for disabilities, rewire itself to overcome dyslexia, and break cycles of depression and OCD. And as scientists are learning from studies performed on Buddhist monks, it is not only the outside world that can change the brain, so can the mind and, in particular, focused attention through the classic Buddhist practice of mindfulness. With her gift for making science accessible, meaningful, and compelling, science writer Sharon Begley illuminates a profound shift in our understanding of how the brain and the mind interact and takes us to the leading edge of a revolution in what it means to be human. Praise for Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain “There are two great things about this book. One is that it shows us how nothing about our brains is set in stone. The other is that it is written by Sharon Begley, one of the best science writers around. Begley is superb at framing the latest facts within the larger context of the field. This is a terrific book.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers “Excellent . . . elegant and lucid prose . . . an open mind here will be rewarded.”—Discover “A strong dose of hope along with a strong does of science and Buddhist thought.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune
Download or read book Strangers to Ourselves written by Timothy D. Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Know thyself," a precept as old as Socrates, is still good advice. But is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? Wilson makes the case for better ways of discovering our unconscious selves. If you want to know who you are or what you feel or what you're like, Wilson advises, pay attention to what you actually do and what other people think about you. Showing us an unconscious more powerful than Freud's, and even more pervasive in our daily life, Strangers to Ourselves marks a revolution in how we know ourselves.
Download or read book Changing Our Minds written by Dr. Naomi Fisher and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children are born full of curiosity, eager to participate in the world. They learn as they live, with enthusiasm and joy. Then we send them to school. We stop them from playing and actively exploring their interests, telling them it's more important to sit still and listen. The result is that for many children, their motivation to learn drops dramatically. The joy of the early years is replaced with apathy and anxiety. This is not inevitable. We are socialised to believe that schooling is synonymous with education, but it's only one approach. Self-directed education puts the child back in control of their learning. This enables children, including those diagnosed with special educational needs, to flourish in their own time and on their own terms. It enables us to put wellbeing at the centre of education. Changing Our Minds brings together research, theory and practice on learning. It includes interviews with influential thinkers in the field of self-directed education and examples from families alongside practical advice. This essential guide will give you an understanding of why self-directed education makes sense, how it works, and what to do to put it into action yourself.
Download or read book OUT OF OUR MINDS LEARNING TO BE CREATIVE written by Ken Robinson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About The Book: Out of Our Minds - There is a paradox here. Throughout the world, companies and organizations are trying to compete in a world of economic and technological change that is moving faster than ever. They urgently need people who are creative, innovative and flexible. Too often they can t find them. Why is this? What s the real problem - and what should be done about it? Out of Our Minds answers these three vital questions for all organizations.
Download or read book The Self Illusion written by Bruce Hood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.
Download or read book Winning the War in Your Mind written by Craig Groeschel and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MORE THAN 500,000 COPIES SOLD! Are your thoughts out of control--just like your life? Do you long to break free from the spiral of destructive thinking? Let God's truth become your battle plan to win the war in your mind! We've all tried to think our way out of bad habits and unhealthy thought patterns, only to find ourselves stuck with an out-of-control mind and off-track daily life. Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Craig Groeschel understands deeply this daily battle against self-doubt and negative thinking, and in this powerful new book he reveals the strategies he's discovered to change your mind and your life for the long-term. Drawing upon Scripture and the latest findings of brain science, Groeschel lays out practical strategies that will free you from the grip of harmful, destructive thinking and enable you to live the life of joy and peace that God intends you to live. Winning the War in Your Mind will help you: Learn how your brain works and see how to rewire it Identify the lies your enemy wants you to believe Recognize and short-circuit your mental triggers for destructive thinking See how prayer and praise will transform your mind Develop practices that allow God's thoughts to become your thoughts God has something better for your life than your old ways of thinking. It's time to change your mind so God can change your life.
Download or read book Being No One written by Thomas Metzinger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-08-20 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.
Download or read book Christian Women in the Patristic World written by Lynn H. Cohick and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From facing wild beasts in the arena to governing the Roman Empire, Christian women--as preachers and philosophers, martyrs and empresses, virgins and mothers--influenced the shape of the church in its formative centuries. This book provides in a single volume a nearly complete compendium of extant evidence about Christian women in the second through fifth centuries. It highlights the social and theological contributions they made to shaping early Christian beliefs and practices, integrating their influence into the history of the patristic church and showing how their achievements can be edifying for contemporary Christians.
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 232 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.
