Introducing Consciousness

Introducing Consciousness

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  • Author: David Papineau
  • Publisher: Totem Books
  • ISBN:
  • Category : Medical
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 188

ntroducing Consciousness provides a comprehensive guide to the current state of consciousness studies.


Consciousness

Consciousness

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  • Author: Susan Blackmore
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317625862
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 838

Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself an illusion? Am I conscious now? Now considered the 'last great mystery of science', consciousness was once viewed with extreme scepticism and rejected by mainstream scientists. It is now a significant area of research, albeit a contentious one, as well as a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. This edition of Consciousness, revised by author team Susan Blackmore and Emily Troscianko, explores the key theories and evidence in consciousness studies ranging from neuroscience and psychology to quantum theories and philosophy. It examines why the term ‘consciousness’ has no recognised definition and provides an opportunity to delve into personal intuitions about the self, mind, and consciousness. Featuring comprehensive coverage of all core topics in the field, this edition includes: Why the problem of consciousness is so hard Neuroscience and the neural correlates of consciousness Why we might be mistaken about our own minds The apparent difference between conscious and unconscious Theories of attention, free will, and self and other The evolution of consciousness in animals and machines Altered states from meditation to drugs and dreaming Complete with key concept boxes, profiles of well-known thinkers, and questions and activities suitable for both independent study and group work, Consciousness provides a complete introduction to this fascinating field. Additional resources are available on the accompanying companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/blackmore


Introducing Consciousness

Introducing Consciousness

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  • Author: David Papineau
  • Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
  • ISBN: 184831972X
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 361

'An excellent book' - Ted Honderich, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London (UCL) Introducing Consciousness provides a comprehensive guide to the current state of consciousness studies. It starts with the history of the philosophical relation between mind and matter, and proceeds to scientific attempts to explain consciousness in terms of neural mechanisms, cerebral computation and quantum mechanics. Along the way, readers will be introduced to zombies and Chinese Rooms, ghosts in machines and Erwin Schrodinger's cat.


An Introduction to Mind, Consciousness and Language

An Introduction to Mind, Consciousness and Language

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  • Author: Ray Cattell
  • Publisher: A&C Black
  • ISBN: 9780826455154
  • Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 244

Much research has been directed at the brain and its more abstract counterpart, the mind. Incorporating the knowledge gained from this current research, the book looks at the relationship between language and the brain/mind.


Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

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  • Author: Susan Blackmore
  • Publisher: OUP Oxford
  • ISBN: 0191578053
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 176

Consciousness, 'the last great mystery for science', has now become a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories using illustrations, lively cartoons, and experiments.Topics include vision and attention, theories of self and will, experiments on action and awareness, altered states of consciousness, and the effects of brain damage and drugs. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


Does Your Brain Need You? An Introduction to Neuroscience and Consciousness

Does Your Brain Need You? An Introduction to Neuroscience and Consciousness

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  • Author: Clemens Lode
  • Publisher: Clemens Lode Verlag e.K.
  • ISBN: 3945586429
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 248

This book is about the "neuroscience of you" and the mind-body connection. Starting with the evolution of awareness, the book will explain the theory of mind and how it relates to our ability to recognize ourselves in the mirror. In the second part, the book will discuss the philosophy of consciousness and how we could create consciousness with artificial intelligence. Who is this for? What is it about? What will it do for me? This book is for anyone interested in the inner mechanisms that make up "you", your consciousness, your perception of self, and your awareness. While it raises significant philosophic and scientific questions, it is an introductory book and can be read and understood by anyone new to the topic. The book explains how our brain evolved over millions of years, what damage to our brain can do to our conscious experience of the world, and how we could recreate human consciousness in a mechanical system. For you, the reader, the book will provide you with a new perspective on free will, consciousness, and philosophy. Imagine one of our ancestors in the distant past, sitting near a lake, lost in thought. She looks into the water and sees her reflection. Then, for the first time in the evolutionary history of humans, the question is asked, "What is this experience I have of myself?" Unbeknownst to her, that question would vex humanity through modern times. Today, there is again an entity looking into a proverbial lake and examining its reflection: while artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, it is on the verge of recognizing itself and asking the same question, "Who am I?" The closer we come to a machine that seems to be as intelligent as a human being, the more we start to worry about our own subjective experience. If a computer eventually becomes indistinguishable from us, what makes humans special? What is our role in the universe if we are so similar to a computer program? Does your brain need "you" at all? In this book, I will examine, from the ground up, questions about consciousness. Many steps toward the understanding of the self will tell you nothing about the self—until your right hemisphere connects everything into one idea as you understand the concept. Such an insight is also called an epiphany. Using a brain scanner, we can actually observe someone having an epiphany when the brain's right hemisphere suddenly buzzes with activity. While the left hemisphere deals with concrete entities, the right hemisphere helps with looking for alternative meanings. For example, the left hemisphere might identify a "bank" as a financial institution, while the right hemisphere also considers it to be the edge of a river ("riverbank"). In the Old Indo-Aryan language Sanskrit, an epiphany leading you to the answer about who you are is called "bodhi," which literally means "awakening" or "enlightenment." Similarly, the name "Buddha" means the "Awakened One" or the "Enlightened One." A similar idea can be found in Zen Buddhism as Satori which corresponds to a very sudden insight. This book shows some of the steps leading to Satori, combining the insights of philosophers and scientists into a new idea of what the "self" means. With this knowledge, we can better reflect on our own values and act according to reality rather than just blindly following someone else's beliefs. My goal with the book is to give you an introduction to neuroscience that is not scattered into different parts. I aim to focus on helping you to answer the following questions: What is the self? Does your brain even need a "self"? Is there a consciousness beyond the body? What is this seemingly mysterious subjective experience we share? How can we think, dream, plan, feel, and make decisions?


Consciousness

Consciousness

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  • Author: Susan Blackmore
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0198794738
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 169

Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


Consciousness

Consciousness

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  • Author: Susan Blackmore
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1444164333
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 995

Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself just an illusion? The 'last great mystery of science', consciousness is a topic that was banned from serious research for most of the last century, but is now an area of increasing popular interest, as well as a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. This ground-breaking textbook by best-selling author Susan Blackmore was the first of its kind to bring together all the major theories of consciousness studies, from those based on neuroscience to those based on quantum theory or Eastern philosophy. The book examines topics such as how subjective experiences arise from objective brain processes, the basic neuroscience of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, out of body and near death experiences and the effects of drugs, dreams and meditation. It also explores the nature of self, the possibility of artificial consciousness in robots, and the question of whether animals are conscious. The new edition has been fully revised to include the latest developments in neuroscience, brain scanning techniques, and artificial consciousness and robotics. The new website includes self-assessment exercises, advanced further reading, flashcards and MCQs. For all those intrigued by what it means to be, to exist, this book could radically transform your understanding of your own consciousness.


Consciousness Revisited

Consciousness Revisited

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  • Author: Michael Tye
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 0262516632
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 249

Four major puzzles of consciousness philosophical materialism must confront after rejecting the phenomenal concept strategy. We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles—solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists.


Pre-reflective Consciousness

Pre-reflective Consciousness

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  • Author: Sofia Miguens
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317399285
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 520

Pre-reflective Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind delves into the relationship between the current analytical debates on consciousness and the debates that took place within continental philosophy in the twentieth century and in particular around the time of Sartre and within his seminal works. Examining the return of the problem of subjectivity in philosophy of mind and the idea that phenomenal consciousness could not be reduced to functional or cognitive properties, this volume includes twenty-two unique contributions from leading scholars in the field. Asking questions such as: Why we should think that self-consciousness is non-reflective? Is subjectivity first-personal? Does consciousness necessitate self-awareness? Do we need pre-reflective self-consciousness? Are ego-disorders in psychosis a dysfunction of pre-reflective self-awareness? How does the Cartesian duality between body and mind fit into Sartre’s conceptions of consciousness?