Consciousness Explained

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Publisher : Hachette+ORM
ISBN 13 : 0316439487
Total Pages : 707 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness Explained by : Daniel C. Dennett

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

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190677015
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and Fundamental Reality by : Philip Goff

Download or read book Consciousness and Fundamental Reality written by Philip Goff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first half of this book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness, and hence cannot be true. The second half explores and defends Russellian monism, a radical alternative to both physicalism and dualism. The view that emerges combines panpsychism with the view that the universe as a whole is fundamental.

Actual Consciousness

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198714386
Total Pages : 433 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis Actual Consciousness by : Ted Honderich

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.

A Place for Consciousness

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195168143
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis A Place for Consciousness by : Gregg Rosenberg

Download or read book A Place for Consciousness written by Gregg Rosenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rosenberg introduces a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism for thinking about what causation is, about the natural world, and about how to create a detailed model to go along with the new paradigm. Arguing that experience is part of the categorical foundations of causality, he shows that within this new paradigm there is a place for something essentially like consciousness in all its traditional mysterious respects."--BOOK JACKET.

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0199654662
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity by : Robert J. Howell

Download or read book Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity written by Robert J. Howell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Consciousness and Language

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521597449
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (974 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and Language by : John R. Searle

Download or read book Consciousness and Language written by John R. Searle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Ignorance and Imagination

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199723966
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Ignorance and Imagination by : Daniel Stoljar

Download or read book Ignorance and Imagination written by Daniel Stoljar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ignorance and Imagination advances a novel way to resolve the central philosophical problem about the mind: how it is that consciousness or experience fits into a larger naturalistic picture of the world. The correct response to the problem, Stoljar argues, is not to posit a realm of experience distinct from the physical, nor to deny the reality of phenomenal experience, nor even to rethink our understanding of consciousness and the language we use to talk about it. Instead, we should view the problem itself as a consequence of our ignorance of the relevant physical facts, Stoljar shows that this change of orientation is well motivated historically, empirically, and philosophically, and that it has none of the side effects it is sometimes thought to have. The result is a philosophical perspective on the mind that has a number of far-reaching consequences: for consciousness studies, for our place in nature, and for the way we think about the relationship between philosophy and science.

Consciousness and Moral Status

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315396327
Total Pages : 150 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (153 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and Moral Status by : Joshua Shepherd

Download or read book Consciousness and Moral Status written by Joshua Shepherd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-23 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

The Feeling of Life Itself

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262042819
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis The Feeling of Life Itself by : Christof Koch

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.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262290553
Total Pages : 725 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Conscious Will by : Daniel M. Wegner

Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

The Mystery of Consciousness

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Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 9780940322066
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mystery of Consciousness by : John R. Searle

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.

Being No One

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262263807
Total Pages : 896 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis Being No One by : Thomas Metzinger

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.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 0547527543
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (475 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by : Julian Jaynes

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

The Conscious Mind

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Publisher : Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 9780195117899
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (178 download)

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Book Synopsis The Conscious Mind by : David J. Chalmers

Download or read book The Conscious Mind written by David J. Chalmers and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 1997 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing in a rigorous, thought-provoking style, the author takes us on a far-reaching tour through the philosophical ramifications of consciousness, offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.

Consciousness and Moral Responsibility

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Publisher : Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN 13 : 0198704631
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and Moral Responsibility by : Neil Levy

Download or read book Consciousness and Moral Responsibility written by Neil Levy and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2014-03 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness—the global workspace view—and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

Consciousness

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199277362
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness by : Peter Carruthers

Download or read book Consciousness written by Peter Carruthers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Carruthers's essays on consciousness and related issues have had a substantial impact on the field, and many of his best are now collected here in revised form. The first half of the volume is devoted to developing, elaborating, and defending against competitors one particular sort of reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness, which Carruthers now refers to as 'dual-content theory'. Phenomenal consciousness - the feel of experience - is supposed to constitute the 'hardproblem' for a scientific world view, and many have claimed that it is an irredeemable mystery. But Carruthers here claims to have explained it. He argues that phenomenally conscious states are ones that possess both an 'analog' (fine-grained) intentional content and a corresponding higher-orderanalog content, representing the first-order content of the experience. It is the higher-order analog content that enables our phenomenally conscious experiences to present themselves to us, and that constitutes their distinctive subjective aspect, or feel.The next two chapters explore some of the differences between conscious experience and conscious thought, and argue for the plausibility of some kind of eliminativism about conscious thinking (while retaining realism about phenomenal consciousness). Then the final four chapters focus on the minds of non-human animals. Carruthers argues that even if the experiences of animals aren't phenomenally conscious (as his account probably implies), this needn't prevent the frustrations and sufferings ofanimals from being appropriate objects of sympathy and concern. Nor need it mean that there is any sort of radical 'Cartesian divide' between our minds and theirs of deep significance for comparative psychology. In the final chapter, he argues provocatively that even insects have minds that include abelief/desire/perception psychology much like our own. So mindedness and phenomenal consciousness couldn't be further apart.Carruthers's writing throughout is distinctively clear and direct. The collection will be of great interest to anyone working in philosophy of mind or cognitive science.

Phenomenal Qualities

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198712715
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis Phenomenal Qualities by : Paul Coates

Download or read book Phenomenal Qualities written by Paul Coates and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A team of distinguished philosophers and psychologists explore the nature of phenomenal qualities, the qualities of conscious experiences, and the ways in which they fit in with our understanding of mind and reality. This volume offers an indispensable resource for anyone wishing to understand the nature of conscious experience.