Brain & Belief

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Publisher : AEGIS PRESS
ISBN 13 : 0974764507
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Brain & Belief by : John J. McGraw

Download or read book Brain & Belief written by John J. McGraw and published by AEGIS PRESS. This book was released on 2004 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its beginnings in prehistoric religion to its central importance in Western faith traditions, the soul has been a constant source of fascination and speculation. Brain & Belief seeks to understand mankind's obsession with life, death, and the afterlife. Exploring the latest insights from neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and existential psychology, McGraw exhaustively researches the various takes on the human soul and considers the meaning of the soul in a postmodern world. The ambitious scope of the book is balanced by a deeply personal voice whose sympathy for both science and religion is resonant.

The Believing Brain

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1429972610
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis The Believing Brain by : Michael Shermer

Download or read book The Believing Brain written by Michael Shermer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.

Memory, Brain, and Belief

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674007192
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Memory, Brain, and Belief by : Daniel L. Schacter

Download or read book Memory, Brain, and Belief written by Daniel L. Schacter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text will be stimulating to scholars in several academic fields. It ranges from cognitive, neurological and pathological perspectives on memory and belief, to memory and belief in autobiographical narratives.

Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192845632
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (928 download)

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Book Synopsis Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind by : Eric Marcus

Download or read book Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind written by Eric Marcus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person's beliefs. Here, Eric Marcus argues that the unity of the rational mind--what makes it one mind--is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can't believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special sense. What explains this is that beliefs, and the inferences by which we acquire them, are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness.

Changes of Mind

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199655758
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis Changes of Mind by : Neil Tennant

Download or read book Changes of Mind written by Neil Tennant and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-14 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of how a rational agent should revise beliefs in the light of new evidence. Computationally implementable, it provides rigorous mathematical theory of dependency networks and investigates the complexity of algorithms for rational agents revising beliefs.

Belief in Psychology

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press (MA)
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Belief in Psychology by : Jay L. Garfield

Download or read book Belief in Psychology written by Jay L. Garfield and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1988 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in Psychology tackles the knotty problem of how to treat the propositional attitudes states such as beliefs, desires, hopes and fears within cognitive science. Jay Garfield asserts that the propositional attitudes can and must play useful theoretical roles in the science of the mind and stresses the importance of their social context in this sophisticated and original argument. Garfield proposes his own alternative to the apparent dilemma of either scrapping the propositional attitudes or of making room for them within a dimly foreseen, futuristic cognitive science. He provides a characterization of the nature of propositional attitudes conceived as psychological states, and of their role in cognitive science. They must, he argues, be understood as relations between their bearers and their environments, including, in the case of persons, their social and linguistic environments. Understanding them in this way is consonant with current practice in empirical cognitive science and provides a philosophically useful analysis of mental representation. Along the way, Garfield discusses the relationship between the enterprise of science and our commonsense conception of ourselves and the world, and the ways in which this relation constrains our understanding of the propositional attitudes, and illuminates a realistic interpretation of a psychology of representational states and processes. Belief in Psychology is the only book that adopts such a view, and it is unique in providing a sustained critique of eliminativism, instrumentalism, and computational individualism - the main competing proposals within philosophy of cognitive science for eliminating or reconciling propositional attitudes. Jay Garfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Communications and Cognitive Science at Hampshire College and a co-director of the University of Massachusetts Cognitive Science Institute. He is a co-author of Cognitive Science: An Introductionand editor of Modularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural Language Understanding, both Bradford books. A Bradford Book.

The Pragmatic Mind

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Author :
Publisher : New Americanists
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pragmatic Mind by : Mark Bauerlein

Download or read book The Pragmatic Mind written by Mark Bauerlein and published by New Americanists. This book was released on 1997 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English professor Mark Bauerlein studies the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its overlooked relevance for the neopragmatism of later thinkers. Bauerlein argues that those "original" pragmatists are often cited casually and imprecisely as mere precursors to contemporary intellectuals, but, in fact, many broad social and academic reforms hailed by new pragmatists were actually grounded in the "old" school.

Mindwise

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 030774356X
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (77 download)

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Book Synopsis Mindwise by : Nicholas Epley

Download or read book Mindwise written by Nicholas Epley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science (Society for Personality and Social Psychology) Why are we sometimes blind to the minds of others, treating them like objects or animals instead? Why do we talk to our cars, or the stars, as if there is a mind that can hear us? Why do we so routinely believe that others think, feel, and want what we do when, in fact, they do not? And why do we think we understand our spouses, family, and friends so much better than we actually do? In this illuminating book, leading social psychologist Nicholas Epley introduces us to what scientists have learned about our ability to understand the most complicated puzzle on the planet—other people—and the surprising mistakes we so routinely make. Mindwise will not turn others into open books, but it will give you the wisdom to revolutionize how you think about them—and yourself.

Why We Believe

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030024925X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Why We Believe by : Agustin Fuentes

Download or read book Why We Believe written by Agustin Fuentes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea—is central to the human way of being in the world.

The Human Mind and Belief

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Author :
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1491877251
Total Pages : 73 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (918 download)

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Book Synopsis The Human Mind and Belief by : Eugene G Breen

Download or read book The Human Mind and Belief written by Eugene G Breen and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human mind is all we have got to understand anything. There is enormous variety in the capacity and the spectrum of human minds. Some think little, some invent, some have the genius factor, and most are the basic model. They all have common characteristics such as desire for knowledge, for love, for happiness, for understanding of suffering and grief. Some ponder the bigger questions like, the meaning of life, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and others don't or ignore them. The nature of knowledge and the capacity of the human mind to "know" are mysteries. The inexorible progress of humanity and striving toward more information and technical advancement begs the question the song asks "is that all there is?" What is the end game for man, the human mind and the world as we know it? These and other thought provoking issues have exercized the mind of man since forever. These pages, gleaned from the exposure to the mental suffering of thousands of patients, tries to make a user friendly guide to the human brain/mind, and what it means to be human.

The Opacity of Mind

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199685142
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis The Opacity of Mind by : Peter Carruthers

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.

Mind and Belief V

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Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1504988590
Total Pages : 103 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis Mind and Belief V by : Eugene Breen

Download or read book Mind and Belief V written by Eugene Breen and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the latest in the series The Human Mind and Belief. It is akin to an impressionist painting with ideas scattered all over the text, much like the artist daubs brushes of varying colors on the canvas. The image comes to light from a distance and forms a deep impression. The basic theme is that in order to get a life, you gotta believe. It discusses work and music and the human mind, among other topics, and peers at the deeper meaning of these realities. It is a playful teasing of man, much like a cat plays with a mouse before devouring him! By leading man on a merry dance through some of his interests, and by distracting him with his own things, the clinical eye of the writer and reader observe man when he thinks no one is looking and so reveals himself in his true colors. What you see is in the eye of the beholder and many poor uneducated blind people see the truth of life when thus confronted by man in his underwear, whereas many educated intelligent clear-sighted people do not.

Reprogram Your Mind: The Power of Belief Systems

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Author :
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1304711161
Total Pages : 65 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Reprogram Your Mind: The Power of Belief Systems by : Silva Jean

Download or read book Reprogram Your Mind: The Power of Belief Systems written by Silva Jean and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-12-13 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about how a person can successfully change beliefs. In our world, in order to know where we belong, we must know what our beliefs are. Some of the beliefs came from the environment while others are created by people. A child's beliefs came from its surrounding such as parents, school and Medias. People who change beliefs are people who want to expand their horizon. But most of us are afraid to go beyond what we are capable of. How can we go out in our own comfort zone? Why we need to change our beliefs? Why a person failed to change his believe? How can we successfully change our beliefs? All the questions are answered here in this guide.

How Minds Change

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593190300
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

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Book Synopsis How Minds Change by : David McRaney

Download or read book How Minds Change written by David McRaney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brain-bending investigation of why some people never change their minds—and others do in an instant—by the bestselling author of You Are Not So Smart What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation. When self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney began a book about how to change someone’s mind in one conversation, he never expected to change his own. But then a diehard 9/11 Truther’s conversion blew up his theories—inspiring him to ask not just how to persuade, but why we believe, from the eye of the beholder. Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, HOW MINDS CHANGE explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California—that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy? An expansive, big-hearted journalistic narrative, HOW MINDS CHANGE reaches surprising and thought-provoking conclusions, to demonstrate the rare but transformative circumstances under which minds can change.

The Ethics of Belief and Beyond

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000062007
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Ethics of Belief and Beyond by : Sebastian Schmidt

Download or read book The Ethics of Belief and Beyond written by Sebastian Schmidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also more generally on debates about responsibility and rationality, as well as on normative questions concerning other mental states or attitudes. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.

God and the Brain

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Author :
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1467456551
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (674 download)

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Book Synopsis God and the Brain by : Kelly James Clark

Download or read book God and the Brain written by Kelly James Clark and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does cognitive science show that religious belief is irrational? Kelly James Clark brings together science and philosophy to examine some of humanity’s more pressing questions. Is belief in God, as Richard Dawkins claims, a delusion? Are atheists smarter or more rational than religious believers? Do our genes determine who we are and what we believe? Can our very creaturely cognitive equipment help us discover truth and meaning in life? Are atheists any different from Mother Teresa? Clark’s surprising answers both defend the rationality of religious belief and contribute to the study of cognitive science. God and the Brain explores complicated questions about the nature of belief and the human mind. Scientifically minded, philosophically astute, and reader-friendly, God and the Brain provides an accessible overview of some new cognitive scientific approaches to the study of religion and evaluates their implications for both theistic and atheistic belief.

Why God Won't Go Away

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Publisher : Ballantine Books
ISBN 13 : 0307493156
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Why God Won't Go Away by : Andrew Newberg, M.D.

Download or read book Why God Won't Go Away written by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have we humans always longed to connect with something larger than ourselves? Why does consciousness inevitably involve us in a spiritual quest? Why, in short, won't God go away? Theologians, philosophers, and psychologists have debated this question through the ages, arriving at a range of contradictory and ultimately unprovable answers. But in this brilliant, groundbreaking new book, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili offer an explanation that is at once profoundly simple and scientifically precise: the religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain. Newberg and d'Aquili base this revolutionary conclusion on a long-term investigation of brain function and behavior as well as studies they conducted using high-tech imaging techniques to examine the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns at prayer. What they discovered was that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads us to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid and tangibly real. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call "oneness with the universe" and the Franciscans attribute to the palpable presence of God is not a delusion or a manifestation of wishful thinking but rather a chain of neurological events that can be objectively observed, recorded, and actually photographed. The inescapable conclusion is that God is hard-wired into the human brain. In Why God Won't Go Away, Newberg and d'Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Along the way, they delve into such essential questions as whether humans are biologically compelled to make myths; what is the evolutionary connection between religious ecstasy and sexual orgasm; what do Near Death Experiences reveal about the nature of spiritual phenomena; and how does ritual create its own neurological environment. As their journey unfolds, Newberg and d'Aquili realize that a single, overarching question lies at the heart of their pursuit: Is religion merely a product of biology or has the human brain been mysteriously endowed with the unique capacity to reach and know God? Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, Why God Won't Go Away bridges faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the "real" is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.