Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
The Mystery Of Consciousness
Download The Mystery Of Consciousness full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Mystery Of Consciousness ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
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.
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 . This book was released on 1997 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What started as a two-part essay in the New York Review of Books, this work discusses well-known thinkers, such as Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, Israel Rosenfeld and David Chalmers.
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 National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 0 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.
Book Synopsis The Mystery of the Mind by : Wilder Penfield
Download or read book The Mystery of the Mind written by Wilder Penfield and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2025-03-25 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic account of the relationship between the human brain and the human mind Can the mind be explained by what we know about the brain? Is a person’s being determined by their body alone or by their mind and body as separate elements? In this incisive and engaging book, Wilder Penfield, whose work pioneered such research, shares insights into these and other questions, providing an in-depth look at the function of the brain and its relationship to the action of the mind. With a foreword by Charles W. Hendel, an introduction by William Feindel, and reflections by Sir Charles Symonds, The Mystery of the Mind is Penfield’s compelling personal account of his experiences as a neurosurgeon and scientist observing the inner workings of the brain in conscious patients.
Book Synopsis The Consciousness Instinct by : Michael S. Gazzaniga
Download or read book The Consciousness Instinct written by Michael S. Gazzaniga and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The father of cognitive neuroscience” illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problem How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff”—atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells—create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness. The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. Gazzaniga asserts that this model has it backward—brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind. Captivating and accessible, with insights drawn from a lifetime at the forefront of the field, The Consciousness Instinct sets the course for the neuroscience of tomorrow.
Book Synopsis From Science to God by : Peter Russell
Download or read book From Science to God written by Peter Russell and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Science to God offers a crash course in the nature of reality. It is the story of Peter Russell's lifelong exploration into the nature of consciousness — how he went from being a strict atheist, studying mathematics and physics at Cambridge University, to realizing a profound personal synthesis of the mystical and scientific. Using his own tale of curiosity and exploration as the book’s backbone, Russell blends physics, psychology, and philosophy to reach a new worldview in which consciousness is a fundamental quality of creation. He shows how all the ingredients for this worldview are in place; nothing new needs to be discovered. We have only to put the pieces together and explore the new picture of reality that emerges. From Science to God is as much a personal story of an open-minded skeptic as it is a tour de force of scientific and religious paradigm shifts. Russell takes us from Galileo’s den to the lecture halls of Cambridge where he studied with Stephen Hawking. “If you had asked me then if there was a God,” says the best-selling author of his scientific beginnings, “I would have pointed to mathematics.” But no matter what empirical truths science offered Russell, one thorny question remained: How can something as immaterial as consciousness, ever arise from something as unconscious as matter?
Download or read book Conscious written by Annaka Harris and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "If you’ve ever wondered how you have the capacity to wonder, some fascinating insights await you in these pages.” --Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals As concise and enlightening as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, this mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience. What is consciousness? How does it arise? And why does it exist? We take our experience of being in the world for granted. But the very existence of consciousness raises profound questions: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? How are we able to think about this? And why should we? In this wonderfully accessible book, Annaka Harris guides us through the evolving definitions, philosophies, and scientific findings that probe our limited understanding of consciousness. Where does it reside, and what gives rise to it? Could it be an illusion, or a universal property of all matter? As we try to understand consciousness, we must grapple with how to define it and, in the age of artificial intelligence, who or what might possess it. Conscious offers lively and challenging arguments that alter our ideas about consciousness—allowing us to think freely about it for ourselves, if indeed we can.
Book Synopsis Philosophers on Consciousness by : Jack Symes
Download or read book Philosophers on Consciousness written by Jack Symes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We know, more intimately than anything else, what it's like to undergo a rich world of experiences: agonizing pains, dizzying pleasures, heady rage and existential doubts. But, despite the incredible advances of physical science, it seems that we're no closer to an explanation of how this inner world of experiences comes about. No matter how detailed our description of the physical brain, perhaps we'll always be left with this same question: how and why does the brain produce consciousness? This book is a short, accessible and engaging guide to the mystery of consciousness. Featuring remastered interviews and original essays from the world's leading thinkers, Philosophers on Consciousness sheds new light on the most promising theories in philosophy and science. Beyond understanding the mind, this is a journey into personal identity, the origin of meaning, the nature of morality and the fundamental structure of reality. Contributors include: Miri Albahari, Susan Blackmore, David Chalmers, Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, Philip Goff, Frank Jackson, Casey Logue, Gregory Miller, Michelle Montague, Massimo Pigliucci and Galen Strawson.
Download or read book Anaesthesia written by Kate Cole-Adams and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2017 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award You know how it is when you go under. The jab, the countdown, the— —and then you wake. This book is about what happens in between. Until a hundred and seventy years ago many people chose death over the ordeal of surgery. Now hundreds of thousands undergo operations every day. Anaesthesia has made it possible. But how much do we really know about what happens to us on the operating table? Can we hear what’s going on around us? Is pain still pain if we are not awake to feel it, or don’t remember it afterwards? How does the unconscious mind deal with the body’s experience of being cut open and ransacked? And how can we help ourselves through it? Haunting, lyrical, sometimes shattering, Anaesthesia leavens science with personal experience to bring an intensely human curiosity to the unknowable realm beyond consciousness. What really happens to us when we are anaesthetised? By this I mean not what happens to the pinging, crackling apparatus of our nerves and spinal cords and brains, but what happens to us—to the person who is me or the person who is you—as doctors go about the messy business of slicing and delving within us? Kate Cole-Adams is a Melbourne writer and journalist. Her non-fiction work Anaesthesia won the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, 2017 and the 2017 Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Media Award. It was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction, 2017. Her novel Walking to the Moon is also published by Text. ‘Anaesthesia is mesmerising...This rich and thorough study looks more deeply into questions about the nature of consciousness than many of us who undergo an anaesthetic are likely, or willing, to ponder.’ Australian Book Review ‘A work of splendid richness and depth, driven by a curiosity so intense that it hazards at times the extreme boundaries of the sayable.’ Helen Garner ‘Kate Cole-Adams has been fascinated with our funny non-being during surgery for a long time, and Anaesthesia feels like a book that’s taken over a decade to write, which it is. It also feels like you’re having a decade’s worth of conversations with a dogged, but generous and resourceful thinker, with someone (she is both a journalist and a novelist) who can crack open a complex idea, and then run with it.’ Readings 'An obsessive, mystical, terrifying, and even phantasmagorical exploration of anesthesia’s shadowy terra incognita.’ The New Yorker 'Remarkable in its attention to historical detail and quality of the primary sources...practising anaesthetists should read what has become the single best account of our profession’s most philosophically fragile constructs—consciousness and self... Cole-Adams has distilled and articulated the art of our profession.’ Anaesthesia Intensive Care journal (published by Australian Society of Anaesthetists) ‘Extraordinarily well-researched and delicately structured, this is a book with few parallels. Exceptional writing illuminates a topic that affects most of us, but that few of us understand.’ Judges’ Report, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2018 ‘Comfortably numb. A close-up look at anaesthesia is equal parts social history, popular science and report on experience.’ NZ Listener ‘Anaesthesia is not just an account of medical research but a poetic exploration of the mysteries of the human mind.’ Australian ‘Should be compulsory reading for all anaesthetists, others responsible for the care of surgical patients, and medical students who wish to achieve a true perspective of today’s anaesthesia.’ medicSA ‘Cole-Adams’s prose is sinuous, at times intoxicating, and witty.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘A troubling, anxious subject that most of us would rather avoid or deflect with dark humour. Cole-Adams has illuminated it in a memorable way. The book is a gift not of oblivion but of awareness.’ Inside Story ‘For the interested reader, it’s an outline of the science, with an emphasis on the unknown. For the practitioner, it’s a patient experience, eloquently expressed. There’s much more the anaesthesia than meets the eye, and this book provides a glimpse into the depths.’ Conversation ‘A fascinating mix of historical background, moving—sometimes shocking—surgical stories, interviews with experts and case studies. Surprisingly, it seems relatively little is really known about exactly how effective and affective anaesthetic is. Despite that, I found this book an oddly reassuring study.’ North and South NZ ‘Kate Cole-Adams has written a book that defies familiar categories. It is a personal memoir, a history, a scientific study, and a philosophical enquiry into the unconscious, and by drawing all these strands together the author has delivered a masterpiece.’ Jamie Grant, head judge, Waverley Council Nib Literary Awards ‘This is a surprising delight of a book about the invention and use of anaesthetics, but it is also about the concept of consciousness. It is a book about the fear of death, the fear of a lack of control, the fear of an imminent operation, the way a life can be plagued by a general feeling of anxiety and how dreams play a part in this.’ Krissy Kneen, Feminist Writers Festival, Favourite Reads of 2017 ‘Kate Cole-Adams’s Anaesthesia propelled me towards new ways of thinking about thinking itself: experience and consciousness and how we make in and make up this world.’ Ashley Hay, Australian, Books of the Year 2017
Book Synopsis Feeling & Knowing by : Antonio Damasio
Download or read book Feeling & Knowing written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.
Book Synopsis Altered States of Consciousness by : Marc Wittmann
Download or read book Altered States of Consciousness written by Marc Wittmann and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness. During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been ignored by mainstream science, or considered crazy fantasies. Recent research, however, has located the neural underpinnings of these altered states of mind. In this book, neuropsychologist Marc Wittmann shows how experiences that disturb or widen our everyday understanding of the self can help solve the mystery of consciousness. Wittmann explains that the relationship between consciousness of time and consciousness of self is close; in extreme circumstances, the experiences of space and self intensify and weaken together. He considers the emergence of the self in waking life and dreams; how our sense of time is distorted by extreme situations ranging from terror to mystical enlightenment; the experience of the moment; and the loss of time and self in such disorders as depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. Dostoyevsky reported godly bliss during epileptic seizures; neurologists are now investigating the phenomenon of the epileptic aura. Wittmann describes new studies of psychedelics that show how the brain builds consciousness of self and time, and discusses pilot programs that use hallucinogens to treat severe depression, anxiety, and addiction. If we want to understand our consciousness, our subjectivity, Wittmann argues, we must not be afraid to break new ground. Studying altered states of consciousness leads us directly to the heart of the matter: time and self, the foundations of consciousness.
Book Synopsis The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness by : Mark Solms
Download or read book The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness written by Mark Solms and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime’s quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain’s obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience.
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
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
Book Synopsis The Embodied Mind by : Thomas R. Verny
Download or read book The Embodied Mind written by Thomas R. Verny and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As groundbreaking synthesis that promises to shift our understanding of the mind-brain connection and its relationship with our bodies. We understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships: muscle interacts with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain? In The Embodied Mind, internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verny sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind’s ties to every part of the body. The Embodied Mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes—all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Verny shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact that will shift our understanding of memory. Verny describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. The Embodied Mind shows how intelligence and consciousness—traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone—also permate our entire being. Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imaged.
Book Synopsis Human Consciousness by : Alastair Hannay
Download or read book Human Consciousness written by Alastair Hannay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Where Does Mind End? by : Marc Seifer
Download or read book Where Does Mind End? written by Marc Seifer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities • Recasts psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness • Shows that we have consciousness for a reason; it is humanity’s unique contribution to the cosmos • Integrates the work of Freud, Jung, Gurdjieff, Tony Robbins, Rudolf Steiner, the Dalai Lama as well as ESP, the Kabbalah, tarot, dreams, and kundalini yoga The culmination of 30 years of research, Where Does Mind End? takes you on an inward journey through the psyche--exploring the highest states of consciousness; the insights and theories of ancient and modern philosophers, psychologists, and mystics; the power of dreams, chi energy, tarot, and kundalini yoga; and proof of telepathy and other facets of parapsychology--to explain the mystery of consciousness and construct a comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities. Starting with the ancients and early philosophers such as Zoroaster, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, the author examines models of mind that take into account divine and teleological components, the problem and goal of self-understanding, the mind/body conundrum, and holographic paradigms. Seifer then moves to modern times to explain the full range of Freud’s psychoanalytic model of mind, exploring such ideas as the ego, superego, and id; the unconscious; creativity; and self-actualization. Using Freud’s psychoanalytical model as framework, he reveals an overarching theory of mind and consciousness that incorporates such diverse concepts as Jung’s collective psyche; ESP; the Kabbalah; Gurdjieff’s ideas on behaviorism and the will; the philosophies of Wilhelm Reich, P. D. Ouspensky, and Nikola Tesla; the personality redevelopment strategies of Tony Robbins; and the Dalai Lama’s and Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the highest states of consciousness. Recasting psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness, he shows that by casting off the mechanical mental operation of day-to-day life, we naturally attain the self-integration to which traditional psychology has long aspired. By entering the true path to fulfillment of the soul’s will, we help the planet by transforming ourselves and raising our energy to a higher realm.
