Author: Riccardo Manzotti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265097
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
What is the conscious mind? What is experience? In 1968, David Armstrong asked “What is a man?” and replied that a man is “a certain sort of material object”. This book starts from his question but proceeds along a different path. The traditional mind-brain identity theory is set aside, and a mind-object identity theory is proposed in its place: to be conscious of an object is simply to be made of that object. Consciousness is physical but not neural. This groundbreaking hypothesis is supported by recent empirical findings in both perception and neuroscience, and is herein tested against a series of objections of both conceptual and empirical nature: the traditional mind-brain identity arguments from illusion, hallucinations, dreams, and mental imagery. The theory is then compared with existing externalist approaches including disjunctivism, realism, embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind. Can experience and objects be one and the same?
Author: Riccardo Manzotti
Publisher: Advances in Consciousness Research
ISBN: 9789027213624
Category : Cognition
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
In 1968, David Armstrong asked "what is a man" ? What is the conscious mind ? What is experience ? This book starts from his reply "he is a certain sort of material object", but proceeds along a radically different path. The book puts forward and defends a mind-object identity theory : Being conscious of an object is just that object being me. The proposal is matched against a series of objections of both conceptual and empirical nature and eventually compared with existing externalist approaches - disjunctivism, realism, embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind. Dwelling on recent empirical findings from perception and neuroscience, the proposal is defended from traditional objections such as the argument from illusion, hallucinations, dreams, and mental imagery. Can experience and objects be one and the same ?
Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019926760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions.McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, extreme dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existentobjects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas.
Author: Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Altered states of consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Author: John Campbell
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191529478
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Campbell investigates how consciousness of the world explains our ability to think about the world. He illuminates problems about thought, reference and experience by looking at the psychological mechanisms on which conscious attention depends.
Author: Riccardo Manzotti
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1682192261
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 165
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Book Description
Over a period of many years, the celebrated English novelist Tim Parks and the Italian philosopher Riccardo Manzotti have been discussing the nature of consciousness. Not long ago, Parks suggested to his friend that they condense their exchanges “into a series of focused dialogues to set out the standard positions on consciousness, and suggest some alternatives.” Fifteen of the resultant conversations were edited by Parks and published in The New York Review of Books online—one of its most popular features ever. Now collected into one slim but thought-provoking volume, the dialogues reveal the profound scholarship of the two men. Their talks touch upon Aristotle and William James, the Higgs boson and Descartes, and include topics such as “Where Are Words?”, “The Body and Us”, “The Reality of Dreams”, “The Object of Consciousness”, and finally “Consciousness: What Is It?”. For those of us searching for insight into some of life’s most basic puzzles—how do we think? how do we perceive one another, and ourselves?—Dialogues on Consciousness will take its place alongside other classics of philosophy.
Author: Ted Honderich
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198714386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
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.
Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226136721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Looks at how whole domains of phenomena come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific study. With examples from the natural and social sciences, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical.
Author: David Gamez
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.
Author: Jesse J. Prinz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019971813X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
The problem of consciousness continues to be a subject of great debate in cognitive science. Synthesizing decades of research, The Conscious Brain advances a new theory of the psychological and neurophysiological correlates of conscious experience. Prinz's account of consciousness makes two main claims: first consciousness always arises at a particular stage of perceptual processing, the intermediate level, and, second, consciousness depends on attention. Attention changes the flow of information allowing perceptual information to access memory systems. Neurobiologically, this change in flow depends on synchronized neural firing. Neural synchrony is also implicated in the unity of consciousness and in the temporal duration of experience. Prinz also explores the limits of consciousness. We have no direct experience of our thoughts, no experience of motor commands, and no experience of a conscious self. All consciousness is perceptual, and it functions to make perceptual information available to systems that allows for flexible behavior. Prinz concludes by discussing prevailing philosophical puzzles. He provides a neuroscientifically grounded response to the leading argument for dualism, and argues that materialists need not choose between functional and neurobiological approaches, but can instead combine these into neurofunctional response to the mind-body problem. The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions, while also surveying, challenging, and extending philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. All readers interested in the nature of consciousness will find Prinz's work of great interest.
