Author:
Publisher: MSAC Philosophy Group
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Author: Andrea Diem-Lane
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1565438035
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The idea that the world is an illusion which betrays its real origin has a long tradition and can be found in the writings of Hindu rishis, early Greek philosophers, and Christian gnostics. What is perhaps surprising is to find such a rich literature on the subject in neuroscience and quantum physics. The latest, and perhaps most provocative, idea to gain some currency in varying scientific disciplines is the hypothesis that the universe is the result of a computational simulation and, as such, is an incredibly rich and detailed illusion which has ultimately tricked us into believing otherwise.

Author: Wendy Hasenkamp
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300218087
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
An illuminating record of dialogues between the Dalai Lama and some of today's most prominent scientists, philosophers, and contemplatives In 2013, during a historic six-day meeting at a Tibetan monastery in southern India, the Dalai Lama gathered with leading scientists, philosophers, and monks for in-depth discussions on the nature of reality, consciousness, and the human mind. This eye-opening book presents a record of those spirited and wide-ranging dialogues, featuring contributions from prominent scholars like Richard Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, Tania Singer, and Arthur Zajonc as they address such questions as: Does nature have a nature? Do you need a brain to be conscious? Can we change our minds and brains through meditation? Throughout, the contributors explore the exciting and sometimes surprising commonalities between Western scientific and Tibetan Buddhist methods of perceiving, investigating, and knowing. Part history, part state-of-the-field, part inspiration for the future, this book rigorously and accessibly explores what these two investigative traditions can teach each other, and what that can tell us about ourselves and the world.

Author: Toby Walsh
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 1803994606
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
‘Refreshingly clear-eyed ... Faking It is an insightful and intelligent book that’s a must for those looking for facts about AI hype.’ – Books+Publishing ‘AI will be as big a game-changer as the smart phone and the personal computer – or bigger! This book will help you navigate the revolution.’ – Dr Karl Kruszelnicki Artificial intelligence is, as the name suggests, artificial and fundamentally different to human intelligence. Yet often the goal of AI is to fake human intelligence. This deceit has been there from the very beginning. We’ve been trying to fake it since Alan Turing answered the question ‘Can machines think?’ by proposing that machines pretend to be humans. Now we are starting to build AI that truly deceives us. Powerful AIs such as ChatGPT can convince us they are intelligent and blur the distinction between what is real and what is simulated. In reality, they lack true understanding, sentience and common sense. But this doesn’t mean they can’t change the world. Can AI systems ever be creative? Can they be moral? What can we do to ensure they are not harmful? In this fun and fascinating book, Professor Toby Walsh explores all the ways AI fakes it, and what this means for humanity – now and in the future.

Author: Olivia Gosseries
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2832501230
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Author: Cyriel M.A. Pennartz
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026233013X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
A neuroscientifically informed theory arguing that the core of qualitative conscious experience arises from the integration of sensory and cognitive modalities. Although science has made considerable progress in discovering the neural basis of cognitive processes, how consciousness arises remains elusive. In this book, Cyriel Pennartz analyzes which aspects of conscious experience can be peeled away to access its core: the “hardest” aspect, the relationship between brain processes and the subjective, qualitative nature of consciousness. Pennartz traces the problem back to its historical roots in the foundations of neuroscience and connects early ideas on sensory processing to contemporary computational neuroscience. What can we learn from neural network models, and where do they fall short in bridging the gap between neural processes and conscious experience? Do neural models of cognition resemble inanimate systems, and how can this help us define requirements for conscious processing in the brain? These questions underlie Pennartz's examination of the brain's anatomy and neurophysiology. The perspective of his account is not limited to visual perception but broadened to include other sensory modalities and their integration. Formulating a representational theory of the neural basis of consciousness, Pennartz outlines properties that complex structures must express to process information consciously. This theoretical framework is constructed using empirical findings from neuropsychology and neuroscience as well as such theoretical arguments as the Cuneiform Room and the Wall Street Banker. Positing that qualitative experience is a multimodal and multilevel phenomenon at its very roots, Pennartz places this body of theory in the wider context of mind-brain philosophy, examining implications for our thinking about animal and robot consciousness.

Author: Damien Broderick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030005992
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Science fiction explores the wonderful, baffling and wildly entertaining aspects of a universe unimaginably old and vast, and with a future even more immense. It reaches into that endless cosmos with the tools of rational investigation and storytelling. At the core of both science and science fiction is the engaged human mind--a consciousness that sees and feels and thinks and loves. But what is this mind, this aware and self-aware consciousness that seems unlike anything else we experience? What makes consciousness the Hard Problem of philosophy, still unsolved after millennia of probing? This book looks into the heart of this mystery - at the science and philosophy of consciousness and at many inspiring fictional examples - and finds strange, challenging answers. The book's content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.

Author: Marie D. Jones
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
ISBN: 1578598222
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
A profound and fascinating exploration of death and the afterlife! Christian and other religious beliefs, rituals from around the world, quests for immortality, scientists’ conclusions, ghosts, and more! What happens when we die? Many view it as a mystery, but there are tantalizing clues to be found in the Bible and other religious scriptures, scientific findings, historical writings, literature, reports of near-death experiences, and in many other recorded sources. Facing the contradictions and similarities of beliefs from all over the world and throughout history, The Afterlife Book: Heaven, Hell, and Life After Death shows how death and the afterlife is viewed in a variety of different ways. This engrossing guide looks at the many competing views of the afterlife—and the shared connections between them, including ... Where ideas of Heaven and Hell came from and why they endure. What happens during near death experiences and out of body experiences, What is known about reincarnation and immortality. How death is linked to ghosts and apparitions, mediumship, and spiritualism. How the quest for immortality and transhumanism may play a role in one day ending death. How science and spirituality can often say the same thing—only in different languages and terminologies. How death and the dead have been celebrated, memorialized, and honored in the past and present. What happens to the human body just before, during, and immediately after physical death. What happens to the cells, tissues, heart, and brain as a result of the physical process of dying and decomposition. How burial and cremation traditions, rites, rituals, and controversies address consciousness and the existence of a soul. What religious leaders, philosophers, and scientists have to say about consciousness and the soul. Whether animals and pets have souls. Is death just a mysterious phase in our journey? Does it lead to Heaven (or Hell)? Is it reincarnation or simply eternal blackness and unconsciousness? Do we continue to exist in some form or other beyond our physical bodies? The Afterlife Book tackles these questions and gives us all hope that our lives do not come to an end but change like the natural cycles of birth, life, death, and rebirth! It’s many photos and illustrations help bring the text to life, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.

Author: Robert Hanna
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191025593
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
In Cognition, Content, and the A Priori, Robert Hanna works out a unified contemporary Kantian theory of rational human cognition and knowledge. Along the way, he provides accounts of (i) intentionality and its contents, including non-conceptual content and conceptual content, (ii) sense perception and perceptual knowledge, including perceptual self-knowledge, (iii) the analytic-synthetic distinction, (iv) the nature of logic, and (v) a priori truth and knowledge in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. This book is specifically intended to reach out to two very different audiences: contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and knowledge on the one hand, and contemporary Kantian philosophers or Kant-scholars on the other. At the same time, it is also riding the crest of a wave of exciting and even revolutionary emerging new trends and new work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology, with a special concentration on the philosophy of perception. What is revolutionary in this new wave are its strong emphases on action, on cognitive phenomenology, on disjunctivist direct realism, on embodiment, and on sense perception as a primitive and proto-rational capacity for cognizing the world. Cognition, Content, and the A Priori makes a fundamental contribution to this philosophical revolution by giving it a specifically contemporary Kantian twist, and by pushing these new lines of investigation radically further.

Author: David Lane
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1329774329
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
This is an illustrated version of a special presentation on the subject of how science and religion are in conflict primarily because of a linguistic confusion over the term "matter." Explores various themes in physics, consciousness, and evolution. The basis of this book was first presented at an international conference on consciousness at the Dayalbagh Educational Institute in Agra, India.