Consciousness and Its Objects

Consciousness and Its Objects PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 019926760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Colin McGinn presents work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays which extend and deepen his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable.

Consciousness and Its Objects

Consciousness and Its Objects PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 019926760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Colin McGinn presents work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays which extend and deepen his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable.

Consciousness and Object

Consciousness and Object PDF Author: Riccardo Manzotti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265097
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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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?

The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object

The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object PDF Author: Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Altered states of consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity PDF Author: Robert J. Howell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191662658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity Robert J. Howell argues that the options in the debates about consciousness and the mind-body problem are more limited than many philosophers have appreciated. Unless one takes a hard-line stance, which either denies the data provided by consciousness or makes a leap of faith about future discoveries, one must admit that no objective picture of our world can be complete. Howell argues, however, that this is consistent with physicalism, contrary to received wisdom. After developing a novel, neo-Cartesian notion of the physical, followed by a careful consideration of the three major anti-materialist arguments—Black's 'Presentation Problem', Jackson's Knowledge Argument, and Chalmers' Conceivability Argument—Howell proposes a 'subjective physicalism' which gives the data of consciousness their due, while retaining the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Consciousness and Its Objects

Consciousness and Its Objects PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191601798
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Colin McGinn presents his 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.

Human and Machine Consciousness

Human and Machine Consciousness PDF Author: David Gamez
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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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.

The Nature of Consciousness

The Nature of Consciousness PDF Author: Mark Rowlands
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113943098X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In The Nature of Consciousness, Mark Rowlands develops an innovative account of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, one that has significant consequences for attempts to find a place for it in the natural order. The most significant feature of consciousness is its dual nature: consciousness can be both the directing of awareness and that upon which awareness is directed. Rowlands offers a clear and philosophically insightful discussion of the main positions in this fast-moving debate, and argues that the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience are aspects that exist only in the directing of experience towards non-phenomenal objects, a theory that undermines reductive attempts to explain consciousness in terms of what is not conscious. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the philosophy of mind and language, psychology and cognitive science.

The Unity of Consciousness

The Unity of Consciousness PDF Author: Tim Bayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191639885
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In The Unity of Consciousness Tim Bayne draws on philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in defence of the claim that consciousness is unified. In the first part of the book Bayne develops an account of what it means to say that consciousness is unified. Part II applies this account to a variety of cases - drawn from both normal and pathological forms of experience - in which the unity of consciousness is said to break down. Bayne argues that the unity of consciousness remains intact in each of these cases. Part III explores the implications of the unity of consciousness for theories of consciousness, for the sense of embodiment, and for accounts of the self. In one of the most comprehensive examinations of the topic available, The Unity of Consciousness draws on a wide range of findings within philosophy and the sciences of the mind to construct an account of the unity of consciousness that is both conceptually sophisticated and scientifically informed.

The Mystery of Consciousness

The Mystery of Consciousness PDF Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9780940322066
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
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.

The Problem of Consciousness

The Problem of Consciousness PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631188032
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Can consciousness be fitted into a naturalistic worldview or is it inherently mysterious? In virtue of what d does a physical organism come to have an inner conscious life? This book argues that we are not equipped to understand the workings of conciousness, despite its objective naturalness. Introspection does not reveal the hiddent structure of consciousness and it is this that joins experience to the material world.