Consciousness and the Great Philosophers

Consciousness and the Great Philosophers PDF Author: Stephen Leach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131738993X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Consciousness and the Great Philosophers addresses the question of how the great philosophers of the past might have reacted to the contemporary problem of consciousness. Each of the thirty-two chapters within this edited collection focuses on a major philosophical figure from the history of philosophy, from Anscombe to Xuanzang, and imaginatively engages with the problem from their perspective. Written by leading experts in the field, this exciting and engaging book explores the relevance of the history of philosophy to contemporary debates and therefore is essential reading for students and scholars studying the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness, or both.

Consciousness and the Great Philosophers

Consciousness and the Great Philosophers PDF Author: Stephen Leach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317389948
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Consciousness and the Great Philosophers addresses the question of how the great philosophers of the past might have reacted to the contemporary problem of consciousness. Each of the thirty-two chapters within this edited collection focuses on a major philosophical figure from the history of philosophy, from Anscombe to Xuanzang, and imaginatively engages with the problem from their perspective. Written by leading experts in the field, this exciting and engaging book explores the relevance of the history of philosophy to contemporary debates and therefore is essential reading for students and scholars studying the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness, or both.

Philosophers on Consciousness

Philosophers on Consciousness PDF Author: Jack Symes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350190446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
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.

Philosophers of Consciousness

Philosophers of Consciousness PDF Author: Eugene Webb
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780295994376
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Philosophers of Consciousness is both an expository study of the thought of the six figures it focuses on and an original exploration of the themes they address. In addition, as Eugene Webb states, "it does not hesitate to probe the more problematic areas of the thought of each thinker and to suggest what to some of their advocates will probably seem rather bold and controversial interpreations of their ideas." The book reveals some deep differences that set the six off against one another in what is basically a clash between the intellectual emphasis of Lonergan and the more existential approaches of the other thinkers in this study. Readers of Kierkegaard may find much of Webb's interpretation surprising and perhaps disturbing.

Matter and Consciousness

Matter and Consciousness PDF Author: Paul M. Churchland
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262530743
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In "Matter and Consciousness," Paul Churchland clearly presents the advantages and disadvantages of such difficult issues in philosophy of mind as behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This new edition incorporates the striking developments that have taken place in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence and notes their expanding relevance to philosophical issues. Churchland organizes and clarifies the new theoretical and experimental results of the natural sciences for a wider philosophical audience, observing that this research bears directly on questions concerning the basic elements of cognitive activity and their implementation in real physical systems. (How is it, he asks, that living creatures perform some cognitive tasks so swiftly and easily, where computers do them only badly or not at all?) Most significant for philosophy, Churchland asserts, is the support these results tend to give to the reductive and the eliminative versions of materialism. "A Bradford Book"

Galileo's Error

Galileo's Error PDF Author: Philip Goff
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1524747963
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness--panpsychism, an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward.ward.

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality PDF Author: Philip Goff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190677015
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The first half of this book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness, and hence cannot be true. The second half explores and defends Russellian monism, a radical alternative to both physicalism and dualism. The view that emerges combines panpsychism with the view that the universe as a whole is fundamental.

Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience

Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience PDF Author: Antti Revonsuo
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134783094
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Consciousness seems to be an enigmatic phenomenon: it is difficult to imagine how our perceptions of the world and our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings could be related to the immensely complicated biological organ we call the brain. This volume presents the thoughts of some of the leading philosophers and cognitive scientists who have recently participated in the discussion of the status of consciousness in science. The focus of inquiry is the question: "Is it possible to incorporate consciousness into science?" Philosophers have suggested different alternatives -- some think that consciousness should be altogether eliminated from science because it is not a real phenomenon, others that consciousness is a real, higher-level physical or neurobiological phenomenon, and still others that consciousness is fundamentally mysterious and beyond the reach of science. At the same time, however, several models or theories of the role of conscious processing in the brain have been developed in the more empirical cognitive sciences. It has been suggested that non-conscious processes must be sharply separated from conscious ones, and that the necessity of this distinction is manifested in the curious behavior of certain brain-damaged patients. This book demonstrates the dialogue between philosophical and empirical points of view. The writers present alternative solutions to the brain-consciousness problem and they discuss how the unification of biological and psychological sciences could thus become feasible. Covering a large ground, this book shows how the philosophical and empirical problems are closely interconnected. From this interdisciplinary exploration emerges the conviction that consciousness can and should be a natural part of our scientific world view.

Mind and Cognition

Mind and Cognition PDF Author: William G. Lycan
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 904

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Book Description
Designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, this text provides the reader with an overview of the complex, sophisticated and sometimes conflicting developments in theories of mind that have taken place over the last 40 years.

Body Consciousness

Body Consciousness PDF Author: Richard Shusterman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139467778
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, over-stimulation, and stress, and a variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance one's knowledge, performance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticised as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness, Richard Shusterman refutes such charges by engaging the most influential twentieth-century somatic philosophers and incorporating insights from both Western and Asian disciplines of body-mind awareness. Rather than rehashing intractable ontological debates on the mind-body relation, Shusterman reorients study of this crucial nexus towards a more fruitful, pragmatic direction that reinforces important but neglected connections between philosophy of mind, ethics, politics, and the pervasive aesthetic dimensions of everyday life.

Consciousness and Moral Status

Consciousness and Moral Status PDF Author: Joshua Shepherd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315396327
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.