Author: Vincent W. Fallio
Publisher: Nova Publishers
ISBN: 9781600212475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neurology, and cognitive science. This book gathers a compilation of new and significant research on many facets of consciousness research. These include memory studies, evolution of consciousness, paranormal experiences, phenomenal consciousness, meditation, human emotion and psychopathology.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
Author: Max Velmans
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027251336
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
How can one investigate phenomenal consciousness? As in other areas of science, the investigation of consciousness aims for a more precise knowledge of its phenomena, and the discovery of general truths about their nature. This requires the development of appropriate first-person, second-person and third-person methods. This book introduces some of the creative ways in which these methods can be applied to different purposes, e.g. to understanding the relation of consciousness to brain, to examining or changing consciousness as such, and to understanding the way consciousness is influenced by social, clinical and therapeutic contexts. To clarify the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and to demonstrate the interplay of methodology and epistemology, the book also suggests a number of maps of the consciousness studies terrain that place different approaches to the study of consciousness into a broader, interdisciplinary context. (Series A).
Author: Elaine K. Perry
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027251565
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
This pioneering book explores in depth the role of neurotransmitters in conscious awareness. The central aim is to identify common neural denominators of conscious awareness, informed by the neurochemistry of natural, drug induced and pathological states of consciousness. Chemicals such as acetylcholine and dopamine, which bridge the synaptic gap between neurones, are the 'neurotransmitters in mind' that form the substance of the volume, which is essential reading for all who believe that unravelling mechanisms of consciousness must include these vital systems of the brain.Up-to-date information is provided on: Psychological domains of attention, motivation, memory, sleep and dreaming that define normal states of consciousness. Effects of chemicals that alter or abolish consciousness, including hallucinogens and anaesthetics. Disorders of the brain such as dementia, schizophrenia and depression considered from the novel perspective of the way these affect consciousness, and how this might relate to disturbances in neurotransmission. (Series B)
Author: Paul L. Nunez
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633882195
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
This book explains in laypersons' terms a new approach to studying consciousness based on a partnership between neuroscientists and complexity scientists. The author, a physicist turned neuroscientist, outlines essential features of this partnership. The new science goes well beyond traditional cognitive science and simple neural networks, which are often the focus in artificial intelligence research. It involves many fields including neuroscience, artificial intelligence, physics, cognitive science, and psychiatry. What causes autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease? How does our unconscious influence our actions? As the author shows, these important questions can be viewed in a new light when neuroscientists and complexity scientists work together. This cross-disciplinary approach also offers fresh insights into the major unsolved challenge of our age- the origin of self-awareness. Do minds emerge from brains? Or is something more involved? Using human social networks as a metaphor, the author explains how brain behavior can be compared with the collective behavior of large-scale global systems. Emergent global systems that interact and form relationships with lower levels of organization and the surrounding environment provide useful models for complex brain functions. By blending lucid explanations with illuminating analogies, this book offers the general reader a window into the latest exciting developments in brain research.
Author: Peter G. Grossenbacher
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027251282
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
How does the brain go about the business of being conscious? Though we cannot yet provide a complete answer, this book explains what is now known about the neural basis of human consciousness.The last decade has witnessed the dawn of an exciting new era of cognitive neuroscience. For example, combination of new imaging technologies and experimental study of attention has linked brain activity to specific psychological functions. The authors are leaders in psychology and neuroscience who have conducted original research on consciousness. They wish to communicate the highlights of this research to both specialists and interested others, and hope that this volume will be read by students concerned with the neuroscientific underpinnings of subjective experience. As a whole, the book progresses from an overview of conscious awareness, through careful explanation of identified neurocognitive systems, and extends to theories which tackle global aspects of consciousness. (Series B)
Author: Elaine K. Perry
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288046
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas, based on fundamentals of neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry and therapy, this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas, focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions: 1. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological, pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience (‘bottom up’ approach); 2. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness (‘top down’ approach); 3. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and addiction; 4. More provocatively, but still based on scientific evidence, exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries, indicating the potential for radical new thinking or ‘quantum leaps’ in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)
Author: Nicholas Humphrey
Publisher: Nicholas Humphrey
ISBN: 9780192860521
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This book, the first by one of England's outstanding experimental psychologists, brings together a selection of essays on human consciousness, self-knowledge, aesthetics, religion, parapsychology, philosophy of mind, and the atom bomb. Throughout, Humphrey is concerned with the evolution of mind, and he puts forth the theory that self-awareness developed because it is biologically advantageous. "Fluently and pleasantly written, often enlivened by wit, always easy to follow." --Times Literary Supplement. "Always stimulating and fun to read. ... Humphrey writes with elegance and force, and ... his ideas ... are always stimulating. Even the reader who disagrees with his arguments will derive pleasure." --Nature
Author: Daniel D. Hutto
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027251371
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Will our everyday account of ourselves be vindicated by a new science? Or, will our self-understanding remain untouched by such developments? This book argues that beliefs and desires have a legitimate place in theexplanation of action. Eliminativist arguments mistakenly focus on the vehicles of content not content itself. This book asks whether a naturalistic theory of content is possible. It is argued that a modest biosemantic theory of intentional, but nonconceptual, content is the naturalist's best bet. A theory of this kind complements connectionism and recent work on embodied and embedded cognition. But intentional content is not equivalent to propositional content. In order to understand propositional content we must rely on Davidsonian radical interpretation.However, radical interpretation is shown to be at odds with physicalism. But if the best naturalised theory of content we are likely to get from cognitive science is only a theory of intentional content, then a naturalistic explanation of scientific theorising is not possible. It is concluded that cognitive science alone cannot explain the nature of our minds and that eliminativism is intellectually incoherent. (Series A)
Author: Dan Zahavi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027295131
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
Self-consciousness is a topic of considerable importance to a variety of empirical and theoretical disciplines such as developmental and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. This volume presents essays on self-consciousness by prominent psychologists, cognitive neurologists, and philosophers. Some of the topics included are the infants’ sense of self and others, theory of mind, phenomenology of embodiment, neural mechanisms of action attribution, and hermeneutics of the self. A number of these essays argue in turn that empirical findings in developmental psychology, phenomenological analyses of embodiment, or studies of pathological self-experiences point to the existence of a type of self-consciousness that does not require any explicit I —thought or self-observation, but is more adequately described as a pre-reflective, embodied form of self-familiarity. The different contributions in the volume amply demonstrate that self-consciousness is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that calls for an integration of different complementary interdisciplinary perspectives. (Series B)
