Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261219
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An interdisciplinary examination of the evolutionary breakthroughs that rendered the brain accessible to itself. In The Crucible of Consciousness, Zoltan Torey offers a theory of the mind and its central role in evolution. He traces the evolutionary breakthrough that rendered the brain accessible to itself and shows how the mind-boosted brain works. He identifies what it is that separates the human's self-reflective consciousness from mere animal awareness, and he maps its neural and linguistic underpinnings. And he argues, controversially, that the neural technicalities of reflective awareness can be neither algorithmic nor spiritual—neither a computer nor a ghost in the machine. The human mind is unique; it is not only the epicenter of our knowledge but also the outer limit of our intellectual reach. Not to solve the riddle of the self-aware mind, writes Torey, goes against the evolutionary thrust that created it. Torey proposes a model that brings into a single focus all the elements that make up the puzzle: how the brain works, its functional components and their interactions; how language evolved and how syntax evolved out of the semantic substrate by way of neural transactions; and why the mind-endowed brain deceives itself with entelechy-type impressions. Torey first traces the language-linked emergence of the mind, the subsystem of the brain that enables it to be aware of itself. He then explores this system: how consciousness works, why it is not transparent to introspection, and what sense it makes in the context of evolution. The “consciousness revolution” and the integrative focus of neuroscience have made it possible to make concrete formerly mysterious ideas about the human mind. Torey's model of the mind is the logical outcome of this, highlighting a coherent and meaningful role for a reflectively aware humanity.
Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
Author: Barrie M Biven
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1784623091
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
This book is a stirring invitation to any reader who is interested in having a general sense of how the mind works and of the dominant role of mental conflict in everyday life. It is a topical reminder of the importance of Sigmund Freud the psychoanalyst, but also Freud the psychiatrist, neurologist, author and courageous natural scientist. However, this work is not a mere repetition or enumeration of Freud’s theories or descriptions of clinical cases. The book's primary purpose is to provide the reader with an introduction to important contemporary psychoanalytic ideas that modify and build on Freud’s classical theories.
Author: Steve J. Stern
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299113544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
In The Postcolonial State in Africa, Crawford Young offers an informed and authoritative comparative overview of fifty years of African independence, drawing on his decades of research and first-hand experience on the African continent. Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to many of the African states (including those in North Africa) over the last half-century: initial euphoria at independence in the 1960s followed by disillusionment with a lapse into single-party autocracies and military rule; a period of renewed confidence, radicalization, and ambitious state expansion in the 1970s preceding state crisis and even failure in the disastrous 1980s; and a phase of reborn optimism during the continental wave of democratization beginning around 1990. He explores in depth the many African civil wars--especially those since 1990--and three key tracks of identity: Africanism, territorial nationalism, and ethnicity. Only more recently, Young argues, have the paths of the fifty-three African states begun to diverge more dramatically, with some leading to liberalization and others to political, social, and economic collapse--outcomes impossible to predict at the outset of independence. "This book is the best volume to date on the politics of the last 50 years of African independence."--International Affairs "The book shares Young's encyclopedic knowledge of African politics, providing in a single volume a comprehensive rendering of the first 50 years of independence. The book is sprinkled with anecdotes from his vast experience in Africa and that of his many students, and quotations from all of the relevant literature published over the past five decades. Students and scholars of African politics alike will benefit immensely from and enjoy reading The Postcolonial State in Africa."--Political Science Quarterly "The study of African politics will continue to be enriched if practitioners pay homage to the erudition and the nobility of spirit that has anchored the engagement of this most esteemed doyen of Africanists with the continent."--African History Review "The book's strongest attribute is the careful way that comparative political theory is woven into historical storytelling throughout the text. . . . Written with great clarity even for all its detail, and its interwoven use of theory makes it a great choice for new students of African studies."--Australasian Review of African Studies
Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262319314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
An account of the emergence of the mind: how the brain acquired self-awareness, functional autonomy, the ability to think, and the power of speech. How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and linguistics, Torey reconstructs the sequence of events by which Homo erectus became Homo sapiens. He describes the augmented functioning that underpins the emergent mind—a new (“off-line”) internal response system with which the brain accesses itself and then forms a selection mechanism for mentally generated behavior options. This functional breakthrough, Torey argues, explains how the animal brain's “awareness” became self-accessible and reflective—that is, how the human brain acquired a conscious mind. Consciousness, unlike animal awareness, is not a unitary phenomenon but a composite process. Torey's account shows how protolanguage evolved into language, how a brain subsystem for the emergent mind was built, and why these developments are opaque to introspection. We experience the brain's functional autonomy, he argues, as free will. Torey proposes that once life began, consciousness had to emerge—because consciousness is the informational source of the brain's behavioral response. Consciousness, he argues, is not a newly acquired “quality,” “cosmic principle,” “circuitry arrangement,” or “epiphenomenon,” as others have argued, but an indispensable working component of the living system's manner of functioning.
Author: Melita Denning
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 073873327X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Available Once Again—the Groundbreaking Guide to Qabalistic Pathworking Pathworking is one of the most powerful techniques employed in the practical Qabalah, the core of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Llewellyn is pleased to bring back—by popular demand—Magical States of Consciousness, the classic text by renowned magicians Osborne Phillips and the late Melita Denning that first made the practice of pathworking widely available. Revealed here are the methods by which deep dimensions of the human psyche may be reached—dimensions that give you access to profound knowledge and the power of creation. Ascend the Tree of Life to enter the Sphere of Tiphareth, the seat of the Higher Self. Train your mind and imagination, enhance your physical and emotional health, gain knowledge and spiritual initiation, experience adventure and self-empowerment—all through Qabalistic pathworking. Designed for both the beginner and the established mage, this sought-after book includes the complete narrative texts for the inward journeys of classic pathworking. Plus, mandalas are included that serve as gateways to altered states of consciousness and magical images of the Sephirothic archetypes—the sources of mystical power which exist not only cosmically but in the depths of each person's own being.
Author: Jürgen Lawrenz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443843970
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
In this bold, provocative account, the author argues that the phenomena of life and mind elude purely materialistic explanations. Living matter occupies a unique phase of existence which results from the complex transformation of its biochemical synergies. Analogous phase changes account for mind and self-reflexive consciousness. A central role in the living state is played by intelligence, which has not been recognised as a non-negotiable precondition of organic existence. Yet the concept of evolutionary adaptivity relies tacitly on it. Thus the book amounts to a serious challenge to the overly theoretical paradigmata of the last half-century with their timorous evasion of biological fundamentals. However, although the work relies on up-to-date research of the life sciences, it is a primarily philosophical enquiry, dealing head on with many unsolved problems of life and mind, and culminating in a detailed “ontological proof” of the mind system.
Author: Henry Longueville Mansel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Author: Dale Bick Carlson
Publisher: Bick Publishing House
ISBN: 9781884158278
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
Provides an overview of the world of science and helps teens understand how science affects their lives.
Author: C. Drinko
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137335297
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 133
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Book Description
Improvisation teachers have long known that the human mind could be trained to be effortlessly spontaneous and intuitive. Drinko explores what these improvisation teachers knew about improvisation's effects on consciousness and cognition and compares these theories to current findings in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.
