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The contributions to this book are original articles, representing a cross-section of current philosophical work on consciousness and thereby allowing students and readers from other disciplines to acquaint themselves with the very latest debate, so that they can then pursue their own research interests more effectively. The volume includes a bibliography on consciousness in philosophy, cognitive science and brain research, covering the last 25 years and consisting of over 1000 entries in 18 thematic sections, compiled by David Chalmers and Thomas Metzinger.
This book aims to offer an account of conscious experience and of concepts that help us understand empirical reasoning and empirical dialectic. The account offered possesses, it is claimed, two virtues. First, it provides great theoretical freedom. It allows the theoretician freedom to radically reconceive the world. The theoretician may, for example, begin with the conception that colors are genuine qualities of physical bodies and may, in light of empirical findings, shift to the conception that colors are not genuine qualities at all. Second, the account grants empirical reason a great power to constrain: empirical reason can force a particular conception of the self and the world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through a novel treatment of presentation and appearances in the account offered of conscious experience and a novel treatment of ostensive definitions in the account offered of concepts. The argument of the book is buttressed by a critical study of the principal approaches to experience and reason found in the philosophical literature.--
Individual Differences in Conscious Experience by Robert G. Kunzendorf,Benjamin Wallace Pdf
Individual Differences in Conscious Experience is intended for readers with philosophical, psychological, or clinical interests in subjective experience. It addresses some difficult but important issues in the study of consciousness, subconsciousness, and self-consciousness. The book’s fourteen chapters are written by renowned, pioneering researchers who, collectively, have published more than fifty books and more than one thousand journal articles. The editors’ introductory chapter frames the book’s subtext: that mind-brain theories embodying the constraints of individual differences in subjective experience should be given greater credence than nomothetic theories ignoring those constraints. The next five chapters describe research and theory pertaining to individual differences in conscious sensations — specifically, individual differences in pain perception, phantom limbs, gustatory sensations, and mental imagery. Then, two succeeding chapters focus on individual differences in subconsciousness. The final six chapters address individual differences in altered states of self-consciousness — dreams, hypnotic phenomena, and various clinical syndromes. (Series B)
Dimensions of Conscious Experience by Paavo Pylkkänen,Tere Vadén Pdf
It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected aspects of consciousness. The book brings together philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive and computer science, biology, physics, art and the new media. It contains critical studies of subjectivity vs objectivity, nonconceptuality vs conceptuality, language, evolutionary aspects, neural correlates, microphysical level, creativity, visual arts and dreams. It is suitable as a text-book for a third-year undergraduate or a graduate seminar on consciousness studies. (Series A)
An in-depth investigation into the phenomenology of conscious experience - the nature of awareness; introspection; phenomenal space and time consciousness. A fascinating and probing study.
The Structure of Conscious Experience by Lee Roy Beach Pdf
There must exist a point at which the molecular and electro-chemical processes that comprise brain function are transformed into rich, orderly conscious experience which seamlessly blends the present moment, what led up to it, and what will follow it. This is the stuff of our everyday lives, and it raises questions about its organization and how that organization facilitates engagement with the world at large. In short, what is the structure of conscious experience and what is gained by it being structured that way? This book argues that the structure is what is familiarly known as narrative form and that the gain is the ability to communicate about one’s experience with oneself and others, as well as to make informed predictions about what will happen in the fundamentally unknowable and potentially dangerous future. In the latter case, because the essence of narrative form is time and causality, structuring events from memory (the past) and from perception (the present) in narrative form causally implies future events (expectations). The potential threat (the bad or the absence of good) of these expected future events can be assessed, and, if required, action can be taken to prevent their occurrence or to diminish their impact. The implications about thinking and action, and about who we are as individuals, are also discussed here.
Author : John C. Eccles Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media Page : 592 pages File Size : 53,8 Mb Release : 2012-12-06 Category : Medical ISBN : 9783642491689
Brain and Conscious Experience by John C. Eccles Pdf
The planning of this Study Week at the Pontifical Academy of Science from September 28 to October 4, 1964, began just two years before when the President, Professor Lemaitre, asked me if 1 would be responsible for a Study Week relating Psychology to what we may call the Neurosciences. 1 accepted this responsibility on the understanding that 1 could have as sistance from two colleagues in the Academy, Professors Heymans and Chagas. Besides participating in the Study Week they gave me much needed assistance and advice in the arduous and, at times, perplexing task that 1 had undertaken, and 1 gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to them. Though there have been in recent years many symposia concerned with the so-called higher functions of the brain, for example with percep tion, learning and conditioning, and with the processing of information in the brain, there has to my knowledge been no symposium specifically with brain functions and consciousness since the memorable treating Laurentian Conference of 1953, which was later published in 1954 as the book, "Brain Mechanisms and Consciousness.
The problem of consciousness continues to be a subject of great debate in cognitive science. Synthesizing decades of research, The Conscious Brain advances a new theory of the psychological and neurophysiological correlates of conscious experience. Prinz's account of consciousness makes two main claims: first consciousness always arises at a particular stage of perceptual processing, the intermediate level, and, second, consciousness depends on attention. Attention changes the flow of information allowing perceptual information to access memory systems. Neurobiologically, this change in flow depends on synchronized neural firing. Neural synchrony is also implicated in the unity of consciousness and in the temporal duration of experience. Prinz also explores the limits of consciousness. We have no direct experience of our thoughts, no experience of motor commands, and no experience of a conscious self. All consciousness is perceptual, and it functions to make perceptual information available to systems that allows for flexible behavior. Prinz concludes by discussing prevailing philosophical puzzles. He provides a neuroscientifically grounded response to the leading argument for dualism, and argues that materialists need not choose between functional and neurobiological approaches, but can instead combine these into neurofunctional response to the mind-body problem. The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions, while also surveying, challenging, and extending philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. All readers interested in the nature of consciousness will find Prinz's work of great interest.
Intuition as Conscious Experience by Ole Koksvik Pdf
Drawing on the most recent philosophical research on intuition and perception, Ole Koksvik defends the idea that intuition not only justifies belief but can play a much wider role in our everyday epistemic lives than previously thought.
The World In Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience represents a bold assault on one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science: the nature of consciousness and the human mind. Rather than examining the brain and nervous system to see what they tell us about the mind, this book begins with an examination of conscious experience to see what it can tell us about the brain. Through this analysis, the first and most obvious observation is that consciousness appears as a volumetric spatial void, containing colored objects and surfaces. This reveals that the representation in the brain takes the form of an explicit volumetric spatial model of external reality. Therefore, the world we see around us is not the real world itself, but merely a miniature virtual-reality replica of that world in an internal representation. In fact, the phenomena of dreams and hallucinations clearly demonstrate the capacity of the brain to construct complete virtual worlds even in the absence of sensory input. Perception is somewhat like a guided hallucination, based on sensory stimulation. This insight allows us to examine the world of visual experience not as scientists exploring the external world, but as perceptual scientists examining a rich and complex internal representation. This unique approach to investigating mental function has implications in a wide variety of related fields, including the nature of language and abstract thought, and motor control and behavior. It also has implications to the world of music, art, and dance, showing how the patterns of regularity and periodicity in space and time--apparent in those aesthetic domains--reflect the periodic basis set of the underlying harmonic resonance representation in the brain.
The fundamental principles that explain the heretofore mysterious phenomena of consciousness are: (1) Consciousness is energies of the environment, and energies developed in intrafusal muscle spindles are conscious experience, and (2) the experience occurring as the developed energies, depending on purpose and intensity, are detected by muscle receptors. The conscious experience occurs as perception (the experience of the environment), imagery (imagination, memory, and dreams), feelings (emotion), or, when agreed to, the meanings of language. Consciousness and conscious experience are not subject to the interpretations of scientific and religious knowledge because consciousness is the individual experience of each and every person. In Conscious Experience, author W.H. Sparks presents a discussion of the relationship of consciousness and experience based on his extensive research and his personal experiences. Along with a review of the development of the theory of consciousness, Sparks offers a plethora of facts and thoughts about conscious experience, including: An explanation of the nature and experience of consciousness How the experience of energies detected by receptors constitutes conscious experience The idea that conscious experience is detected as the energies developed in the intrafusal spindles by muscle receptors How consciousness is experienced by the muscle system The structures of experience are the intrafusal muscle spindles The impulse activity transduced from the detected energies innervates the muscle system The recognition of the part the muscle receptors play in conscious experience is the process that finally answers the question of consciousness and conscious experience In the Conscious Experience, Sparks provides information that shows conscious experience includes perception, imagery, feelings, and the meanings of languageall qualities unique to each individual.
Language and Conscious Experience by W. H. Sparks,W.H. Sparks Pdf
Language and Conscious Experience is a philosophical theory of consciousness. The book presents a theory that accommodates every aspect of consciousness and conscious experience. The aspects referred to are perception, imagery including memory and dreams, feelings (emotion) and the acquisition and development of language including the origination of meaning. The nature of consciousness is the energies detected by sensory receptors. The nature of conscious experience is the detection by spindle receptors of energies developed and enhanced in intrafusal muscle spindles. We experience the environment in the form of sensations: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, to use the common and traditional identifications. Consciousness is experienced by the detection of intrafusal muscle spindles. The spindle receptor detection is analogous to the detection of the environment by sensory receptors. The difference, of course, is that we are conscious as the detection of the intrafusal spindles. The purpose of the neuromuscular system is response to the energies of the environment. The purpose of the intrafusal spindles is to control the neuromuscular system. Efferent impulse activity from synaptic activity enhances the intrafusal spindles that can then be detected as conscious experience. Energies developed in the intrafusal spindles are determined by the innervation of the system. When enhanced from configured synaptic activity the innervation is modified by the synaptic activity configured by experience.
Scale in Conscious Experience by Joseph S. King,Karl H. Pribram Pdf
This volume is the result of the third Appalachian Conference on Behavioral Neurodynamics which focused on the problem of scale in conscious experience. Set against the philosophical view of "eliminative materialism," the purpose of this conference was to facilitate communication among investigators who approach the study of consciousness and conscious phenomena from a variety of analytical levels. One speculative outcome of the conference is that the columnar arrangement within primary sensory cortices may provide the local isolation necessary for nonlocal interactions to occur. In addition, the relationship between unit activity and field potentials within a circumscribed region of cortex may provide the other enigmatic aspect of neurophysiological nonlocality, namely, the common context in the macro scale. So instead of a problem looking for a solution, scale becomes a solution to a problem. Only further research will determine the utility of the ideas expressed here.
Dimensions of Conscious Experience by Paavo Pylkkänen,Tere Vadén Pdf
It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected aspects of consciousness. The book brings together philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive and computer science, biology, physics, art and the new media. It contains critical studies of subjectivity vs objectivity, nonconceptuality vs conceptuality, language, evolutionary aspects, neural correlates, microphysical level, creativity, visual arts and dreams. It is suitable as a text-book for a third-year undergraduate or a graduate seminar on consciousness studies. (Series A)
Neural Substrates of Memory, Affective Functions, and Conscious Experience by C. Loeb,G. F. Poggio Pdf
It is important, indeed necessary, we believe, that the study of the higher brain func tions be introduced by a brief account of the evolution of the philosophical thinking and scientific researches on cognition. The intuition that sensations and intelligence reside in the brain goes back to the Egyptians, in particular the Edwin Smith papyrus, probably dated between 2500 and 3000 b. c. , where the term "brain" appears for the first time and where there is a description of its coverings (meninges) and circumvolutions (Walsh 1994). The philosophical debate on brain and mind made its appearance in ancient l Greece and in subsequent centuries developed among the philosophers. The flow of sensations, the process of thinking, and the site of reason were localized in the brain, according to Alcmaeon of Croton (sixth to fifth centuries b. c. ) and subsequently Lattanzio, Alexander of Tralles, Democritus, Anaxagoras, and particularly Hip pocrates (460-377 b. c. ), who placed the soul, envisaged as a mental function, in the brain. Plato (427-347 b. c. ) believed that the brain provided the sensory experiences (hearing, sight, smell) and that from these were generated thinking and memory, and the act of thinking produced the truth or "episteme. " The formulation of the problem changes radically with Aristotle (384-322 b. c. ), who believed that the heart, and not the brain, was the site of passions, feelings, intelligence, and thought (Gross 1995).
