The Man In My Head Has Lost His Mind What Is Consciousness

Author : Carter Blakelaw
Publisher : The Logic of Dreams
Page : 64 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2023-01-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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The Man in My Head Has Lost His Mind (What is Consciousness?) by Carter Blakelaw Pdf

The howl of the bedside clock-radio carves through your dreams like a buzz-saw through butter, and you are awake. In another place. Never mind the bright yellow sunlight that flecks your pillow and warms your face; you are rudely awake, and resent it. Gah! You roll onto your side, cantilever your legs over the side of the bed and plant your feet squarely on the carpet. You rub your face. Massage your neck. Oh, what it is to be alive!--and conscious--oh oh oh, indeed. But what is it to be alive, and conscious? Alive, we have some inkling of; you eat, you sleep, you exercise. You stay healthy and keep your body going as best you can. But conscious? What even is that? A good question is what that is, and a question for which this book has an answer. So in this text, first I set the scene: - Did our consciousness evolve? - Does consciousness give us free will? - Which animals do we think are conscious? - Where does consciousness go when we sleep? - How does consciousness deliver meaning? - What might a theory of consciousness look like? Then I propose: - A model for consciousness at the macro scale - A mechanism for consciousness at the micro scale Finally, I suggest some real world tests that science will one day be able to perform which will either corroborate or invalidate the theory I present here. This is a workable, testable theory. Science and philosophy demand nothing less. Table of Contents Introduction 1. A Poodle Ate My Homework 2. Life Is a Comic Strip 3. How Do You Explain Anything? 4. As Time Goes By (A Kiss Is Just a Kiss) 5. This See, Is the Conscious Bit 6. Qualia, the Possible and a Particular 7. Evolution and Free Will 8. The Good, the Bad and the Choosy 9. Finally, Making It All Work A must-read for the curious-minded, which you are, are you not? So read on...

Author : Barbara K. Lipska,Elaine McArdle
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2018-04-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781328787279

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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind by Barbara K. Lipska,Elaine McArdle Pdf

In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts Barbara Lipska's deadly brain cancer and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind. Neuroscientist Lipska was diagnosed early in 2015 with metastatic melanoma in her brain's frontal lobe. As the cancer progressed and was treated, she experienced behavioral and cognitive symptoms connected to a range of mental disorders, including dementia and her professional specialty, schizophrenia. Lipska's family and associates were alarmed by the changes in her behavior, which she failed to acknowledge herself. Gradually, after a course of immunotherapy, Lipska returned to normal functioning, amazingly recalled her experience, and through her knowledge of neuroscience identified the ways in which her brain changed during treatment. Lipska admits her condition was unusual; after recovery she was able to return to her research and resume her athletic training and compete in a triathalon. Most patients with similar brain cancers rarely survive to describe their ordeal. Lipska's memoir, coauthored with journalist Elaine McArdle, shows that strength and courage but also an encouraging support network are vital to recovery.

Author : Carter Blakelaw
Publisher : The Logic of Dreams
Page : 121 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2023-04-23
Category : Computers
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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This Robot Brain Gets Life (Making AI Pseudo-Conscious) by Carter Blakelaw Pdf

For those in a hurry, this: - To align an AI’s goals with our own, we must build-in alignment from the start. - To keep an AI honest, we must build-in honesty from the start. - To get an AI to understand anything, we must invest it with something of what it’s like to be conscious. In this book, a theory of consciousness is cast into an AI architecture that allows interventions in concept formation by design. For the rest of you, who enjoy reading and mulling things over, this: Can a computing device appreciate the smell of coffee on a Sunday morning, or contemplate the Earth as seen from the Moon, or worry about inflation and the price of fuel? Not without being conscious and understanding the world. And one can't be done without the other, surely? In this book, Carter Blakelaw uses a theory of what makes us conscious to present a machine that will genuinely think for itself. Not only that, but once he has his machine, he looks at how to ensure its interests align with our own, and how to keep it honest and true (alignment and hallucinations being two of the biggest issues in AI). Discover what he discovers about the machine, about our world, and about us.

Author : Carter Blakelaw
Publisher : The Logic of Dreams
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-11
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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CB's Top 100 Writing Tips, Tricks, Techniques and Tools from the Advice Toolbox by Carter Blakelaw Pdf

How do you create plot from character? How do you create character from plot? How do you write text that flows? Based on more than a decade of writers' workshops and critique groups, this book draws useful lessons from weak writing, and presents these lessons as tenets, or rules. In this book you will discover: •100 solid rules to apply to your fiction. •The motivation behind each rule. •The pros and cons of keeping—or breaking—the rules. •Numerous examples of rule-keeping and rule-breaking. •How every rule serves to keep the reader reading. Serious about your craft? Act now!

Author : Julian Jaynes
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2000-08-15
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780547527543

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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes Pdf

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Author : Jack Calverley
Publisher : The Logic of Dreams
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-16
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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The Behemoth Legalis Mindhack by Jack Calverley Pdf

When P. D. R. Buchanan is employed to sort out a dispute between two corporate AIs, he finds he's digging a bottomless hole for himself... In this short science fiction story, an eccentric man faces a life-changing challenge in the face of his every attempt to be a decent, honest, good citizen. A sample short story from the collection "Proud New Monkey, UITSU & more..." by Jack Calverley, published here as a chapbook.

Author : Tim Parks
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2021-07-06
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780393866858

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The Hero's Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna by Tim Parks Pdf

The acclaimed author of Italian Ways returns with an exploration into Italy’s past and present—following in the footsteps of Garibaldi’s famed 250-mile journey across the Apennines. In the summer of 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy’s legendary revolutionary, was finally forced to abandon his defense of Rome. He and his men had held the besieged city for four long months, but now it was clear that only surrender would prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a huge French army. Against all odds, Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory. On the evening of July 2, riding alongside his pregnant wife, Anita, he led 4,000 hastily assembled men to continue the struggle for national independence elsewhere. Hounded by both French and Austrian armies, the garibaldini marched hundreds of miles across the Appenines, Italy’s mountainous spine, and after two months of skirmishes and adventures arrived in Ravenna with just 250 survivors. Best-selling author Tim Parks, together with his partner Eleonora, set out in the blazing summer of 2019 to follow Garibaldi and Anita’s arduous journey through the heart of Italy. In The Hero’s Way he delivers a superb travelogue that captures Garibaldi’s determination, creativity, reckless courage, and profound belief. And he provides a fascinating portrait of Italy then and now, filled with unforgettable observations of Italian life and landscape, politics, and people.

Author : G. E. W. Wolstenholme,Maeve O'Connor
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2009-09-16
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780470718209

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Brain and Mind by G. E. W. Wolstenholme,Maeve O'Connor Pdf

The Novartis Foundation Series is a popular collection of the proceedings from Novartis Foundation Symposia, in which groups of leading scientists from a range of topics across biology, chemistry and medicine assembled to present papers and discuss results. The Novartis Foundation, originally known as the Ciba Foundation, is well known to scientists and clinicians around the world.

Author : Stanislas Dehaene
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780698151406

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Consciousness and the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene Pdf

WINNER OF THE 2014 BRAIN PRIZE From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness.

Author : Daniel Goleman,Richard J. Davidson
Publisher : Ardent Media
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0891976485

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Consciousness, the Brain, States of Awareness, and Alternate Realities by Daniel Goleman,Richard J. Davidson Pdf

Author : V. S. Ramachandran
Publisher : William Morrow
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1998-08-19
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0688152473

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Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran Pdf

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases: A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial. A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience? A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time. Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.

Author : Roy J. Snell
Publisher : Good Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2023-08-12
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : EAN:8596547506225

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Lost in the Air by Roy J. Snell Pdf

"Lost in the Air" by Roy J. Snell. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Author : Jonathan O. Chimakonam,Uti Ojah Egbai,Samuel T. Segun,Aribiah D. Attoe
Publisher : Springer
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2019-02-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030142629

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New Conversations on the Problems of Identity, Consciousness and Mind by Jonathan O. Chimakonam,Uti Ojah Egbai,Samuel T. Segun,Aribiah D. Attoe Pdf

This book introduces concepts in philosophy of mind and neurophilosophy. Inside, three scholars offer approaches to the problems of identity, consciousness, and the mind. In the process, they open new vistas for thought and raise fresh controversies to some of the oldest problems in philosophy. The first chapter focuses on the identity problem. The author employs an explanatory model he christened sense-phenomenalism to defend the thesis that personal identity is something or a phenomenon that pertains to the observable/perceptible aspect of the human person. The next chapter explores the problem of consciousness. It deploys the new concept equiphenomenalism as a model to show that mental properties are not by-products but necessary products of consciousness. Herein, the notion of qualia is a fundamental and necessary product that must be experienced simultaneously with neural activities for consciousness to be possible. The last chapter addresses the mind/body problem. It adopts the new concept proto-phenomenalism as an alternative explanatory model. This model eliminates the idea of a mind. As such, it approaches the mind-body problem from a materialistic point of view with many implications such as, the meaning(lessness) of our existence, the possibility of thought engineering as well as religious implications.

Author : William James
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 15 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1904
Category : Consciousness
ISBN : OCLC:492887475

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Does "consciousness" Exist ? by William James Pdf

Author : Heinrich Dumoulin
Publisher : World Wisdom, Inc
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0941532909

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Zen Buddhism: Japan by Heinrich Dumoulin Pdf

In this second volume of his classic history, one of the world's foremost Zen scholars turns his attention to the development of Zen in Japan.