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Author: Bruce Hood Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199969892 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.
Author: Bruce Hood Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199969892 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.
Author: Daniel M. Wegner Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262290553 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 725
Book Description
A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Author: Julian Barbour Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199760896 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
Richard Feynman once quipped that "Time is what happens when nothing else does." But Julian Barbour disagrees: if nothing happened, if nothing changed, then time would stop. For time is nothing but change. It is change that we perceive occurring all around us, not time. Put simply, time does not exist. In this highly provocative volume, Barbour presents the basic evidence for a timeless universe, and shows why we still experience the world as intensely temporal. It is a book that strikes at the heart of modern physics. It casts doubt on Einstein's greatest contribution, the spacetime continuum, but also points to the solution of one of the great paradoxes of modern science, the chasm between classical and quantum physics. Indeed, Barbour argues that the holy grail of physicists--the unification of Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics--may well spell the end of time. Barbour writes with remarkable clarity as he ranges from the ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, through the giants of science Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, to the work of the contemporary physicists John Wheeler, Roger Penrose, and Steven Hawking. Along the way he treats us to enticing glimpses of some of the mysteries of the universe, and presents intriguing ideas about multiple worlds, time travel, immortality, and, above all, the illusion of motion. The End of Time is a vibrantly written and revolutionary book. It turns our understanding of reality inside-out.
Author: Joseph Anderson Publisher: SIU Press ISBN: 9780809321964 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
Applying research findings from studies in visual perception, neurophysiology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and anthropology, Joseph D. Anderson defines the complex interaction of motion pictures with the human mind and organizes the relationship between film and cognitive science. Anderson's primary argument is that motion picture viewers mentally process the projected images and sounds of a movie according to the same perceptual rules used in response to visual and aural stimuli in the world outside the theater. To process everyday events in the world, the human mind is equipped with capacities developed through millions of years of evolution. In this context, Anderson builds a metatheory influenced by the writings of J. J. and Eleanor Gibson and employs it to explore motion picture comprehension as a subset of general human comprehension and perception, focusing his ecological approach to film on the analysis of cinema's true substance: illusion. Anderson investigates how viewers, with their mental capacities designed for survival, respond to particular aspects of filmic structure--continuity, diegesis, character development, and narrative--and examines the ways in which rules of visual and aural processing are recognized and exploited by filmmakers. He uses Orson Welles's Citizen Kane to disassemble and redefine the contemporary concept of character identification; he addresses continuity in a shot-by-shot analysis of images from Casablanca; and he uses a wide range of research studies, such as Harry F. Harlow's work with infant rhesus monkeys, to describe how motion pictures become a substitute or surrogate reality for an audience. By examining the human capacity for play and the inherent potential for illusion, Anderson considers the reasons viewers find movies so enthralling, so emotionally powerful, and so remarkably real.
Author: Brendan D Murphy Publisher: ISBN: 9780646973357 Category : Languages : en Pages : 606
Book Description
The Grand Illusion synthesizes the best consciousness research with decades of cutting-edge discovery and hard science, empowering you with an intelligent new paradigm and new direction for humanity. This acclaimed book destroys the materialist notion of humans as "meat computers" and lays the foundation for a scientifically-based metaphysics.
Author: Donald Hoffman Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393254704 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth? Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. From examining why fashion designers create clothes that give the illusion of a more “attractive” body shape to studying how companies use color to elicit specific emotions in consumers, and even dismantling the very notion that spacetime is objective reality, The Case Against Reality dares us to question everything we thought we knew about the world we see.
Author: Mari Perron Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781456580315 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
No matter how much is learned, if that learning remains in our heads, it is not enough. Unless learning touches our hearts, it's never going to bring us the wisdom we seek, the peace we desire, or the intimacy and connection for which we yearn. A new and more receptive way of knowing is needed, and is found in this course for the heart. "A Course of Love" was received by Mari Perron and given to be a "new" course in miracles. It is for the heart what "A Course in Miracles" is for the mind. For many, it is the next step in a journey already begun.
Author: Sam Harris Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451683405 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Author: Jonathan Bricklin Publisher: State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438456298 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 405
Book Description
A Seminary Co-op Notable Book of 2016 William James is often considered a scientist compromised by his advocacy of mysticism and parapsychology. Jonathan Bricklin argues James can also be viewed as a mystic compromised by his commitment to common sense. James wanted to believe in will, self, and time, but his deepest insights suggested otherwise. "Is consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of reality?" James asked shortly before his death in 1910. A century after his death, research from neuroscience, physics, psychology, and parapsychology is making the case, both theoretically and experimentally, that answers James's question in the affirmative. By separating what James passionately wanted to believe, based on common sense, from what his insights and researches led him to believe, Bricklin shows how James himself laid the groundwork for this more challenging view of existence. The non-reality of will, self, and time is consistent with James's psychology of volition, his epistemology of self, and his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist.
Author: Bruce Hood
Author: Bruce Hood
Author: Daniel M. Wegner
Author: Julian Barbour
Author: Joseph Anderson
Author: Brendan D Murphy
Author: Donald Hoffman
Author: Mari Perron
Author: Sam Harris
Author: Sigmund Freud
Author: Jonathan Bricklin