The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object PDF Download

Author: Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Altered states of consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Author: Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 9780517527771
Category : Altered states of consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Pathways Through to Space is the first coherent, practical guide to achieving higher levels of consciousness. An outstanding contribution to mystic literature, this personal experiential journal offers an intimate view of one man's search for the truth. With the insight and sensitivity of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Lilly, Castaneda, and Laing, the words of this highly developed scientist-thinker will serve as an inspiration for greater and more expansive experiences, leading the way toward a new synthesis of perception and understanding.

Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019926760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions.McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, extreme dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existentobjects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas.

Author: Riccardo Manzotti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265097
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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What is the conscious mind? What is experience? In 1968, David Armstrong asked “What is a man?” and replied that a man is “a certain sort of material object”. This book starts from his question but proceeds along a different path. The traditional mind-brain identity theory is set aside, and a mind-object identity theory is proposed in its place: to be conscious of an object is simply to be made of that object. Consciousness is physical but not neural. This groundbreaking hypothesis is supported by recent empirical findings in both perception and neuroscience, and is herein tested against a series of objections of both conceptual and empirical nature: the traditional mind-brain identity arguments from illusion, hallucinations, dreams, and mental imagery. The theory is then compared with existing externalist approaches including disjunctivism, realism, embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind. Can experience and objects be one and the same?

Author: Ted Honderich
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198714386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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What is it for you to be conscious? There is no consensus in philosophy or science: it has remained a mystery. Ted Honderich develops a brand new theory of consciousness, according to which perceptual consciousness is external to the perceiver. It exists in a subjective physical world dependent on both you and the objective physical world.

Author: Gregg Rosenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195168143
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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"Rosenberg introduces a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism for thinking about what causation is, about the natural world, and about how to create a detailed model to go along with the new paradigm. Arguing that experience is part of the categorical foundations of causality, he shows that within this new paradigm there is a place for something essentially like consciousness in all its traditional mysterious respects."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Evan Thompson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538316
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.

Author: Franklin Merrell-Wolff
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791426753
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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This book presents a philosophy that includes the enlightenment experience--a philosophy grounded on the authority of direct realization resulting from transformation in consciousness.

Author: Dan Zahavi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191507717
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Dan Zahavi offers an in-depth and up-to-date analysis of central and contested aspects of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. What is ultimately at stake in Husserl's phenomenological analyses? Are they primarily to be understood as investigations of consciousness or are they equally about the world? What is distinctive about phenomenological transcendental philosophy, and what kind of metaphysical import, if any, might it have? Husserl's Legacy offers an interpretation of the more overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology and engages with some of the most contested and debated questions in phenomenology. Central to its interpretative efforts is the attempt to understand Husserl's transcendental idealism. Zahavi argues that Husserl was not a sophisticated introspectionist, not a phenomenalist, nor an internalist, not a quietist when it comes to metaphysical issues, and not opposed to all forms of naturalism. Husserl's Legacy argues that Husserl's phenomenology is as much about the world as it is about consciousness, and that a proper grasp of Husserl's transcendental idealism reveals the fundamental importance of facticity and intersubjectivity.

Author: Jesse J. Prinz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019971813X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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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.