Conscious Experience PDF Download

Author: Thomas Metzinger
Publisher: Imprint Academic
ISBN: 9780907845058
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
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.

Author: Robert G. Kunzendorf
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027251404
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
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)

Author: Steven M. Lehar
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135636591
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
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.

Author: David E. Nielson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781640950030
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"In this book, Nielson addresses how to define your purpose in life to achieve conscious success. He uses real-life stories, humor, and a humble approach that has connected with audiences of all ages"--

Author: Marcello Massimini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198728441
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.

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

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Book Description
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.

Author: Andrew P. Smith
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 146531590X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
This book is an evolutionary history of life on earth. Its focus is not the evolution of the structural/functional adaptations found in any biology textbook, though these are necessarily discussed in a general way. Its primarily concerned with consciousness, with what the organism experiences. Just how far back into evolutionary history consciousness extends, of course, is a highly controversial issue, and one which we will probably never resolve with certainty. We know we are conscious, and most people would probably extend consciousness to other mammals, but when it comes to lower vertebrates, let alone invertebrates, there is no consensus. This book takes a what if approach. What if all forms of existence were conscious to some extent, a view known as panpsychism or panexperientialism? Based on those aspects of their function and behavior that we can actually observe and measure, what can we say about what this consciousness is like? The resulting story is one in which consciousness becomes increasingly more complex over evolutionary history, yet is based on facts of animal behavior that any reader, regardless of personal views on consciousness, can accept. In order to simply a vast amount of scientific literature, the book focuses on two general properties of consciousness and its behavioral manifestations: the experience of an outer world embedded in space and time; and that of an inner self that is defined by its relationship to other organisms. Two key claims made are that 1) dimensions of externally-perceived space and time have emerged more or less one at a time over the course of evolutionary history; and 2) the number of spatial/temporal dimensions experienced by any organism in the outer world is closely related to experienced inner dimensions in its relationships with other organisms. For example, the simplest invertebrate organisms experience one dimension of space, in the form of intensity discriminations made of simple stimuli such as light, touch and chemical substances. Closely correlated with this one-dimensional experience of the outer world is the ability to make simple self-other discriminations, in which the organism in effect distinguishes itself one-dimensionally from the outer world. Somewhat more evolved invertebrates, such as arthropods, experience two dimensions of space, their perception being largely limited to shapes, contrasts, and surfaces. They can also distinguish between two dimensions in their relationships with other organisms, as exhibited in the ability to discriminate such classes of other as male vs. female and kin vs. non-kin. The most highly evolved invertebrates, as well as all vertebrates, experience additional dimensions of space and/or time and make still finer discriminations among other organisms. The evolutionary story is not confined to organisms, however. The book argues that the same kind of dimensional relationships exist on lower levels of existence. Thus there are atoms that recognize and interact with other atoms in various degrees of dimensions, and there are cells that recognize and interact with other cells in different numbers of dimensions. Again, the minimal claim being made is that the function and behavior of these lifeforms can be understood in terms of dimensions, while leaving it up to individual readers to decide whether this could reflect a similar dimensionality of consciousness. Review by Kirkus Discoveries A lucid, thought-provoking and wide-ranging metaphysical treatise by novelist, scientific researcher and Stanford Ph.D. Smith. Heralded as the first complete history of consciousness ever written, The Dimensions of Experience covers an astonishin

Author: David Gamez
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.

Author: Trevor A. Harley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107125286
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
An introduction to the psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience of consciousness, including sleep, dreaming, meditative, and altered states.

Author: Eric Schwitzgebel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262295083
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
A philosopher argues that we know little about our own inner lives. Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s researchers found that most people reported dreaming in black and white. In the 1960s, when most movies were in color and more people had color television sets, the vast majority of reported dreams contained color. The most likely explanation for this, according to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, is not that exposure to black-and-white media made people misremember their dreams. It is that we simply don't know whether or not we dream in color. In Perplexities of Consciousness, Schwitzgebel examines various aspects of inner life (dreams, mental imagery, emotions, and other subjective phenomena) and argues that we know very little about our stream of conscious experience. Drawing broadly from historical and recent philosophy and psychology to examine such topics as visual perspective, and the unreliability of introspection, Schwitzgebel finds us singularly inept in our judgments about conscious experience.