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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind
This book seeks to examine the mutual interplay between
existentialism and Christian belief as seen through the work of
three existentialist thinkers who were also committed Christians -
a Spaniard (Miguel de Unamuno), a Russian (Nikolai Berdyaev), and a
Frenchman (Gabriel Marcel). They are compared with each other and
with leading non-religious existentialists. The major themes
studied include reason, freedom, the self, belief, hope, love,
suffering, and immortality.
We know, more intimately than anything else, what it's like to
undergo a rich world of experiences: agonizing pains, dizzying
pleasures, heady rage and existential doubts. But, despite the
incredible advances of physical science, it seems that we're no
closer to an explanation of how this inner world of experiences
comes about. No matter how detailed our description of the physical
brain, perhaps we'll always be left with this same question: how
and why does the brain produce consciousness? This book is a short,
accessible and engaging guide to the mystery of consciousness.
Featuring remastered interviews and original essays from the
world's leading thinkers, Philosophers on Consciousness sheds new
light on the most promising theories in philosophy and science.
Beyond understanding the mind, this is a journey into personal
identity, the origin of meaning, the nature of morality and the
fundamental structure of reality. Contributors include: Miri
Albahari, Susan Blackmore, David Chalmers, Patricia Churchland,
Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, Philip Goff, Frank Jackson, Casey
Logue, Gregory Miller, Michelle Montague, Massimo Pigliucci and
Galen Strawson.
Neuroscience has made considerable progress in figuring out how the
brain works. We know much about the molecular-genetic and
biochemical underpinnings of sensory and motor functions. Recent
neuroimaging work has opened the door to investigating the neural
underpinnings of higher-order cognitive functions, such as memory,
attention, and even free will. In these types of investigations,
researchers apply specific stimuli to induce neural activity in the
brain and look for the function in question. However, there may be
more to the brain and its neuronal states than the changes in
activity we induce by applying particular external stimuli. In
Volume 2 of Unlocking the Brain, Georg Northoff addresses
consciousness by hypothesizing about the relationship between
particular neuronal mechanisms and the various phenomenal features
of consciousness. Northoff puts consciousness in the context of the
resting state of the brain thereby delivering a new point of view
to the debate that permits very interesting insights into the
nature of consciousness. Moreover, he describes and discusses
detailed findings from different branches of neuroscience including
single cell data, animal data, human imaging data, and psychiatric
findings. This yields a unique and novel picture of the brain, and
will have a major and lasting impact on neuroscientists working in
neuroscience, psychiatry, and related fields.
Neuroscience has made considerable progress in figuring out how the
brain works. We know much about the molecular-genetic and
biochemical underpinnings of sensory and motor functions, and
recent neuroimaging work has opened the door to investigating the
neural underpinnings of higher-order cognitive functions, such as
memory, attention, and even free will. In these types of
investigations, researchers apply specific stimuli to induce neural
activity in the brain and look for the function in question.
However, there may be more to the brain and its neuronal states
than the changes in activity we induce by applying particular
external stimuli.
In Volume 1 of Unlocking the Brain, Georg Northoff presents his
argument for how the brain must code the relationship between its
resting state activity and stimulus-induced activity in order to
enable and predispose mental states and consciousness. By
presupposing such a basic sense of neural code, the author ventures
into different territories and fields of current neuroscience,
including a comprehensive exploration of the features of resting
state activity as distinguishable from and stimulus-induced
activity; sparse coding and predictive coding; and spatial and
temporal features of the resting state itself. This yields a unique
and novel picture of the brain, and will have a major and lasting
impact on neuroscientists working in neuroscience, psychiatry, and
related fields.
This book applies the formal discipline of logic to everyday
discourse. It offers a new analysis of the notion of individual,
suggesting that this notion is linguistic, not ontological, and
that anything denoted by a proper name in a well-functioning
language game is an individual. It further posits that everyday
discourse is non-compositional, i.e., its complex expressions are
not just the result of putting simpler ones together but react on
the latter, modifying their meaning through feedback. The book
theorizes that in everyday discourse, there is no algebra of truth
values, but the latter can be both input and output of something
which has no truth value at all. It suggests that an elementary
proposition of everyday discourse (defined as having exactly one
predicate) can, in principle, be indefinitely expanded by adding
new components, belonging neither to subject nor to predicate, but
remain elementary. This book is of interest to logicians and
philosophers of language.
There is a growing literature in neuroethics dealing with cognitive
neuro-enhancement for healthy adults. However, discussions on this
topic tend to focus on abstract theoretical positions while
concrete policy proposals and detailed models are scarce.
Furthermore, discussions appear to rely solely on data from the US
or UK, while international perspectives are mostly non-existent.
This volume fills this gap and addresses issues on cognitive
enhancement comprehensively in three important ways: 1) it examines
the conceptual implications stemming from competing points of view
about the nature and goals of enhancement; 2) it addresses the
ethical, social, and legal implications of neuroenhancement from an
international and global perspective including contributions from
scholars in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and
South America; and 3) it discusses and analyzes concrete legal
issues and policy options tailored to specific contexts.
Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of
philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics
and philosophy of language. But there has been very little
experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophy of
religion. Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental
Philosophy demonstrates how cognitive science of religion has the
methodological and conceptual resources to become a form of
experimental philosophy of religion. Addressing a wide variety of
empirical claims that are of interest to philosophers and
psychologists of religion, a team of psychologists and philosophers
apply data from the psychology of religion to important problems in
the philosophy of religion including the psychology of religious
diversity; the psychology of substance dualism; the problem of evil
and the relation between religious belief and empathy; and the
cognitive science explaining the formation of intuitions that
unwittingly guide philosophers of religion when formulating
arguments. Bringing together authors and researchers who have made
important contributions to interdisciplinary research on religion
in the last decade, Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and
Experimental Philosophy provides new ways of approaching core
philosophical and psychological problems.
Listen. Hear your deepest longings, triumphs and
trials in these ancient tales of the human experience.
Journey through these fascinating stories and you will see how
myths and tales retold from many cultures bring universal themes
from love and life, fears and foibles, straight into your
heart.
From the learned housekeeper who imparts her wisdom on the
importance of listening, to a juggler who shows that gifts from the
heart are truly the best of all, these stories offer timeless
insight and inspiration. They will allow you to connect with the
strength and value of your own myths and tales.
Drawn from many cultures and faith traditions including Irish,
Scottish, English, European, Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern each
retelling illustrates the healing and powerful connection that
stretches across the globe and unites us all in an embrace of
wisdom through words. You will see your own struggles and successes
mirrored in the lives of the characters contained in these pages:
As you travel through their stories, you will hear a gentle voice
urging you to tap into your own endless power and potential.
Fusing speculative realism, analytical and linguistic philosophy
this book theorises the fundamental impact the experience of
reading has on us. In reading, language provides us with a world
and meaning becomes perceptible. We can connect with another
subjectivity, another place, another time. At its most extreme,
reading changes our understanding of the world around us. Metanoia-
meaning literally a change of mind or a conversion-refers to this
kind of new way of seeing. To see the world in a new light is to
accept that our thinking has been irrevocably transformed. How is
that possible? And is it merely an intellectual process without any
impact on the world outside our brains? Innovatively tackling these
questions, this book mobilizes discussions from linguistics,
literary theory, philosophy of language, and cognitive science. It
re-articulates linguistic consciousness by underlining the poetic,
creative moment of language and sheds light on the ability of
language to transform not only our thinking but the world around us
as well.
This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs,
minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive
rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both
analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of
faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood
as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a
representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive
capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity
attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that
these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that
supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it
offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that
is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and
embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while
this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also
offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects
and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto
persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons,
subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that
often remain in the background of such (often erroneously)
individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized
across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between
people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or
in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized
to include mediation at any degree of remove).
In Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience
Meets the Aristotelian Tradition, Matthew Owen argues that despite
its nonphysical character, it is possible to empirically detect and
measure consciousness. Toward the end of the previous century, the
neuroscience of consciousness set its roots and sprouted within a
materialist milieu that reduced the mind to matter. Several decades
later, dualism is being dusted off and reconsidered. Although some
may see this revival as a threat to consciousness science aimed at
measuring the conscious mind, Owen argues that measuring
consciousness, along with the medical benefits of such
measurements, is not ruled out by consciousness being nonphysical.
Owen proposes the Mind-Body Powers model of neural correlates of
consciousness, which is informed by Aristotelian causation and a
substance dualist view of human nature inspired by Thomas Aquinas,
who often followed Aristotle. In addition to explaining why there
are neural correlates of consciousness, the model provides a
philosophical foundation for empirically discerning and quantifying
consciousness. En route to presenting and applying the Mind-Body
Powers model to neurobiology, Owen rebuts longstanding objections
to dualism related to the mind-body problem. With scholarly
precision and readable clarity, Owen applies an oft forgotten yet
richly developed historical vantage point to contemporary cognitive
neuroscience.
The development of cognitive models is a key step in the
challenging research program to advance our understanding of human
cognition and behavior. Dynamical models represent a general and
flexible approach to cognitive modeling. This introduction focuses
on applications of stochastic processes and dynamical systems to
model cognition. The dynamical approach is particularly useful to
emphasize the strong link between experimental research (and its
paradigms), data analysis, and mathematical models including their
computer implementation for numerical simulation. Most of specific
examples are from the domain of eye movement research, with
concepts being applicable to a broad range of problems in cognitive
modeling. The textbook aims at the graduate and/or advanced
undergraduate level for students in Cognitive Science and related
disciplines such as Psychology and Computer Science. Joint
introduction of the theory of cognitive processes and mathematical
models, their underlying mathematical concepts, numerical
simulation, and analysis; The focus on eye movements provide a
theoretically coherent, but very general application area; Computer
code in R Programming Language for Statistical Computing is
available for all examples, figures, and solutions to exercises.
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