On The Contexts Of Things Human: An Integrative View Of Brain, Consciousness, And Freedom Of Will

On The Contexts Of Things Human: An Integrative View Of Brain, Consciousness, And Freedom Of Will
Author: Ronald J Macgregor
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 981447827X

This book is unique in expanding the boundaries of neuroscience, while remaining solidly grounded within it. In this, it outlines a new plateau of wider integrative understanding both within and beyond neuroscience. The book advances the view and implications of an integrated functional unity of consciousness and brain, inclusive of freedom of will. It reaches from first principles of human awareness and apprehension and the physical foundations of consciousness, through a structured integrative view of consciousness and the brain, to outlines of the ambient contextual influences of human living. Comprehensive overviews of brain theory and theoretical neuroscience are given. Fundamental brain functions of human apprehension, language, value, aesthetics, rational and extrarational knowing, biological primals, and adaptive integrations are seen to operate within such ambient influences as whole of nature, human plight, circumstances, personal life, good and evil, inner depths, worlds of man, and enlightenments.Prof Ronald MacGregor has published extensively in theoretical neuroscience since 1965, consistently advocating the foundationality of physiology and physical law in brain-mind function. His work has helped ground neuroelectric signaling within physical science and characterize the neuroelectric patterns of neurons and neural networks.

On the Contexts of Things Human

On the Contexts of Things Human
Author: Ronald J. MacGregor
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2006
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9812773916

The study of isoperimetric inequalities involves a fascinating interplay of analysis, geometry and the theory of partial differential equations. Several conjectures have been made and while many have been resolved, a large number still remain open. One of the principal tools in the study of isoperimetric problems, especially when spherical symmetry is involved, is Schwarz symmetrization, which is also known as the spherically symmetric and decreasing rearrangement of functions. The aim of this book is to give an introduction to the theory of Schwarz symmetrization and study some of its applications. The book gives an modern and up-to-date treatment of the subject and includes several new results proved recently. Effort has been made to keep the exposition as simple and self-contained as possible. A knowledge of the existence theory of weak solutions of elliptic partial differential equations in Sobolev spaces is, however, assumed. Apart from this and a general mathematical maturity at the graduate level, there are no other prerequisites.

Information—Consciousness—Reality

Information—Consciousness—Reality
Author: James B. Glattfelder
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2019-04-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030036332

This open access book chronicles the rise of a new scientific paradigm offering novel insights into the age-old enigmas of existence. Over 300 years ago, the human mind discovered the machine code of reality: mathematics. By utilizing abstract thought systems, humans began to decode the workings of the cosmos. From this understanding, the current scientific paradigm emerged, ultimately discovering the gift of technology. Today, however, our island of knowledge is surrounded by ever longer shores of ignorance. Science appears to have hit a dead end when confronted with the nature of reality and consciousness. In this fascinating and accessible volume, James Glattfelder explores a radical paradigm shift uncovering the ontology of reality. It is found to be information-theoretic and participatory, yielding a computational and programmable universe.

Human and Machine Consciousness

Human and Machine Consciousness
Author: David Gamez
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2018-03-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1783743018

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.

Conscience and the Common Good

Conscience and the Common Good
Author: Robert K. Vischer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2010
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0521113776

Our society's longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, although conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law's willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. Conscience and the Common Good reframes the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus.

The Unity of Consciousness

The Unity of Consciousness
Author: Tim Bayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-10-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191639885

In The Unity of Consciousness Tim Bayne draws on philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in defence of the claim that consciousness is unified. In the first part of the book Bayne develops an account of what it means to say that consciousness is unified. Part II applies this account to a variety of cases - drawn from both normal and pathological forms of experience - in which the unity of consciousness is said to break down. Bayne argues that the unity of consciousness remains intact in each of these cases. Part III explores the implications of the unity of consciousness for theories of consciousness, for the sense of embodiment, and for accounts of the self. In one of the most comprehensive examinations of the topic available, The Unity of Consciousness draws on a wide range of findings within philosophy and the sciences of the mind to construct an account of the unity of consciousness that is both conceptually sophisticated and scientifically informed.

The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul

The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul
Author: Simona Ginsburg
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 665
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262039303

A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka propose a new theory about the origin of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the transition to basic consciousness. Using a methodology similar to that used by scientists when they identified the transition from non-life to life, Ginsburg and Jablonka suggest a set of criteria, identify a marker for the transition to minimal consciousness, and explore the far-reaching biological, psychological, and philosophical implications. After presenting the historical, neurobiological, and philosophical foundations of their analysis, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose that the evolutionary marker of basic or minimal consciousness is a complex form of associative learning, which they term unlimited associative learning (UAL). UAL enables an organism to ascribe motivational value to a novel, compound, non-reflex-inducing stimulus or action, and use it as the basis for future learning. Associative learning, Ginsburg and Jablonka argue, drove the Cambrian explosion and its massive diversification of organisms. Finally, Ginsburg and Jablonka propose symbolic language as a similar type of marker for the evolutionary transition to human rationality—to Aristotle's “rational soul.”

The Master and His Emissary

The Master and His Emissary
Author: Iain McGilchrist
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 615
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0300245920

A new edition of the bestselling classic – published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2000-08-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0547527543

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