Regarding the Mind, Naturally

Regarding the Mind, Naturally
Author: Marcin Milkowski
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-08-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1443865680

Naturalism is currently the most vibrantly developing approach to philosophy, with naturalised methodologies being applied across all the philosophical disciplines. One of the areas naturalism has been focussing upon is the mind, traditionally viewed as a topic hard to reconcile with the naturalistic worldview. A number of questions have been pursued in this context. What is the place of the mind in the world? How should we study the mind as a natural phenomenon? What is the significance of cognitive science research for philosophical debates? In this book, philosophical questions about the mind are asked in the context of recent developments in cognitive science, evolutionary theory, psychology, and the project of naturalisation. Much of the focus is upon what we have learned by studying natural mental mechanisms as well as designing artificial ones. In the case of natural mental mechanisms, this includes consideration of such issues as the significance of deficits in these mechanisms for psychiatry. The significance of the evolutionary context for mental mechanisms as well as questions regarding rationality and wisdom is also explored. Mechanistic and functional models of the mind are used to throw new light on discussions regarding issues of explanation, reduction and the realisation of mental phenomena. Finally, naturalistic approaches are used to look anew at such traditional philosophical issues as the correspondence of mind to world and presuppositions of scientific research.

The Laboratory of the Mind

The Laboratory of the Mind
Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2005-09-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134865791

Thought experiments are performed in the laboratory of the mind. Beyond this metaphor it is difficult to say just what these remarkable devices for investigating nature are or how they work. Though most scientists and philosophers would admit their great importance, there has been very little serious study of them. This volume is the first book-length investigation of thought experiments. Starting with Galileo's argument on falling bodies, Brown describes numerous examples of the most influential thought experiments from the history of science. Following this introduction to the subject, some substantial and provocative claims are made, the principle being that some thought experiments should be understood in the same way that platonists understand mathematical activity: as an intellectual grasp of an independently existing abstract realm. With its clarity of style and structure, The Laboratory of the Mind will find readers among all philosophers of science as well as scientists who have puzzled over how thought experiments work.

A Place for Consciousness

A Place for Consciousness
Author: Gregg Rosenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2004-11-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0195168143

"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.

Natural History of the Mind

Natural History of the Mind
Author: William R. Sickles
Publisher: Nova Publishers
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1997
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781560725169

This book is a simple explanation of how the mind evolved. One of the many interesting facts emerging from this study is that vision appeared long before there was any brain of significance. Perception therefore had to be direct awareness of forms, patterning, smells, and so on. Survival depended on sensory input being an immediate representation of reality. The world as seen could not have been something pieced together and mulled over in a brain which didn't exist. Memory and learning are said to occur at a molecular level for much the same reasons. Today's social insects exhibit enormously complex behaviour, yet their brains are microscopic. All such facts, gleaned from both the past and present, have a major impact upon theories about how our own minds operate.

Society Of Mind

Society Of Mind
Author: Marvin Minsky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1988-03-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0671657135

Computing Methodologies -- Artificial Intelligence.

Mind Over Medicine

Mind Over Medicine
Author: Lissa Rankin
Publisher: Hay House
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1401939996

Presents evidence from medical journals that beliefs, thoughts, and feelings can cure the body and shows readers how to apply this knowledge in their own lives. -- provided by publisher.

Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP

Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP
Author: Ingo Swann
Publisher: Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-09-02
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1949214389

In this milestone book, Ingo Swann guides the reader through revolutionary techniques he developed and tested in thousands of experiments, with startling results, for tapping ESP potential. His exciting new concepts of “mind mound,” “mind manifestation,” and the “ESP core” help readers demystify ESP and link this important inner reality to what is already known about dreams, memory, quantum physics, and human creativity. Swann shows how to become more receptive to the “deeper self” and make contact with the hidden reality in which ESP operates.

The Natural Openness and Freedom of the Mind

The Natural Openness and Freedom of the Mind
Author: Khangsar Tenpa'i Wangchuk
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0834845695

This second volume of the collected works of the modern Tibetan master Khangsar Tenpa’i Wangchuk is the root text and commentary on the Dzogchen tantra called The Natural Openness and Freedom of the Mind, a verse text on the direct practices to realize the nature of mind taught within the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. This is a modern commentary on a Dzogchen tantra titled The Natural Freedom and Openness of the Mind, covering the practices of trekcho, thogal, and bardo. This tantra is a mind terma, or treasure, of the early modern terton, or treasure revealer, Deshek Lingpa (1842–1907), and incarnation of Yudra Nyingpo, a student of Yeshe Tsogyal, preeminent female consort of Padmasambhava, through whom the transmission lineage of this teaching is said to descend. The commentary presents the approach to enlightenment taught in this tradition. These instructions are considered advanced and secret, to be taught only to those who have received transmission from a qualified master. For the curious reader outside of the tradition, this book offers a clear and concise introduction to way the Nyingma tradition frames Buddhist cosmology, mind, liberation, and prayer.

The Mind in Nature

The Mind in Nature
Author: C. B. Martin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2010-05-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191614602

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical. C. B. Martin, an original and influential exponent of 'ontologically serious' metaphysics, echoes Locke's dictum that 'all things that exist are only particulars', and argues that properties are powerful qualities. He also spells out the implications of this view for philosophical conceptions of causation, intentionality, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Martin emphasizes the importance of non-conscious 'vegetative' systems, which provide clear examples of intentionality in the form of representational use. The slide from representational use to consciousness involves a change in the material of use, but not the form of representation. A concluding chapter provides an argument for the view that an ontology of particular substances and properties leads ineluctably to monism: the bus we board with Locke takes us directly to the world of Spinoza and Einstein. Along the way, we are led to understand the nature of minds and conscious states of mind in a way that avoids both reductionism (the idea that mental is reducible to the non-mental) and dualism (the idea that mental substances or properties differ dramatically from physical substances and properties).