Ten Problems of Consciousness

Ten Problems of Consciousness
Author: Michael Tye
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1997-01-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262700641

Can neurophysiology ever reveal to us what it is like to smell a skunk or to experience pain? In what does the feeling of happiness consist? How is it that changes in the white and gray matter composing our brains generate subjective sensations and feelings? These are several of the questions that Michael Tye addresses, while formulating a new and enlightening theory about the phenomenal "what it feels like" aspect of consciousness. The test of any such theory, according to Tye, lies in how well it handles ten critical problems of consciousness. Tye argues that all experiences and all feelings represent things, and that their phenomenal aspects are to be understood in terms of what they represent. He develops this representational approach to consciousness in detail with great ingenuity and originality. In the book's first part Tye lays out the domain, the ten problems and an associated paradox, along with all the theories currently available and the difficulties they face. In part two, he develops his intentionalist approach to consciousness. Special summaries are provided in boxes and the ten problems are illustrated with cartoons. A Bradford Book Representation and Mind series

Consciousness, Color, and Content

Consciousness, Color, and Content
Author: Michael Tye
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262700887

A further development of Tye's theory of phenomenal consciousness along with replies to common objections.

Tense Bees and Shell-shocked Crabs

Tense Bees and Shell-shocked Crabs
Author: Michael Tye
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190278013

What is it like 'on the inside' for nonhuman animals? Do they feel anything? Most people happily accept that dogs, for example, share many experiences and feelings with us. But what about simpler creatures? Fish? Honeybees? Crabs? Turning to the artificial realm, what about robots? This book presents answers to these questions.

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

Consciousness and the Social Brain

Consciousness and the Social Brain
Author: Michael S. A. Graziano
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0199928657

What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.

Being You

Being You
Author: Anil Seth
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1524742880

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of 2021—Bloomberg Businessweek; A Best Science Book of 2021—The Guardian; A Best Science Book of 2021—Financial Times; A Best Philosophy Book of 2021—Five Books; A Best Book of 2021—The Economist Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science. What does it mean to “be you”—that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood. Now, internationally renowned neuroscience professor, researcher, and author Anil Seth is offers a window into our consciousness in BEING YOU: A New Science of Consciousness. Anil Seth is both a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness and one of most prominent spokespeople for this relatively new field of science. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness. Seth has been interviewed for documentaries aired on the BBC, Netflix, and Amazon and podcasts by Sam Harris, Russell Brand, and Chris Anderson, and his 2017 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed over 11 million times, a testament to his uncanny ability to make unimaginably complex science accessible and entertaining.

Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained
Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 705
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0316439487

Daniel Dennett's "brilliant" exploration of human consciousness — named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times — is a masterpiece beloved by both scientific experts and general readers (New York Times Book Review). Consciousness Explained is a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life — of people, animal, even robots — are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book. "Dennett is a witty and gifted scientific raconteur, and the book is full of fascinating information about humans, animals, and machines. The result is highly digestible and a useful tour of the field." —Wall Street Journal

Subjective Consciousness

Subjective Consciousness
Author: Uriah Kriegel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2009-08-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199570353

Uriah Kriegel develops an objective theory of what it is for a mental state to be conscious. The key idea is that consciousness arises when self-awareness and world-awareness are integrated in the right way. Conscious mental states differ from unconscious ones in that, whatever else they represent, they represent themselves in a very specific way.

Consciousness

Consciousness
Author: Christopher S. Hill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2009-10-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 052111022X

This book identifies all of the main forms of consciousness and proposes an account of each of them.

Toward a Science of Consciousness

Toward a Science of Consciousness
Author: Stuart R. Hameroff
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 820
Release: 1996
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780262082495

This text originates from the second of two conferences discussing the concept of consciousness. In 15 sections, this book demonstrates the broad range of fields now focusing on consciousness.