The Constitution of Visual Consciousness

The Constitution of Visual Consciousness
Author: Steven M. Miller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9027271828

This volume examines the neuroscience of visual consciousness, drawing on the phenomenon of binocular rivalry. It provides overviews of brain structure and function, the visual system, and neuroscientific methodologies, and then focuses on binocular rivalry from multiple perspectives: historical, psychophysical, electrophysiological, brain-imaging, brain stimulation, clinical and computational, with a glimpse also into the future of research in this exciting field. This is the first collected volume on binocular rivalry in nearly a decade and will be of special interest to researchers, scholars and students in the vision sciences, and more broadly in the psychological and clinical sciences. In addition, it lays foundations for a forthcoming interdisciplinary volume in this series on the constitution of phenomenal consciousness, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the science and philosophy of consciousness.

The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness

The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness
Author: Steven M. Miller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9027268789

Philosophers of mind have been arguing for decades about the nature of phenomenal consciousness and the relation between brain and mind. More recently, neuroscientists and philosophers of science have entered the discussion. Which neural activities in the brain constitute phenomenal consciousness, and how could science distinguish the neural correlates of consciousness from its neural constitution? At what level of neural activity is consciousness constituted in the brain and what might be learned from well-studied phenomena like binocular rivalry, attention, memory, affect, pain, dreams and coma? What should the science of consciousness want to know and what should explanation look like in this field? How should the constitution relation be applied to brain and mind and are other relations like identity, supervenience, realization, emergence and causation preferable? Building on a companion volume on the constitution of visual consciousness (AiCR 90), this volume addresses these questions and related empirical and conceptual territory. It brings together, for the first time, scientists and philosophers to discuss this engaging interdisciplinary topic.

The Constitution of Visual Consciousness

The Constitution of Visual Consciousness
Author: Steven M. Miller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2013
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9789027213570

Binocular rivalry is often considered an experimental window on the neural processes of consciousness. We propose three distinct approaches to exploit this window. First, one may look through the window, using binocular rivalry as a passive tool to dissociate unaltered sensory input from wavering perceptual output. Second, the mechanisms underlying binocular rivalry may yield detailed knowledge of the neuronal underpinnings of binocular vision and increase the value of rivalry as a tool to study consciousness. Finally, smart experimental manipulations allow experimenters to 'reach through the window' and interact with mechanisms of conscious visual perception. Within this distinction, we discuss the major open questions in binocular rivalry research and examine how recent technological developments may be incorporated in future studies...

Consciousness and Physicalism

Consciousness and Physicalism
Author: Andreas Elpidorou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317402073

Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of a Research Program explores the nature of consciousness and its place in the world, offering a revisionist account of what it means to say that consciousness is nothing over and above the physical. By synthesizing work in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science from the last twenty years and forging a dialogue with contemporary research in the empirical sciences of the mind, Andreas Elpidorou and Guy Dove advance and defend a novel formulation of physicalism. Although physicalism has been traditionally understood to be a metaphysical thesis, Elpidorou and Dove argue that there is an alternative and indeed preferable understanding of physicalism that both renders physicalism a scientifically informed explanatory project and allows us to make important progress in addressing the ontological problem of consciousness. Physicalism, Elpidorou and Dove hold, is best viewed not as a thesis (metaphysical or otherwise) but as an interdisciplinary research program that aims to compositionally explain all natural phenomena that are central to our understanding of our place in nature. Consciousness and Physicalism is replete with philosophical arguments and informed, through and through, by findings in many areas of scientific research. It advances the debate regarding the ontological status of consciousness. It will interest students and scholars in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of science. And it will challenge both foes and friends of physicalism.

Beyond the simple contrastive analysis: Appropriate experimental approaches for unraveling the neural basis of conscious experience

Beyond the simple contrastive analysis: Appropriate experimental approaches for unraveling the neural basis of conscious experience
Author: Jaan Aru
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: Consciousness
ISBN: 2889195473

Contrasting conditions with and without conscious experience has served consciousness research well. However, research based on this simple contrast has led to controversies about the neural basis of conscious experience. One key reason for these ongoing debates seems to be that the simple contrast between conditions with and without consciousness is not specific for unraveling the neural basis of conscious experience, but rather also leads to other processes that precede or follow it. Acknowledging this methodological problem implies that some of the previous research findings about the neural underpinnings of conscious experience are actually reflecting the prerequisites and consequences rather than the direct correlates of conscious perception. Thus, it is required to re-evaluate the previous results to find out which of them are telling us anything about the neural basis of consciousness. But first and foremost, to overcome this methodological problem we need new experimental paradigms that go beyond the simple contrastive analysis or find the ways how some older but well forgotten paradigms may foster a new look at this emerging problem. Accordingly, this research topic is looking for empirical and theoretical contributions that: 1) envision new and suitable experimental approaches to study consciousness that are free from the limitations of the simple contrastive analysis; 2) provide empirical data that help to separate the neural correlates of conscious experience from the prerequisites and consequences of it; 3) help to re-assess previous research findings about the neural correlates of conscious perception in the light of the methodological problems with the traditional contrastive analysis. We hope that the theoretical insights and experimental approaches collected within this Research Topic help us to gain a more refined understanding of the neural basis of conscious experience.

Vision and Mind

Vision and Mind
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2002-10-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780262640473

The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems—What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of perceptual experience into a broader account of the nature of the mind and the world?—are at the heart of metaphysics. Rather than try to cover all of the many strands in the philosophy of perception, this book focuses on a particular orthodoxy about the nature of visual perception. The central problem for visual science has been to explain how the brain bridges the gap between what is given to the visual system and what is actually experienced by the perceiver. The orthodox view of perception is that it is a process whereby the brain, or a dedicated subsystem of the brain, builds up representations of relevant figures of the environment on the basis of information encoded by the sensory receptors. Most adherents of the orthodox view also believe that for every conscious perceptual state of the subject, there is a particular set of neurons whose activities are sufficient for the occurrence of that state. Some of the essays in this book defend the orthodoxy; most criticize it; and some propose alternatives to it. Many of the essays are classics. Contributors G.E.M. Anscombe, Dana Ballard, Daniel Dennett, Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, H.P. Grice, David Marr, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Zenon Pylyshyn, Paul Snowdon, and P.F. Strawson

The Neurology of Consciousness

The Neurology of Consciousness
Author: Steven Laureys
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2015-08-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0128011750

The second edition of The Neurology of Consciousness is a comprehensive update of this ground-breaking work on human consciousness, the first book in this area to summarize the neuroanatomical and functional underpinnings of consciousness by emphasizing a lesional approach offered by the study of neurological patients. Since the publication of the first edition in 2009, new methodologies have made consciousness much more accessible scientifically, and, in particular, the study of disorders, disruptions, and disturbances of consciousness has added tremendously to our understanding of the biological basis of human consciousness. The publication of a new edition is both critical and timely for continued understanding of the field of consciousness. In this critical and timely update, revised and new contributions by internationally renowned researchers—edited by the leaders in the field of consciousness research—provide a unique and comprehensive focus on human consciousness. The new edition of The Neurobiology of Consciousness will continue to be an indispensable resource for researchers and students working on the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness and related disorders, as well as for neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists contemplating consciousness as one of the philosophical, ethical, sociological, political, and religious questions of our time. - New chapters on the neuroanatomical basis of consciousness and short-term memory, and expanded coverage of comas and neuroethics, including the ethics of brain death - The first comprehensive, authoritative collection to describe disorders of consciousness and how they are used to study and understand the neural correlates of conscious perception in humans. - Includes both revised and new chapters from the top international researchers in the field, including Christof Koch, Marcus Raichle, Nicholas Schiff, Joseph Fins, and Michael Gazzaniga

Microgenetic Approach to the Conscious Mind

Microgenetic Approach to the Conscious Mind
Author: Talis Bachmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2000-11-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9027299897

Many secrets of nature have been discovered since we have a better understanding of microstructures, for example subatomic spheres in physics and genetic structures in biochemistry. This book is set to convey an overview of the history, methods, findings and theoretical accounts of microgenetic research in consciousness and experimental psychology. The reader will find information about how conscious percepts unfold within only a fraction of a second. In a sense, and according to the microgenetic hypothesis, our subjectively experienced perceptual image undergoes formation similar to the process of developing a photograph. Yet the time scale of the awareness-related perceptual development is much finer and therefore accessible only to observation armed with special experimental procedures that are exposed in this book. In addition, the author presents empirical findings and theoretical interpretations from his own lab. Professor Talis Bachmann has been active in microgenetic research on attention, perception and consciousness for more than 25 years. (Series B)

Transitions Between Consciousness and Unconsciousness

Transitions Between Consciousness and Unconsciousness
Author: Guido Hesselmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0429891504

The empirical study of consciousness is in constant progress. New ideas and approaches arise, methods are being debated and refined, and experimental research over the last two decades has produced a rich body of data, acquired in the aim to better understand consciousness and its neural underpinnings. This volume synthesises this data, focusing on how to understand the relations and transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness alongside exploring and distinguishing conscious experience of sensory stimuli and unconscious states. Bringing together leading academics and promising young scientists from across the fields of psychology and neuroscience, Transitions between Consciousness and Unconsciousness discusses controversial topics and ideas, providing an overview of current research trends and opinions, as well as perspectives on theoretical and methodological questions. This is an essential volume for consciousness researchers and students from across psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, as well as those researching modes of visual processing.

Arts of Allusion

Arts of Allusion
Author: Margaret S. Graves
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190695927

The art of the object reached unparalleled heights in the medieval Islamic world, yet the intellectual dimensions of ceramics, metalwares, and other plastic arts in this milieu have not always been acknowledged. Arts of Allusion reveals the object as a crucial site where pre-modern craftsmen of the eastern Mediterranean and Persianate realms engaged in fertile dialogue with poetry, literature, painting, and, perhaps most strikingly, architecture. Lanterns fashioned after miniature shrines, incense burners in the form of domed monuments, earthenware jars articulated with arches and windows, inkwells that allude to tents: through close studies of objects from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, this book reveals that allusions to architecture abound across media in the portable arts of the medieval Islamic world. Arts of Allusion draws upon a broad range of material evidence as well as medieval texts to locate its subjects in a cultural landscape where the material, visual, and verbal realms were intertwined. Moving far beyond the initial identification of architectural types with their miniature counterparts in the plastic arts, Margaret Graves develops a series of new frameworks for exploring the intelligent art of the allusive object. These address materiality, representation, and perception, and examine contemporary literary and poetic paradigms of metaphor, description, and indirect reference as tools for approaching the plastic arts. Arguing for the role of the intellect in the applied arts and for the communicative potential of ornament, Arts of Allusion asserts the reinstatement of craftsmanship into Islamic intellectual history.