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Author: Owen Flanagan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262262754
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
A noted philosopher proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to solve the "really hard problem": how to live in a meaningful way—how to live a life that really matters—even as a finite material being living in a material world. If consciousness is "the hard problem" in mind science—explaining how the amazing private world of consciousness emerges from neuronal activity—then "the really hard problem," writes Owen Flanagan in this provocative book, is explaining how meaning is possible in the material world. How can we make sense of the magic and mystery of life naturalistically, without an appeal to the supernatural? How do we say truthful and enchanting things about being human if we accept the fact that we are finite material beings living in a material world, or, in Flanagan's description, short-lived pieces of organized cells and tissue? Flanagan's answer is both naturalistic and enchanting. We all wish to live in a meaningful way, to live a life that really matters, to flourish, to achieve eudaimonia—to be a "happy spirit." Flanagan calls his "empirical-normative" inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing eudaimonics. Eudaimonics, systematic philosophical investigation that is continuous with science, is the naturalist's response to those who say that science has robbed the world of the meaning that fantastical, wishful stories once provided. Flanagan draws on philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, as well as on transformative mindfulness and self-cultivation practices that come from such nontheistic spiritual traditions as Buddhism, Confucianism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, in his quest. He gathers from these disciplines knowledge that will help us understand the nature, causes, and constituents of well-being and advance human flourishing. Eudaimonics can help us find out how to make a difference, how to contribute to the accumulation of good effects—how to live a meaningful life.
Author: Owen Flanagan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262262754
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Get Book
Book Description
A noted philosopher proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to solve the "really hard problem": how to live in a meaningful way—how to live a life that really matters—even as a finite material being living in a material world. If consciousness is "the hard problem" in mind science—explaining how the amazing private world of consciousness emerges from neuronal activity—then "the really hard problem," writes Owen Flanagan in this provocative book, is explaining how meaning is possible in the material world. How can we make sense of the magic and mystery of life naturalistically, without an appeal to the supernatural? How do we say truthful and enchanting things about being human if we accept the fact that we are finite material beings living in a material world, or, in Flanagan's description, short-lived pieces of organized cells and tissue? Flanagan's answer is both naturalistic and enchanting. We all wish to live in a meaningful way, to live a life that really matters, to flourish, to achieve eudaimonia—to be a "happy spirit." Flanagan calls his "empirical-normative" inquiry into the nature, causes, and conditions of human flourishing eudaimonics. Eudaimonics, systematic philosophical investigation that is continuous with science, is the naturalist's response to those who say that science has robbed the world of the meaning that fantastical, wishful stories once provided. Flanagan draws on philosophy, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, as well as on transformative mindfulness and self-cultivation practices that come from such nontheistic spiritual traditions as Buddhism, Confucianism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism, in his quest. He gathers from these disciplines knowledge that will help us understand the nature, causes, and constituents of well-being and advance human flourishing. Eudaimonics can help us find out how to make a difference, how to contribute to the accumulation of good effects—how to live a meaningful life.
Author: Tom Stoppard
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802190502
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
Above all don’t use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science. The Hard Problem is a tour de force, exploring fundamental questions of how we experience the world, as well as telling the moving story of a young woman whose struggle for understanding her own life and the lives of others leads her to question the deeply held beliefs of those around her. Hilary, a young psychology researcher at the Krohl Institute for Brain Science, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question. She and other researchers at the institute are grappling with what science calls the “hard problem”—if there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? What Hilary discovers puts her fundamentally at odds with her colleagues, who include her first mentor and one-time lover, Spike; her boss, Leo; and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.
Author: Adam Kahane
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1442950196
Category : Communication
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
Author: Jonathan Shear
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262692212
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Why doesn't all this cognitive processing go on "in the dark," without any consciousness at all? In this book philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies. At the 1994 landmark conference "Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness", philosopher David Chalmers distinguished between the "easy" problems and the "hard" problem of consciousness research. According to Chalmers, the easy problems are to explain cognitive functions such as discrimination, integration, and the control of behavior; the hard problem is to explain why these functions should be associated with phenomenal experience. Why doesnt all this cognitive processing go on "in the dark", without any consciousness at all? In this book, philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies. Some take issue with Chalmers' distinction, arguing that the hard problem is a non-problem, or that the explanatory gap is too wide to be bridged. Others offer alternative suggestions as to how the problem might be solved, whether through cognitive science, fundamental physics, empirical phenomenology, or with theories that take consciousness as irreducible. Contributors Bernard J. Baars, Douglas J. Bilodeau, David Chalmers, Patricia S. Churchland, Thomas Clark, C. J. S. Clarke, Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Stuart Hameroff, Valerie Hardcastle, David Hodgson, Piet Hut, Christof Koch, Benjamin Libet, E. J. Lowe, Bruce MacLennan, Colin McGinn, Eugene Mills, Kieron OHara, Roger Penrose, Mark C. Price, William S. Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, Tom Scott, William Seager, Jonathan Shear, Roger N. Shepard, Henry Stapp, Francisco J. Varela, Max Velmans, Richard Warner
Author: Jeffrey Alan Gray
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198520900
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
How does conscious experience arise out of the functioning of the human brain? How is it related to the behaviour that it accompanies? How does the perceived world relate to the real world? Between them, these three questions constitute what is commonly known as the Hard Problem of consciousness. Despite vast knowledge of the relationship between brain and behaviour, and rapid advances in our knowledge of how brain activity correlates with conscious experience, the answers to all three questions remain controversial, even mysterious. This important new book analyses these core issues and reviews the evidence from both introspection and experiment. To many its conclusions will be surprising and even unsettling: · The entire perceived world is constructed by the brain. The relationship between the world we perceive and the underlying physical reality is not as close as we might think. · Much of our behaviour is accomplished with little or no participation from conscious experience. · Our conscious experience of our behaviour lags the behaviour itself by around a fifth of a second - we become aware of what we do only after we have done it. · The lag in conscious experience applies also to the decision to act - we only become aware of our decisions after they have been formed. · The self is as much a creation of the brain as is the rest of the perceived world. Written by a leading scientist, this analysis of how conscious experience relates to brain and behaviour is accessible and compelling. It will have major implications for our understanding of human nature.
Author: Paulo J. Negro
Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers
ISBN: 1681087677
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
A Blueprint for the Hard Problem of Consciousness addresses the fundamental mechanism that allows physical events to transcend into subjective experiences, termed the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Consciousness is made available as the abstract product of self-referent realization of information by strange loops through the levels of processing of the brain. Readers are introduced to the concept of the Hard Problem of Consciousness and related concepts followed by a critical discourse of different theories of consciousness. Next, the author identifies the fundamental flaw of the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and proposes an alternative that avoids the cryptic intelligent design and panpsychism of the IIT. This author also demonstrates how something can be created out of nothing without resorting to quantum theory, while pointing out neurobiological alternatives to the bottom-up approach of quantum theories of consciousness. The book then delves into the philosophy of qualia in different physiological knowledge networks (spatial, temporal and olfactory, cortical signals, for example) to explain an action-based model consistent with the generational principles of Predictive Coding, which maps prediction and predictive-error signals for perceptual representations supporting integrated goal-directed behaviors. Conscious experiences are considered the outcome of abstractions realized out of map overlays and provided by sustained oscillatory activity. The key feature of this blueprint is that it offers a perspective of the Hard Problem of Consciousness from the point of view of the subject; the experience of ‘being the subject’ is predicted to be the realization of inference inversely mapped out of hidden causes of global integrated actions. The author explains the consistencies of his blueprint with ideas of the Global Neuronal Workspace and the Adaptive Resonance Theory of consciousness as well as with the empirical evidence supporting the Integrated Information Theory. A Blueprint for the Hard Problem of Consciousness offers a unique perspective to readers interested in the scientific philosophy and cognitive neuroscience theory in relation to models of the theory of consciousness.
Author: Anil Seth
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524742880
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
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.
Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316439487
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
"Brilliant...as audacious as its title....Mr. Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant." --George Johnson, New York Times Book Review Consciousness Explained is a 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.
Author: Nat Greene
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626569878
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
Illustrated with examples ranging from everyday issues to serious problems, this book will help you understand the behaviors that great problem-solvers use to tackle the hardest problems with skill and panache, regardless of the industry or nature of the problem. --
Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524747564
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.
