The Conscious Self

Author : Antonio Damasio
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307379493
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Self Comes to Mind written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. Here, in his most ambitious and stunning work yet, he rejects the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, and presents compelling new scientific evidence that posits an evolutionary perspective. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. This development helps to open the way for the appearance of culture, perhaps one of our most defining characteristics as thinking and self-aware beings.

Author : Jessica L. Tracy
Publisher : Guilford Publications
ISBN 13 : 1462515185
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Self-Conscious Emotions written by Jessica L. Tracy and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timely and authoritative, this volume reviews the breadth of current knowledge on the self-conscious emotions and their role in psychological and social functioning. Leading investigators approach the subject from multiple levels of analysis, ranging from basic brain mechanisms to complex social processes. Chapters present compelling advances in research on the most fundamental self-conscious emotions: embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, pride, and shame. Addressed are neural and evolutionary mechanisms, developmental processes, cultural differences and similarities, and influences on a wide array of social behaviors and personality processes. A unique chapter on assessment describes and evaluates the full range of available measures.

Author : Thomas R. Blakeslee
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1489945334
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond the Conscious Mind written by Thomas R. Blakeslee and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nobel Prize-winning work of Roger Sperry revolutionized our understanding of human consciousness by proving that separate thinking and knowledge could exist in the left and right halves of the brain. Now, popular science writer Thomas Blakeslee - author of the highly acclaimed The Right Brain - takes us to a new level of understanding based on the theory of neural Darwinism by Gerald Edelman, another Nobel Prize winner. Blakeslee explains that our neurons spontaneously organize into hundreds of groups called modules that compete to respond to every situation in our lives - from reading this paragraph to falling in love. A vast preponderance of this activity operates outside of our conscious awareness.

Author : Frans Schalkwijk
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317637747
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Conscience and Self-Conscious Emotions in Adolescence written by Frans Schalkwijk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consequences of apparent moral failings in an individual are something that can be seen frequently in the media and in everyday life. One issue that is rarely addressed in public discussion about someone’s ‘lack of conscience’ is any thought as to how the conscience actually functions. In The Conscience and Self-Conscious Emotions in Adolescence, Frans Schalkwijk presents a new definition of the conscience as a psychic function in which self-conscious emotions and empathy are dominant. Schalkwijk combines current scientific research into empathy, shame and guilt as well as his rich clinical experience to create a wealth of information for clinicians working with children and adolescents. This book is a superb guide for operationalizing the diagnostics of the conscience, presenting a developmental approach to the theory and diagnostics of the conscience and integrating psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioural, social, psychological and neurobiological theories. Research has shown that human behaviours are often enacted well below our potential cognitive level. In this book, a balance is found between affective and cognitive aspects of the conscience. Accessibly written and incorporating case studies and detailed notation throughout, this is a highly practical work ideal for psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, students and professionals working with children, adolescents and adults.

Author : David H. Lund
Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Conscious Self written by David H. Lund and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In philosophical work on the nature of the conscious self, the prevailing views are reductionist and materialist-i.e., the conscious self, if considered to be anything more than a remarkably tenacious illusion, is reduced to a collection of experiences strung out over time, experiences that are materialistically understood to be nothing more than physical or functional states of the body. Persons are human bodies, and thus are entirely material beings. Daniel Dennett, for instance, has called the self an abstract Center of Narrative Gravity and Derek Parfit has defended a reductionist view of the self in his book Reasons and Persons.Against such views, philosopher David H. Lund advances a nonmaterialist and nonreductionist interpretation of the self in this rigorously argued work in the philosophy of mind. Using both analytic and phenomenological approaches, Lund meets well-known materialist and reductionist theories of the self head on, providing a comprehensive set of arguments against such theories. Arguing that the conscious self must be accorded the ontological status of a metaphysically basic particular, he first establishes that the unity of consciousness experienced at the present moment reveals the presence of a unitary subject of conscious states. He then shows that the unity of consciousness that extends over time (revealed in the sense of having remained the same person over time despite numerous changes) can be plausibly explained only if the selfsame unitary subject endures through time. Finally, he demonstrates that the subject of conscious states (the conscious self) has modal properties (those reflecting the conditions under which the conscious self might have existed) that no purely material entity could possess.This thorough, erudite, and highly original defense of dualism as a serious philosophical account of consciousness will be of interest to philosophers, cognitive scientists, and anyone with an interest in the perennial riddle of consciousness.David H. Lund (Bemidji, MN), professor of philosophy and former chair of the philosophy department at Bemidji State University, is the author of Making Sense of It All: An Introduction to Philosophical Inquiry; Perception, Mind, and Personal Identity; and Death and Consciousness.

Author : Thomas Metzinger
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262263807
Total Pages : 896 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Being No One written by Thomas Metzinger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-08-20 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.

Author : Eric Marcus
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192845632
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Belief, Inference, and the Self-Conscious Mind written by Eric Marcus and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is impossible to hold patently contradictory beliefs in mind together at once. Why? Because we know that it is impossible for both to be true. This impossibility is a species of rational necessity, a phenomenon that uniquely characterizes the relation between one person's beliefs. Here, Eric Marcus argues that the unity of the rational mind--what makes it one mind--is what explains why, given what we already believe, we can't believe certain things and must believe certain others in this special sense. What explains this is that beliefs, and the inferences by which we acquire them, are constituted by a particular kind of endorsement of those very states and acts. This, in turn, entails that belief and inference are essentially self-conscious: to hold a belief or to make an inference is at the same time to know that one does. An examination of the nature of belief and inference, in light of the phenomenon of rational necessity, reveals how the unity of the rational mind is a function of our knowledge of ourselves as bound to believe the true. Rational self-consciousness is the form of mental togetherness.

Author : Red Hawl
Publisher : SCB Distributors
ISBN 13 : 1935387332
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Self Observation written by Red Hawl and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an in-depth examination of the much needed process of “self” study known as self observation. We live in an age where the “attention function” in the brain has been badly damaged by TV and computers-up to 90 percent of the public under age 35 suffers from attention-deficit disorder! This book offers the most direct, non-pharmaceutical means of healing attention dysfunction. The methods presented here are capable of restoring attention to a fully functional and powerful tool for success in life and relationships. This is also an age when humanity has lost its connection with conscience. When humanity has poisoned the Earth’s atmosphere, water, air and soil, when cancer is in epidemic proportions and is mainly an environmental illness, the author asks: What is the root cause? And he boldly answers: Failure to develop conscience! Selfobservation, he asserts, is the most ancient, scientific, and proven means to develop this crucial inner guide to awakening and a moral life. This book is for the lay-reader, both the beginner and the advanced student of self observation. No other book on the market examines this practice in such detail. There are hundreds of books on self-help and meditation, but almost none on self-study via self-observation, and none with the depth of analysis, wealth of explication, and richness of experience which this book offers. Red Hawk, author of 5 collections of poetry, was the Hodder Fellow at Princeton University (1992-93) and is currently a full professor at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. He has practiced self-observation for over 30 years, under the guidance of the Gurdjieff Society of Arkansas, meditation master Osho Rajneesh, and spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick.

Author : Bruce Hood
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199969892
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Self Illusion written by Bruce Hood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.

Author : Daniel M. Wegner
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262290553
Total Pages : 725 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.