Understanding Consciousness

✍ Scribed by Max Velmans

• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 321
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The mysteries of consciousness have gripped the human imagination for over 2500 years. At the dawn of the new millennium, this book provides solutions to some of the deepest puzzles surrounding its nature and function. Drawing on recent scientific discoveries, Max Velmans challenges conventional reductionist thought, providing an understanding of how consciousness relates to the brain and physical world that is neither dualist, nor reductionist. The book should be of interest to psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists and other professionals concerned with mind/body relationships, and all who care about this subject.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
List of illustrations......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Mind-body theories and their problems......Page 14
What is consciousness?......Page 16
Is there a conscious soul in the brain?......Page 22
Are mind and matter the same thing?......Page 36
Are mind and consciousness just activities?......Page 61
Could robots be conscious?......Page 86
A new analysis: how to marry science with experience......Page 114
Conscious phenomenology and common sense......Page 116
Experienced worlds, the world described by physics, and the thing itself......Page 152
Subjective, intersubjective and objective science......Page 182
Consciousness, brains and human information processing......Page 206
A new synthesis: reflexive monism......Page 236
What consciousness is......Page 238
What consciousness does......Page 249
Self-consciousness in a reflexive universe......Page 276
References......Page 297
Name index......Page 314
Subject index......Page 318