Philosophy Consciousness

Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over 30 years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

Every year, we are given a fixed number of days. Some days pass us by without leaving a trace and some days we remember forever. Do you remember your first kiss? Or how the first rays of the spring sun feel? Or how about the best meal you ever had? These memorable experiences are characterised by intensity of perception, depth of feeling or sense of profound significance causing them to stand out in our mind and involve a heightened sense of wonder and awe.

In Then I Am Myself the World, Christof Koch explores the only thing we directly experience: consciousness. At the book's heart is integrated-information theory, the idea that the essence of consciousness is the ability to exert causal power over itself, to be an agent of change. Koch investigates the physical origins of consciousness in the brain and how this knowledge can be used to measure consciousness in natural and artificial systems.

It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.

In our fast-paced society, we often overlook the needs of our inner selves. This best selling guide shows how to add depth, meaning, and spirituality to your life by nurturing the spirit. By teaching you how to sense the sacredness of everyday things, it will help you solve emotional problems, ease frustration, and gain new perspectives on what living means.

In Brainwashing, Kathleen Taylor brings the worlds of neuroscience and social psychology together for the first time. In elegant and accessible prose, and with abundant use of anecdotes and case-studies, she examines the ethical problems involved in carrying out the required experiments on humans, the limitations of animal models, and the frightening implications of such research. She also explores the history of thought-control and reveals how it persists all around us, from marketing and television to politics and education.

Drawing on the wisdom of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and others, Nancy Sherman's Stoic Wisdom presents a compelling modern Stoicism that teaches grit, resilience, and the importance of close relationships in addressing life's biggest and smallest challenges.

In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?

Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra", beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved.

Do you occasionally have that strange feeling known as déjà vu? Do you sometimes feel that you know what is going to happen next? Do you ever have a strong feeling that actions you are about to take are the right (or wrong) thing to do? This audiobook proposes a simply amazing theory - a theory that states that personal death is a scientific impossibility. Using the latest findings of neurology, quantum physics, and consciousness studies, Anthony Peake suggests that we never die.

Merging Taoist philosophy, Hindu principles, and Confucianism along with scientific findings, Jason Gregory outlines the practice of wu-wei as a vehicle to realize our innate freedom, revealing that when we release our ego and allow life to unfold as it will, we align ourselves more closely with our goals and cultivate skill and mastery along the way. Equating "being in the zone" with a stillness of the mind, Gregory shares meditation practices coupled with yoga exercises from Patanjali that allow you to approach life with a mastery of acceptance.

With a unique combination of ancient and contemporary wisdom from Tibetan Buddhism, The Diamond Cutter presents readers with empowering strategies for success in their personal and professional lives.

Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers. Philosopher David J. Chalmers offers a cogent analysis of this heated debate as he unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.

Daniel C. Dennett—preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist—has spent his career creating the basis for a naturalistic account of consciousness with acumen and elegance. I’ve Been Thinking traces the development of Dennett’s own intellect and instructs us how we too can become good thinkers. Dennett’s restless curiosity leads him from his childhood in Beirut to Harvard, and from Parisian jazz clubs to “tillosophy” on his tractor in Maine. Along the way, he reveals the breakthroughs and misjudgments that shaped his paradigm-shifting philosophies.

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bio-electrical activity in the brain? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book - part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation - describes Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness.

From the vantage point of his eighth decade, Klein revisits the wisdom he relished in his youth with this collection of philosophical gems, adding new ones that strike chords with him at the end of his life. From Epicurus to Emerson and Camus to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr - whose words provided the title of this audiobook - each pithy extract is annotated with Klein's inimitable charm and insights.

Matter and Memory, (Matière et Mémoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century.

stonishingly irrational ideas are spreading. Covid denial persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Anti-vaxxers compromise public health. Conspiracy thinking hijacks minds and incites mob violence. Toxic partisanship is cleaving nations, and climate denial has pushed our planet to the brink. Meanwhile, American Nazis march openly in the streets, and Flat Earth theory is back. What the heck is going on? Why is all this happening, and why now? More important, what can we do about it?