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Consciousness from a Broad Perspective: A Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Introduction

Consciousness. Background to the Current Debate Introduction Discussion Questions Behaviorism and the Cognitive Revolution Dualism and Physicalism Neuroscience and Philosophy References Plato’s Philosophy Body and Soul Aristotle and Science Aristotle’s World Logic Souls Scholasticism Dualism A New Logic The Method of Doubt Could It All Be a Dream?Problems of Dualism Mind-Body Interaction Freedom Skepticism Solipsism Animal Consciousness The Unconscious The Self Discussion Questions Plato Aristotle Dualism References Philosophy, Science, and the Mind-Body Problem. Responding to Cartesian Dualism Dualism Monism Leibniz’s Idealism Berkeley’s Idealism Hume’s Empiricism Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Discussion Questions References Consciousness as a Scientific Problem. A Brief History of Psychology and Cognitive Science The Science of Psychology Behaviorism The Cognitive Revolution and the Re-emergence of the Mind Information Processing The Brain as a Computer Turing’s Test Turing Machines Searle’s Chinese Room The Background Mind Without Intentionality Computational Neuroscience Discussion Questions Early Psychology Freud Wittgenstein Behaviorism The Cognitive Revolution and Artificial Intelligence References Consciousness Rediscovered. Advances in Neuroscience Functional Neuroanatomy and Biochemistry Brain Activity Non-stop Brain Organization Brain Lobes Frontal Lobe Frontal Lobe Pathologies Psychosurgery of the Frontal Lobes Frontal Lobe Summary Parietal Lobe Parietal Lobe Pathologies Parietal Lobe Summary Occipital Lobe Occipital Lobe Pathologies Occipital lobe summary Temporal Lobe Temporal Lobe Pathologies Temporal Lobe Summary Core Brain Structures Limbic System Limbic System Pathologies Limbic System Summary Basal Ganglia Basal Ganglia Pathologies Basal Ganglia Summary Diencephalon Diencephalon Pathologies Diencephalon Summary Mesencephalon (Midbrain)Metencephalon Myelencephalon (Medulla)Neurons: Communicating Cells Neural Coding Receptive Field Rate Coding Population Coding Grandmother Coding Parallel Processing Redundancy Neural Pathways Neurotransmitters Glutamate Serotonin Dopamine Acetylcholine Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid Epinephrine, Norepinephrine Endorphins and Enkephalins Glia and the Other Brain Brain Imaging Computed Tomography Positron Emission Tomography Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Electroencephalography Magnetoencephalography Neural Correlates of Consciousness Biological Naturalism Causal Emergence of the Conscious Field Free Will Discussion Questions References Consciousness as a Modern Mystery. Can Consciousness be Explained?Approaches to Understanding the Mind Plato Desartes Materialism Idealism Physicalism Behaviorism Functionalism Consciousness as Mysterious Imagine a Causal Explanation of Consciousness Ben the Neuroscientist and the Quest for Consciousness Why Are We Conscious?Consciousness and Blindsight Evolution of Virtual and Conscious Seeing David Chalmers on Consciousness Consciousness as a Fundamental Chalmers’s Theory of Consciousness Psychophysical Parallelism: Structural Coherence Joseph Levine’s Explanatory Gap Tomas Nagel and Being a Bat Mary the Scientist McGinn and Cognitive Closure Mysterian Pluralism Human Cognition Consciousness and Emergence Discussion Questions Introduction Ben the Neuroscientist Consciousness and Blindsight David Chalmers Joseph Levine Thomas Nagel Frank Jackson Colin McGinn References Rethinking Consciousness. Fragmented Views Correlation and Causation Neuroscientific Studies of Vision and Consciousness Illusions of Time and Action Free Will and Action Ordering of Events The Binding Problem Split Brains Ned Block and the Concept of Consciousness Access and Phenomenal Consciousness Bernard Baars’s Global Workspace Model of Consciousness The Theater Model in More Detail Consciousness as Serial Processing in Parallel-Processing Brains Contrastive Analysis Beyond Rethinking Consciousness The New Skeptics Eliminative Materialism Folk Psychology as Theory Folk Psychology and Neurophilosophy Folk Psychology and Unity of Science Reducing Folk Psychology Replacing Folk Psychology with a Neurocomputational Model Vectors and Consciousness The Brain as a Kinetic System Consciousness as Recursive Vector Transformations Consciousness Explained?Information Processing and Consciousness The Problems of Life and Consciousness as Mechanical Problems A Computational View of Consciousness Cartesian Materialism The User Illusion Developmental Consciousness Virtual Machines in the Brain What Lies Behind the User Illusion?Putting the Stream of Consciousness Together Dennett on Subjective Experience Discussion Questions The Visual World as an Illusion Benjamin Libet The Binding Problem Split Brains Ned Block Bernard Baars Paul and Patricia Churchland Daniel Dennett References Externalism and Consciousness. Where Is Consciousness?Internalism Challenged Frege on Meaning Putnam’s Externalism Burge’s Externalism Qualia and Externalism Block’s Inverted Earth In the Head and the World Clark and Chalmers’s Vehicle Externalism Active and Passive Externalism Functionalism and Vehicle Externalism Contingency and Coupling Externalism About Beliefs Cognitive States Across People and Artifacts Externalism and Consciousness Susan Hurley’s Vehicle Externalism of Consciousness Alva Noё Considers Life and Consciousness Consciousness in a Petri Dish Rewiring Visual Systems Phantom Limbs Sensory Substitution Biology of Consciousness?Discussion Questions Introduction Frege and Russell Putnam and Burge Clark and Chalmers Alva Noe Summary Questions References Neurofunctionalism Envirofunctionalism Radicalism Dualism Forms Ontology and the Otherworldly Systems Views Copenhagen Skepticism Technological Ontology Wheeler’s Metaphysics of Information Biological Liberalism References A Conscious Universe. Consciousness East and West Western Subjectivism and Eastern Formlessness The Ego and the Universe Constrained Stories of Western Subjectivism The Focus on Thought in Western Naturalism Naturalism as a Metaphysical Perspective Hume and Kant on the Limits of Naturalism Einstein’s Pragmatic Realism Fundamentally Observers of Our Universe A Pointless Universe as a Reductio ad Absurdum Will of Nature, Will to Power, and Consciousness A Thought Experiment in the Western Intellectual Tradition Imagine Schopenhauer’s Satori Postmodernism and Will to Power Meditative Perspectives and Conditioned States of Mind Faith in Philosophical Materialism A Dialogue on Consciousness Western Subjectivism Researching the Formless References

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A Broad Perspective on the Aestheticization of Religion
The Concept Although we will not go deeply into philosophical and conceptual discussions about aesthetics in this chapter, a working definition is needed. A common-sense definition often identifies the aesthetic with the beautiful, but according to Alexander Baumgarten, who introduced aesthetics as a...
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Definition of the foundations of consciousness from a Buddhist perspective
In The Connected Discourses of the Buddha as translated by Bodhi (2000, p. 602), it is stated: Then, monks, it occurred to me: “When what exists does consciousness come to be? By what is consciousness conditioned?” Then, monks, through careful attention, there took place in me a breakthrough...
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Perspectives on philosophical backgrounds of learning theories
The question of learning is inherently intertwined with the question of knowing. Already the earliest philosophers of our Western culture, the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, disagreed on what knowledge is and how it can be acquired. The question is tied to both ontological issues concerning...
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Philosophical Perspectives
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The Philosophers’ Perspective
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Philosophical Perspectives on Different Kinds of Inequalities
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Psychology of meditation: Philosophical perspectives
Loriliai Biernacki Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung. Keats, “Ode to Melancholy” Introduction...
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