Consciousness and human identity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Consciousness and human identity
Oxford University Press, 1998
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Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
What processes of the brain or the mind can explain the uniquely personal experience we have of smelling a rose, or feeling the pain of toothache, or seeing the point of a newspaper cartoon, or sensing a pang of post-modernist angst in the run up to the Millennium. The phenomenon of human higher-order consciousness - that there is something that it is like for human beings to experience the world - has puzzled philosophers, naturalists and theologians down the ages. Now, somewhat belatedly, consciousness has caught the interest of scientists, some of whom believe they are on the brink of discovering its basis in neurobiological processes. This book, drawing together leading figures from the spheres of science and philosophy, is about the prospects of finding a scientific explanation of consciousness. It also considers how our view of ourselves could be affected by such a scientific explanation. Until recently, the vast complexity of the brain had kept researchers from tackling the thorny topic of consciousness.
Table of Contents
Introduction. 1: Margaret Boden: Consciousness and human identity: an interdisciplinary perspective. 2: John Sealre: How to study consciousness scientifically. 3: Olaf Sporns: Biological variability and brain function. 4: Bernard Balleine and Anthony Dickson: Consciousness: the interface between affect and cognition. 5: Steven Rose: The rise of neurogenetic determinism. 6: W.F. Clocksin: Artificial identity and human identity. 7: Jeremy Butterfield: Quantum curiosities of psychophysics. 8: Mary Midgley: Putting ourselves together again. 9: Fraser Watts: Towards a theology of consciousness. 10: Nicholas Lash: Recovering contingency. 11: Peter Lipton: Binding the mind. Index
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