Advances in Consciousness Research
January 22, 2004
During the last decade, the study of emotional self-regulation has blossomed in a variety of sub-disciplines belonging to either psychology (developmental, clinical) or the neurosciences (cognitive and affective). Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain gives an overview of the current state of this relatively new scientific field. Several areas are examined by some of the...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 30, 2003
Paula Droege
A major obstacle for materialist theories of the mind is the problem of sensory consciousness. How could a physical brain produce conscious sensory states that exhibit the rich and luxurious qualities of red velvet, a Mozart concerto or fresh-brewed coffee? Caging the Beast: A Theory of Sensory Consciousness offers to explain what these conscious sensory states have in common, by virtue of...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 28, 2003
Gordon G. Globus
Quantum Closures and Disclosures thinks together two seemingly irreconcilable discourses: An application of quantum field theory to brain functioning, called quantum brain dynamics, and the continental postphenomenological tradition, especially the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. Underlying both developments is a new ontology of nonCartesian dual modes whose rich provenance is...
Advances in Consciousness Research
January 30, 2003
Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience make possible an understanding of the neural events that are associated with different forms of consciousness. To fully understand and unveil the mystery of consciousness inside the brain we require examination of the concept of neural basis of conscious mind. This book provides a systematic exploration of consciousness and gives an overview of neural...
Advances in Consciousness Research
May 23, 2002
George Mandler
This integrated approach to the psychology of consciousness arises out of Mandler’s 1975 paper that was seminal in starting the current flood of interest in consciousness. The book starts with this paper, followed by a novel psychological/evolutionary theoretical discussion of consciousness, and then a historically oriented presentation of relevant functions of consciousness, from memory to...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 8, 2002
A collection of stimulating studies on the past, the present, and the future of consciousness, Consciousness Evolving contributes to understanding some of the most important conceptual problems of our time. The advent of the modern synthesis together with the human genome project affords a platform for considering what it is that makes humans distinctive. Beginning with an essay that accents...
Advances in Consciousness Research
December 14, 2001
It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected...
Advances in Consciousness Research
December 12, 2001
Rich in precursors (Kant and Frege) and stimulated by Castañeda’s study in the logic of self-consciousness and Shoemaker’s seminal paper ‘Self-reference and self-awareness’, the work of the past thirty-five years on self-reference and self-awareness has generated a wealth of deep, sophisticated philosophy. This volume explores the historical anticipations in Kant and Frege, brings four classic...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 12, 2001
Giuseppe Vitiello
This introduction to the dissipative quantum model of brain and to its possible implications for consciousness studies is addressed to a broad interdisciplinary audience. Memory and consciousness are approached from the physicist point of view focusing on the basic observation that the brain is an open system continuously interacting with its environment. The unavoidable dissipative character...
Advances in Consciousness Research
May 15, 2001
How does the brain go about the business of being conscious? Though we cannot yet provide a complete answer, this book explains what is now known about the neural basis of human consciousness. The last decade has witnessed the dawn of an exciting new era of cognitive neuroscience. For example, combination of new imaging technologies and experimental study of attention has linked brain activity...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Evan Harris Walker
4 citations
Consciousness comes out of quantum mechanics — from the presence of tunneling in the brain, and from state vector collapse brought on by the brain’s comparison loops. This fact is tied to the machinery of the MSE — the modified Schrödinger equation. This understanding of consciousness also lets us resolve problems in neurophysiology and even in physics — the resolution of the disparity that has...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Philip Van Loocke
We consider systems in which forces and selection (or ‘reduction’) procedures cooperate to determine present states. Forces work on the immediate past of a system and determine a set of possible states. Selection works in the immediate future and selects one of these states as the actual state of the system. Selection can be constrained in terms of a criterion not reducible to the forces...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
The Physical Nature of Consciousness contains twelve chapters that discuss recent and new perspectives on the relation between modern physics and consciousness. Stuart Hameroff opens with an extended and updated exposition of the Penrose/Hameroff Orch-OR model, and subsequently addresses recent criticisms of quantum approaches to the brain. Evan Walker presents his view on consciousness from...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Chris Clarke
An example is presented of a model of consciousness based on a description of the world which integrates the material and psychological aspects from the start. An indication is given of work under way to test the model.
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Gordon G. Globus
I “think together” quantum brain dynamics (QBD) and postmodernism (appropriated to include Heidegger). In particular, the world thrownness of Heidegger, the sovereignty of Bataille and the differance of Derrida can be talked about in terms of QBD. This effects a rapprochement between the QBD revolution against classical neural network brain theory and the postmodern revolution against modernity...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Matti Pitkänen
Topological Geometro-Dynamics (TGD) is a unified theory of fundamental interactions. TGD involves a quite far-reaching generalization of the space–time concept and, apart from the notion of quantum jump, reduces quantum theory to infinite-dimensional geometry. General coordinate invariance forces the identification of the quantum states as quantum histories rather than time-constant snapshots...
Advances in Consciousness Research
April 12, 2001
Stuart Hameroff
Quantum approaches have enormous explanatory power for understanding enigmatic features of consciousness. The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orch OR’ model involves quantum superposition/computation in microtubules within the brain’s neurons. As technological quantum processes require extreme cold and isolation to avoid thermal decoherence, conventional wisdom holds against biological quantum processes in...
Advances in Consciousness Research
November 29, 2000
46 citations
How can one investigate phenomenal consciousness? As in other areas of science, the investigation of consciousness aims for a more precise knowledge of its phenomena, and the discovery of general truths about their nature. This requires the development of appropriate first-person, second-person and third-person methods. This book introduces some of the creative ways in which these methods can...
Advances in Consciousness Research
November 14, 2000
Analysis and dissociation have proved to be useful tools to understand the basic functions of the brain and the mind, which therefore have been decomposed to a multitude of ever smaller subsystems and pieces by most scientific approaches. However, the understanding of complex functions such as consciousness will not succeed without a more global consideration of the ways the mind-brain works....
Advances in Consciousness Research
November 14, 2000
Bill Faw
This paper examines some nervous system mechanisms involved in consciousness, motivation, and emotion. We begin with preliminary thoughts on the relationships between various meanings of consciousness: having phenomenal experiences, being aware of objects and situations, and wakefulness. Then we look at a key issue in ‘emotional consciousness,’ specifically whether it is part of basic...
Advances in Consciousness Research
February 15, 2000
Stephen LaBerge, Donald J. Degracia
77 citations
What can we conclude from the above quotations? Certainly nothing regarding the nature of eroticism in the lucid dream state. Rather, they illustrate that the experience of lucid dreaming is subject to individual variation. This should not be surprising, since lucid dreaming, like all forms of conscious experience, is comprised of a flow of subjective events created by brain processes using...
Advances in Consciousness Research
November 15, 1999
The notion of stratification has played an important role in linguistics and evolutionary studies for some time, but its role in cognitive science has not yet been well articulated and identified. What is meant by stratification? What is the role and value of stratification in the contemporary study of cognition and consciousness? This collective volume speaks to these questions. The twelve...
Advances in Consciousness Research
May 15, 1998
Leopold Stubenberg
This is a philosophical study of qualitative consciousness, characteristic examples of which are pains, experienced colors, sounds, etc. Consciousness is analyzed as the having of qualia. Phenomenal properties or qualia are problematical because they lack appropriate bearers. The relation of having is problematical because none of the typical candidates for this relation — introspection, inner...
Advances in Consciousness Research
September 2, 1997
The focus of this collective volume is on the mutual determination of language structure, discourse patterns and the accessibility to consciousness of mental contents of different types of organization and complexity. The contributions address the following problems, among others: the history of the interpretation of ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious’ mind in the theoretical discourse of modern...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 26, 1997
The Reaching for Mind workshop, held at AISB ’95, explicitly addressed itself to the current crisis in Cognitive Science. In particular, the issue of how this discipline can address consciousness was a leitmotiv in the workshop. The conclusion seems inescapable that there is a need for two sciences in this area. Cognitive Science can be freed to become a fully-fledged experimental epistemology...