Author: Adrian David Nelson Publisher: Lulu.com ISBN: 1329298772 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 222
Book Description
In recent years science and philosophy have seen a resurgence of open-mindedness toward deeper views of consciousness. This book explores ideas and evidence now changing the way scientists and philosophers approach the place of consciousness in the universe. From the frontiers of modern physics and cosmology to controversial experiments exploring telepathy and mind-matter interaction, the emerging view promises to change how we understand our place in the universe, our relationship to other life, and the nature of reality itself.
Author: Julian Jaynes Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 0547527543 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 580
Book Description
National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Author: Todd E. Feinberg Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262534606 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 387
Book Description
How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.
Author: James B. Glattfelder Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3030036332 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 662
Book Description
This open access book chronicles the rise of a new scientific paradigm offering novel insights into the age-old enigmas of existence. Over 300 years ago, the human mind discovered the machine code of reality: mathematics. By utilizing abstract thought systems, humans began to decode the workings of the cosmos. From this understanding, the current scientific paradigm emerged, ultimately discovering the gift of technology. Today, however, our island of knowledge is surrounded by ever longer shores of ignorance. Science appears to have hit a dead end when confronted with the nature of reality and consciousness. In this fascinating and accessible volume, James Glattfelder explores a radical paradigm shift uncovering the ontology of reality. It is found to be information-theoretic and participatory, yielding a computational and programmable universe.
Author: W. H. Sparks Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 1462031676 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
This study identifies the structures and processes that create consciousness and the conscious experience. The expression of perceptions, memories, dreams, and emotions develop and are enhanced in intrafusal muscle spindles. These expressions, in many cases, are common to us all. We experience the environment as reality in the form of sensations: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, to use the common and traditional identifications. Consciousness is experienced in the intrafusal muscle spindles. The fundamental purpose of the spindles is to control the muscular system. The process of control is the detection of the energy by a second set of receptors, the spindle receptors. The second set of receptors is critical to an explanation of the theory and serves to explain what heretofore has been the unknown factor in conscious experience: the experience of consciousness. The spindle receptor detection is analogous to the detection of the environment by sensory receptors. The difference, of course, is that we are the intrafusal spindles detected by the spindle receptors. It is the efferent impulse activity from the congenitally and experientially configured synaptic activity that enhances the energies developed in the spindles as experience. This process is necessary for the experience of consciousness and the effective control of behavior. For centuries, man has reflected upon the conscious nature of the human species. The Nature of Experience offers a new perspective on this eternal question.
Author: Gary Lachman Publisher: SteinerBooks ISBN: 9781584200116 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 356
Book Description
For the last four centuries, science has tried to account for everything in terms of atoms and molecules and the physical laws they adhere to. Recently, this effort was extended to try to include the inner world of human beings. Gary Lachman argues that this view of consciousness is misguided and unfounded. He points to another approach to the study and exploration of consciousness that erupted into public awareness in the late 1800s. In this "secret history of consciousness," consciousness is seen not as a result of neurons and molecules, but as responsible for them; meaning is not imported from the outer world, but rather creates it. In this view, consciousness is a living, evolving presence whose development can be traced through different historical periods, and which evolves along a path to a broader, more expansive state. What that consciousness may be like and how it may be achieved is a major concern of this book . Lachman concentrates on the period since the late 1800s, when Madame Blavatsky first brought the secret history out into the open. As this history unfolds, we encounter the ideas of many modern thinkers, from esotericists like P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, and Colin Wilson to more mainstream philosophers like Henri Bergson, William James, Owen Barfield and the psychologist Andreas Mavromatis. Two little known but important thinkers play a major role in his synthesis--Jurij Moskvitin, who showed how our consciousness relates to the mechanisms of perception and to the external world, and Jean Gebser, who presented perhaps the most impressive case for the evolution of consciousness. An important contribution to the study of consciousness ... a must-read. Contents: Foreword by Colin Wilson Introduction: Consciousness Explained The Search for Cosmic Consciousness Esoteric Evolution The Archaeology of Consciousness Participatory Epistemology The Presence of Origin Last Words: Playing for Time Selected Bibliography "A marvelously exhilarating gallop through every important modern theory of consciousness, from Steiner to Maslow, from Bucke's 'cosmic consciousness' to Gebser's 'integral consciousness.'"--Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider and Access to Inner Worlds "Opens up vast vistas of possibility, suggesting that what we experience as the earth may, in itself, be inseparable from our state of mind, and that the evolution of human consciousness may be as fundamental a process as our development through genetics. A must-read for those seeking an escape from our contemporary culture's cul-de-sac."--Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open the Head "Thinking outside the box, Lachman challenges many contemporary theories by reinserting a sense of the spiritual back into the discussion. Profoundly erudite, yet easy to read, this book is a provocative mind-stretcher."--Leonard Shlain author of Art & Physics, Alphabet versus the Goddess, and Sex, Time & Power.
Author: Erich Neumann Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136302085 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 454
Book Description
The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right. In this influential book, Neumann shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence, the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness. Featuring a foreword by Jung, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and enduring work.
Author: Mark Rowlands Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 113943098X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
In The Nature of Consciousness, Mark Rowlands develops an innovative account of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, one that has significant consequences for attempts to find a place for it in the natural order. The most significant feature of consciousness is its dual nature: consciousness can be both the directing of awareness and that upon which awareness is directed. Rowlands offers a clear and philosophically insightful discussion of the main positions in this fast-moving debate, and argues that the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience are aspects that exist only in the directing of experience towards non-phenomenal objects, a theory that undermines reductive attempts to explain consciousness in terms of what is not conscious. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the philosophy of mind and language, psychology and cognitive science.
Author: Claus Janew Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
What if our consciousness were not just a passive observer, but an active participant in creating the very fabric of reality? Claus Janew presents a thought-provoking synthesis of systems theory, esoteric wisdom, and philosophical insight, painting a picture of reality in which every conscious being plays a crucial role. Dive deep into the concept of the "reality funnel," a dynamic interface where our individual choices and perceptions intertwine to shape the collective tapestry of existence. Discover how the apparent solidity of the physical world emerges from an ocean of potentiality, and how our thoughts, emotions, and actions ripple through space and time, influencing the unfolding of All That Is. Blending the mystical with the scientific, the personal with the universal, this book offers a framework for understanding consciousness that transcends the boundaries of traditional paradigms. It invites you to embrace your role as a co-creator of reality and to awaken to the awesome possibilities that lie at the core of your being. Whether you're a seeker of spiritual growth, a student of the nature of reality, or simply curious about the deeper mysteries of existence, How Consciousness Creates Reality will transform your understanding of yourself and your place in the cosmos.
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Author: Adrian David Nelson
Author: Julian Jaynes
Author: Todd E. Feinberg
Author: James B. Glattfelder
Author: Graham Little
Author: W. H. Sparks
Author: Gary Lachman
Author: Erich Neumann
Author: Mark Rowlands
Author: Claus Janew