Author: Thomas Metzinger Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262263807 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 896
Book Description
According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.
Author: Dan Zahavi Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9781556196669 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 316
Book Description
The aim of this volume is to discuss recent research into self-experience and its disorders, and to contribute to a better integration of the different empirical and conceptual perspectives. Among the topics discussed are questions like 'What is a self?, ' 'What is the relation between the self-givenness of consciousness and the givenness of the conscious self?', 'How should we understand the self-disorders encountered in schizophrenia?' and 'What general insights into the nature of the self can pathological phenomena provide us with?' Most of the contributions are characterized by a distinct phenomenological approach.The chapters by Butterworth, Strawson, Zahavi, and Marbach are general in nature and address different psychological and philosophical aspects of what it means to be a self. Next Eilan, Parnas, and Sass turn to schizophrenia and ask both how we should approach and understand this disorder, and, more specifically, what we can learn about the nature of selfhood and existence from psychopathology. The chapters by Blakemore and Gallagher present a defense and a criticism of the so-called model of self-monitoring, respectively. The final three chapters by Cutting, Stanghellini, Schwartz and Wiggins represent anthropologically oriented attempts to situate pathologies of self-experience.(Series B)
Author: Bernadette Roberts Publisher: SUNY Press ISBN: 0791416941 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
Within the traditional framework, the Christian notion of loss-of-self is generally regarded as the transformation or loss of the ego (lower self) as it attains to the higher or true self in its union with God. Thus, because self at its deepest center is a run-on with the divine, I had never found any true self apart from God, for to find the One is to find the other. Because this was the limit of my expectations, I was all the more surprised and bewildered when many years later I came upon a permanent state in which there was no self, no higher self, true self, or anything that could be called a self. Clearly, I had fallen outside my own, as well as the traditional frame of reference, when I came upon a path that seemed to begin where the writers on the contemplative life had left off. But with the clear certitude of the self's disappearance, there automatically arose the question of what had fallen away--what was the self? What, exactly, had it been? Then too, there was the all-important question: what remained in its absence? This journey was the gradual revelation of the answers to these questions, answers that had to be derived solely from personal experience since no outside explanation was forthcoming.
Author: Patricia Hill Collins Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745684521 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
The concept of intersectionality has become a hot topic in academic and activist circles alike. But what exactly does it mean, and why has it emerged as such a vital lens through which to explore how social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and ethnicity shape one another? In this new book Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge provide a much-needed, introduction to the field of intersectional knowledge and praxis. They analyze the emergence, growth and contours of the concept and show how intersectional frameworks speak to topics as diverse as human rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, immigration, hip hop, global social protest, diversity, digital media, Black feminism in Brazil, violence and World Cup soccer. Accessibly written and drawing on a plethora of lively examples to illustrate its arguments, the book highlights intersectionality's potential for understanding inequality and bringing about social justice oriented change. Intersectionality will be an invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the main ideas, debates and new directions in this field.
Author: Ofer Sharone Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022607367X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 239
Book Description
Today 4.7 million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months. In France more than ten percent of the working population is without work. In Israel it’s above seven percent. And in Greece and Spain, that number approaches thirty percent. Across the developed world, the experience of unemployment has become frighteningly common—and so are the seemingly endless tactics that job seekers employ in their quest for new work. Flawed System/Flawed Self delves beneath these staggering numbers to explore the world of job searching and unemployment across class and nation. Through in-depth interviews and observations at job-search support organizations, Ofer Sharone reveals how different labor-market institutions give rise to job-search games like Israel’s résumé-based “spec games”—which are focused on presenting one’s skills to fit the job—and the “chemistry games” more common in the United States in which job seekers concentrate on presenting the person behind the résumé. By closely examining the specific day-to-day activities and strategies of searching for a job, Sharone develops a theory of the mechanisms that connect objective social structures and subjective experiences in this challenging environment and shows how these different structures can lead to very different experiences of unemployment.
Author: Marc Wittmann Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262546086 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
What altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness. During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been ignored by mainstream science, or considered crazy fantasies. Recent research, however, has located the neural underpinnings of these altered states of mind. In this book, neuropsychologist Marc Wittmann shows how experiences that disturb or widen our everyday understanding of the self can help solve the mystery of consciousness. Wittmann explains that the relationship between consciousness of time and consciousness of self is close; in extreme circumstances, the experiences of space and self intensify and weaken together. He considers the emergence of the self in waking life and dreams; how our sense of time is distorted by extreme situations ranging from terror to mystical enlightenment; the experience of the moment; and the loss of time and self in such disorders as depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. Dostoyevsky reported godly bliss during epileptic seizures; neurologists are now investigating the phenomenon of the epileptic aura. Wittmann describes new studies of psychedelics that show how the brain builds consciousness of self and time, and discusses pilot programs that use hallucinogens to treat severe depression, anxiety, and addiction. If we want to understand our consciousness, our subjectivity, Wittmann argues, we must not be afraid to break new ground. Studying altered states of consciousness leads us directly to the heart of the matter: time and self, the foundations of consciousness.
Author: Bernadette Roberts Publisher: Contemplativechristians.com ISBN: 9780692851159 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The Real Christ is simply the E=MC2 of theology, unfolding the deepest mysteries of the Trinity with profound clarity. This is a must read book for anyone who has struggled with remaining a Christian or grown frustrated with the banality of what seems to be the "Jesus Industry" of corporate Christianity. Please prayerfully and slowly read The Real Christ. It is full of some of the most liberating and transforming ideas currently available to humankind. It is what Christianity was meant to be and, quite truthfully, must still become. We are urged to take up and read, and consider again the complete superstructure that is Christianity so to really discover and really become Christ.
Author: Matthew H. Bowker Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317294483 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
Matthew H. Bowker offers a novel analysis of "experience": the vast and influential concept that has shaped Western social theory and political practice for the past half-millennium. While it is difficult to find a branch of modern thought, science, industry, or art that has not relied in some way on the notion of "experience" in defining its assumptions or aims, no study has yet applied a politically-conscious and psychologically-sensitive critique to the construct of experience. Doing so reveals that most of the qualities that have been attributed to experience over the centuries — particularly its unthinkability, its correspondence with suffering, and its occlusion of the self — are part of unlikely fantasies or ideologies. By analyzing a series of related cases, including the experiential education movement, the ascendency of trauma theory, the philosophy of the social contract, and the psychological study of social isolation, the book builds a convincing case that ideologies of experience are invoked not to keep us close to lived realities and ‘things-in-themselves,’ but, rather, to distort and destroy true knowledge of ourselves and others. In spite of enduring admiration for those who may be called champions of experience, such as Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others treated throughout the work, the ideologies of experience ultimately discourage individuals and groups from creating, resisting, and changing our experience, urging us instead to embrace trauma, failure, deprivation, and self-abandonment.
Author: Evan Thompson Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231538316 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 497
Book Description
A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain. Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate—either in the waking state or in a lucid dream—we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self. Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives.
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Author: Bernadette Roberts
Author: Thomas Metzinger
Author: Dan Zahavi
Author: Bernadette Roberts
Author: Patricia Hill Collins
Author: Ofer Sharone
Author: Marc Wittmann
Author: Bernadette Roberts
Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Author: Evan Thompson