Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind's Privacy
OUP Oxford (2012)
| Abstract | Can consciousness and the human mind be understood and explained in sheerly physical terms? Materialism is a philosophical/scientific theory, according to which the mind is completely physical. This theory has been around for literally thousands of years, but it was always stymied by its inability to explain how exactly mere matter could do the amazing things the mind can do. Beginning in the 1980s, however, a revolution began quietly boiling away in the neurosciences, yielding increasingly detailed theories about how the brain might accomplish consciousness. Nevertheless, a fundamental obstacle remains. Contemporary research techniques seem to still have the scientific observer of the conscious state locked out of the sort of experience the subjects themselves are having. Science can observe, stimulate, and record events in the brain, but can it ever enter the most sacred citadel, the mind? Can it ever observe the most crucial properties of conscious states, the ones we are aware of? If it can't, this creates a problem. If conscious mental states lack a basic feature possessed by all other known physical states, i.e., the capability to be observed or experienced by many people, this give us reason to believe that they are not entirely physical. In this intriguing book, William Hirstein argues that it is indeed possible for one person to directly experience the conscious states of another, by way of what he calls mindmelding. This would involve making just the right connections in two peoples' brains, which he describes in detail. He then follows up the many other consequences of the possibility that what appeared to be a wall of privacy can actually be breached. Drawing on a range of research from neuroscience and psychology, and looking at executive functioning, mirror neuron work, as well as perceptual phenomena such as blind-sight and filling-in, this book presents a highly original new account of consciousness. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Philosophy of mind Consciousness Mind and body Self Neurobiology | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Buy the book | $67.82 new (21% off) $73.25 direct from Amazon (14% off) Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | BD418.3.H567 2012 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 9780199231904 0199231907 | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesTim Crane (2003). The Intentional Structure of Consciousness. In Quentin Smith & Aleksandar Jokic (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Donald Hoffman (2008). Conscious Realism and the Mind-Body Problem. Mind and Matter 6 (1):87-121.
David M. Rosenthal (1986). Two Concepts of Consciousness. Philosophical Studies 49 (May):329-59.
David Rose (2006). Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Neural Theories. Oxford University Press.
A. G. Cairns-Smith (1996). Evolving the Mind: On the Nature of Matter and the Origin of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press.
Joseph Levine (2001). Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
David M. Rosenthal (1993). Explaining Consciousness. In David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings. Oup.
James Hopkins (2000). Evolution, Consciousness, and the Internality of the Mind. In Peter Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (eds.), Evolution and the Human Mind. Cambridge University Press.
Michel Ferrari & Adrien Pinard (2006). Death and Resurrection of a Disciplined Science of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (12):75-96.
Gilberto Gomes (1995). Self-Awareness and the Mind-Brain Problem. Philosophical Psychology 8 (2):155-65.
David J. Chalmers (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press.
Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.) (2010). Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind. State University of New York Press.
Max Velmans (2002). How Could Conscious Experiences Affect Brains? Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (11):3-29.
K. Ramakrishna Rao (2005). Perception, Cognition, and Consciousness in Classical Hindu Psychology. Journal of Consciousness Studies 12 (3):3-30.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-04-15Total downloads20 ( #61,504 of 549,065 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,065 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
