Author : Peter Godfrey-Smith
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 45,34 MB
Release : 2017-03-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 0008226288
BBC R4 Book of the Week ‘Brilliant’ Guardian ‘Fascinating and often delightful’ The Times What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?
Author : Nelson Goodman
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 49,61 MB
Release : 1984
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674631267
This book displays both the remarkable diversity of Goodman's concerns and the essential unity of his thought. As a whole the volume will serve as a concise introduction to Goodman's thought for general readers, and will develop its more recent unfoldings for those philosophers and others who have grown wiser with his books over the years.
Author : Simon Baron-Cohen
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 525 pages
File Size : 46,90 MB
Release : 2013-08-22
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0191668796
This book comprises 26 exciting chapters by internationally renowned scholars, addressing the central psychological process separating humans from other animals: the ability to imagine the thoughts and feelings of others, and to reflect on the contents of our own mindsa theory of mind (ToM). The four sections of the book cover developmental, cultural, and neurobiological approaches to ToM across different populations and species. The chapters explore the earliest stages of development of ToM in infancy, and how plastic ToM learning is; why 3-year-olds typically fail false belief tasks and how ToM continues to develop beyond childhood into adulthood; the debate between simulation theory and theory theory; cross-cultural perspectives on ToM and how ToM develops differently in deaf children; how we use our ToM when we make moral judgments, and the link between emotional intelligence and ToM; the neural basis of ToM measured by evoked response potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and studies of brain damage; emotional vs. cognitive empathy in neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and psychopathy; the concept of self in autism and teaching methods targeting ToM deficits; the relationship between empathy, the pain matrix and the mirror neuron system; the role of oxytocin and fetal testosterone in mentalizing and empathy; the heritability of empathy and candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with empathy; and ToM in non-human primates. These 26 chapters represent a masterly overview of a field that has deepened since the first edition was published in 1993.
Author : Philip Ball
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 513 pages
File Size : 30,18 MB
Release : 2022-06-28
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 022679587X
Minds and where to find them -- The space of possible minds -- All the things you are -- Waking up to the world -- Solomon's secret -- Aliens on the doorstep -- Machine minds -- Out of this world -- Free to choose -- How to know it all.
Author : Daniel M. Wegner
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 45,65 MB
Release : 2017-03-21
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0143110020
“Compelling, and so beautifully written…’The Mind Club’ deftly brings the most up-to-date research about other minds to readers of all backgrounds. It may cause you to think differently about crime and punishment, about business transactions and health care, and even about the upcoming elections. Things might just start looking up.”–The Wall Street Journal From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds—including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It’s easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who have discovered that minds—while incredibly important—are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets—animals, machines, comatose people, god—Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect.
Author : W. Clement Stone
Publisher : Gildan Media LLC aka G&D Media
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 47,7 MB
Release : 2019-02-15
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 1722522070
The human mind today is undergoing the most exciting and intensive probing in the history of mankind. In this unusual and provocative book, W. Clement Stone, a hard-headed businessman, and Norma Lee Browning, a top reporter, combine forces to explore The Other Side of the Mind – the fascinating, often controversial world of mind phenomena. “Enough is known today about the capabilities of the brain to provide science with its greatest challenge,” writes Norma Lee Browning. “It is now evident that we are only scratching the surface of human potentialities. When the curtain of mystery is lifted from the last unexplored corner of the mind, there will be no limits to what the future may hold for shaping the destiny of mankind.” Keep an open mind as you read about: • The strange psychic life of the Australian Aborigines. • The mystery of the fire-walkers of the Fiji Islands. • The yogis of India, who may hold the key which scientists everywhere are looking for to unlock the hidden reservoirs of human efficiency and energy. • The startling and significant research into mental telepathy that is being done by Soviet scientists of the highest caliber. • Extra-sensory perception and what the future holds for para-psychology. • The researches into hypnosis, cybernetics and ESB – electrical stimulation of the brain. • Lourdes, for whose cures medical science has no explanation. • The sensitives of mediums who claim to have special psychic powers and the honest appearing charlatans who prey upon the gullible. • How you can relate the facts in this book to your own life to develop and maintain your physical, mental, and moral well-being.
Author : Charles Tebbetts
Publisher : Prima Lifestyles
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 39,19 MB
Release : 1988
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 9780914629412
Explains how to use methods such as self-hypnosis, meditation, biofeedback, and pre-birth regression to achieve personal growth and success
Author : Sonam Kachru
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 26,42 MB
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0231553382
Human experience is not confined to waking life. Do experiences in dreams matter? Humans are not the only living beings who have experiences. Does nonhuman experience matter? The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, writing during the late fourth and early fifth centuries C.E., argues in his work The Twenty Verses that these alternative contexts ought to inform our understanding of mind and world. Vasubandhu invites readers to explore experiences in dreams and to inhabit the experiences of nonhuman beings—animals, hungry ghosts, and beings in hell. Other Lives offers a deep engagement with Vasubandhu’s account of mind in a global philosophical perspective. Sonam Kachru takes up Vasubandhu’s challenge to think with perspective-diversifying contexts, showing how his novel theory draws together action and perception, minds and worlds. Kachru pieces together the conceptual system in which Vasubandhu thought to show the deep originality of the argument. He reconstructs Vasubandhu’s ecological concept of mind, in which mindedness is meaningful only in a nexus with life and world, to explore its ongoing philosophical significance. Engaging with a vast range of classical, modern, and contemporary Asian and Western thought, Other Lives is both a groundbreaking work in Buddhist studies and a model of truly global philosophy. The book also includes an accessible new translation of The Twenty Verses, providing a fresh introduction to one of the most influential works of Buddhist thought.
Author : Raymond M. Smullyan
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 13,51 MB
Release : 2012-05-30
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 0307819825
More than two hundred new and challenging logic puzzles—the simplest brainteaser to the most complex paradoxes in contemporary mathematical thinking—from our topmost puzzlemaster (“the most entertaining logician who ever lived,” Martin Gardner has called him). Our guide to the puzzles is the Sorcerer, who resides on the Island of Knights and Knaves, where knights always tell the truth and knaves always lie, and he introduces us to the amazing magic—logic—that enables to discover which inhabitants are which. Then, in a picaresque adventure in logic, he takes us to the planet Og, to the Island of Partial Silence, and to a land where metallic robots wearing strings of capital letters are noisily duplicating and dismantling themselves and others. The reader’s job is to figure out how it all works. Finally, we accompany the Sorcerer on an alluring tour of Infinity which includes George Cantor’s amazing mathematical insights. The tour (and the book) ends with Satan devising a diabolical puzzle for one of Cantor’s prize students—who outwits him! In sum: a devilish magician’s cornucopia of puzzles—a delight for every age and level of ability.
Author : Brian McLaughlin
Publisher : Oxford University Press (UK)
Page : 833 pages
File Size : 41,31 MB
Release : 2009-01-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199262616
This is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the state of the art in philosophy of mind, a flourishing area of research. An outstanding team of contributors offer 45 new critical surveys of a wide range of topics.
