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The Consciousness Instinct
- Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's summary
“The father of cognitive neuroscience” illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problem
How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff” - atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells - create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. Gazzaniga asserts that this model has it backward - brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind.
Captivating and accessible, with insights drawn from a lifetime at the forefront of the field, The Consciousness Instinct sets the course for the neuroscience of tomorrow.
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- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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Philosophy of Mind
- An Audio Guide
- By: Edward Feser
- Narrated by: Andrea Powell
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the discipline, and relates them not only to the human brain and its capacity for thought, but also to the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence. This in-depth primer is an account of all the most important and significant attempts that have been made to answer the riddles of consciousness and thought.
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Author is a Christian apologist, and it shows
- By David Penn on 08-30-15
By: Edward Feser
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The Spiritual Brain
- A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul
- By: Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'Leary
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Does religious experience come from God, or is it just the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on brain research on Carmelite nuns that has attracted major media attention and provocative new research in near-death experiences, The Spiritual Brain proves that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. The authors make a convincing case for what many in science are loathe to consider: that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.
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interesting topic, but frustrating listen
- By Barry T on 08-27-08
By: Mario Beauregard, and others
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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The Ego Tunnel
- The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
- By: Thomas Metzinger
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?
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non-specialist literature at its best
- By Esmeralda on 03-17-10
By: Thomas Metzinger
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
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A Beginner’s Guide to Reality
- Exploring Our Everyday Adventures in Wonderland
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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A unique fusion of philosophy and metaphysics set against the backdrop of contemporary culture. Have you ever wondered if the world is really there when you're not looking? We tend to take the reality of our world very much for granted. This book will lead you down the rabbit hole in search of something we can point to, hang our hats on, and say this is real.
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A real great listen on the nature of reality
- By Patrick Mabry, Jr. on 07-30-14
By: Jim Baggott
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Beyond Biocentrism
- Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
- By: Robert Lanza, Bob Berman
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.
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Here's the thing
- By Mikal on 11-09-18
By: Robert Lanza, and others
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What Is Life?
- How Chemistry Becomes Biology
- By: Addy Pross
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrdinger posed a simple, yet profound, question: What is life?. How could the very existence of such extraordinary chemical systems be understood? This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists both before, and ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology?
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Profound & Life Changing...
- By Daegan Smith on 04-06-15
By: Addy Pross
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At the Edge of Uncertainty
- 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
- By: Michael Brooks
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.
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All smoke, no fire
- By Kenton on 07-25-15
By: Michael Brooks
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The brain science was all that was interesting
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I had no idea we knew this much.
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The Ethical Brain
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Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues.
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interesting stuff
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The Feeling of Life Itself
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Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain, three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece, give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain.
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Constant references to illustrations
- By Mark on 11-03-21
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Consciousness Explained
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The national bestseller chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 1991 is now available as an audiobook. The author of Brainstorms, Daniel C. Dennett replaces our traditional vision of consciousness with a new model based on a wealth of fact and theory from the latest scientific research.
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Confuses Consciousness with Ego
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The brain science was all that was interesting
- By 964a5 on 03-25-15
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The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.
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Use Your Credit On "Who's In Charge"
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Consciousness and the Brain
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How does the brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state.
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I had no idea we knew this much.
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The Ethical Brain
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Will increased scientific understanding of our brains overturn our beliefs about moral and ethical behavior? How will increasingly powerful brain imaging technologies affect the ideas of privacy and of self-incrimination? Such thought-provoking questions are rapidly emerging as new discoveries in neuroscience have raised difficult legal and ethical dilemmas. Michael Gazzaniga, widely considered to be the father of cognitive neuroscience, investigates with an expert eye some of these controversial and complex issues.
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interesting stuff
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The Feeling of Life Itself
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Constant references to illustrations
- By Mark on 11-03-21
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Consciousness Explained
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The national bestseller chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 1991 is now available as an audiobook. The author of Brainstorms, Daniel C. Dennett replaces our traditional vision of consciousness with a new model based on a wealth of fact and theory from the latest scientific research.
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Confuses Consciousness with Ego
- By Rahul Yadav on 07-11-19
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The Hidden Spring
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For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies.
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Fascinating
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Being You
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What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.
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Not engaging, nothing new
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Rethinking Consciousness
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In this eye-opening work, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of an inner being led to empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial consciousness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary future.
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Clueless on Many Fronts
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Conscious
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This mind-expanding dive into the mystery of consciousness is an illuminating meditation on the self, free will, and felt experience.
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Perhaps a better definition?
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The Conscious Mind
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What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers. Philosopher David J. Chalmers offers a cogent analysis of this heated debate as he unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.
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Chalmers' search for Consciousness
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The Strange Order of Things
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The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms.
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Homeostasis and Metabolism give self awareness
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Other Minds
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In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.
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Mischief and Craft
- By Darwin8u on 08-10-17
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Consciousness and the Social Brain
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What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.
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Cutting edge...
- By Douglas on 08-07-14
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Incognito
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In this sparkling and provocative new book, the renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries. Taking in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence, and visual illusions, Incognito is a thrilling subsurface exploration of the mind and all its contradictions.
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The author is NOT a good reader
- By MaryEllen on 06-17-11
By: David Eagleman
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Metazoa
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Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom — the Metazoa— they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds.
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Philosophy Meets Biology
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What Is Life?
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Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrdinger posed a simple, yet profound, question: What is life?. How could the very existence of such extraordinary chemical systems be understood? This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists both before, and ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology?
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Profound & Life Changing...
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back
- The Evolution of Minds
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
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What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
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The only other review was so bad that I wrote this
- By Adam on 02-13-17
What listeners say about The Consciousness Instinct
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 09-03-21
worth the read for discussion of consciousness
Summary analyses of Hume and Descartes are materially incomplete and inaccurate; fails to properly distinguish symbolism from natural residue and worldly represention in discussion of cell's reproductive machinery; however, discussion of consciousness otherwise is ℹ️ and useful. Definitely worth the read.
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- Philomath
- 12-01-18
Consciousness through the lens of Neuroscience
Michael Gazzaniga is at the forefront and a leading scientist and researcher in cognitive neuroscience. His work on split brain patients has changed out concept of the mind within the brain, and our perception regarding identity.
In this context his attempt to provide a hypothesis on consciousness can be described as the closest science can come to explaining the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
The book takes us through a history of philosophy and science relating to the mind and the brain the dualism of Descartes, the reductionism schools and modern science, the quantum world of complementarity, and finally the authors proposal as to what the mind is and how it relates to the brain.
The author brings a new perspective to consciousness, one that accepts the possibility of a subjective system that cannot be reduced producing qualia analogous to other instincts. He proposes consciousness as an instinct evolving out of necessity to improve our survivability in complex situations. A continuum which he suggests is very likely present in different ways and degrees in all living things.
This book is highly recommended and a must read for anyone interested in the subject.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Timothy R Stump
- 01-30-19
An amicable introduction to modern neuroscience
Without exploring neuroscience research in depth, this serves as an excellent theoretical overview. I suggeat this to any undergraduate interested in biology, neurology, psychology, or how these could relate to engineering.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Tom
- 01-30-23
Well-done dissection of his Theory of Consciousness
I would have preferred that Gazzaniga had not devoted the first half of the book to the ideas put forth by philosophers, physicians and others in their vain search for the location and nature of consciousness in the spleen or Soul or some other Body Part. He may have considered that a necessary groundwork to laying out his own aproach but I think he could have jumped directly to the details of his theory.
He does, however, make a good case for a reasonable architecture of the mammalian Brain as a modular structure of functions that communicate with each other in a complex network of layers. He follows closely William James’ theory that this communication network constitute an instinct that we call consciousness.
While his research doesn’t lead him to claim that he totally understands all the how’s and why’s of the logistics of its operation, he does put it forth as a framework to be used by neuroengineers, biologists and others to work together to further this endeavor.
This book may not be the latest work to try to define consciousness but Gazzaniga’s theory is definitely well stated and documented and this book is accessible and enjoyable to the lay reader. Four Stars. ****
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1 person found this helpful
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- Philip Savva
- 03-05-22
5 Starred for the year published. Linda F Barrett
Linda F Barrett like this author is hit with FAKE REVIEWS !!
Linda s incredible book has the exact attacks.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Douglas
- 06-24-19
One Of The Truly Great...
neurologists of our time. In his latest book, Gazzaniga furthers the research on the "hard problem" of consciousness but also shows the long historical road to the modern science of the brain and figuring out how it produces that indefinable thing we call "the Self."
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- JeffA
- 12-08-18
I heard him giving the Gifford Lectures
This is an amazing book that untangles great swaths of evolutionary neurobiology. Wonderful clear speaker
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6 people found this helpful
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- William Tanksley, Jr.
- 06-07-19
An interesting and compelling idea, but slow start
This book contains a compelling model to help visualize the author's idea of consciousness, but the interesting model doesn't appear until nearly the end of the book. In the meantime, most of the text (about half) is spent proving that creationists are wrong, a job which is better done by authors who do it by proving that evolution is correct (I recommend, for example, Darwin's Dangerous Idea).
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4 people found this helpful
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- Carson
- 01-01-19
A fantastical overview of conscious thought
The more I learn about the human mind, the more it absolutely amazes me. This book is in deservance of a thunderous applause.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 10-10-21
very informing and iteresting book
this book takes you for a deep dive in to the human mind structure and explains in detail every building block in it , fascinating journey!
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