my mind on books

Sciousness, ed. by Jonathan Bricklin (Eirini Press, 2007), collects several essays and shorter passages by (or about) William James dealing with the concept of ‘sciousness’ or ‘pure experience,’ along with an essay by Bricklin titled “Sciousness and Con-sciousness: William James and the Prime Reality of Non-Dual Experience.” The book opens with the Zen work Hsin-Hsin-Ming (“On Believing in Mind”), introducing the Eastern expression of nondualism, while Bricklin’s essay brings Eastern thought to bear on James’s views.

William James coined the term ‘sciousness‘ to refer to experience before it is separated into subject and object. However, in the essays collected in this book, James doesn’t commonly use the term ‘sciousness’ but most often just speaks of ‘experience’ or ‘pure experience.’ James holds that an experience, often using a room or a building as an example, becomes mental or physical only by the relations it forms with other experiences:

In so far as experiences are prolonged in time, enter into relations of physical influence — breaking, warming, illuminating, etc., each other — we make of them a group apart which we call the physical world. On the other hand, in so far as they are fleeting, physically inert, with a succession which does not follow a determined order, but seems rather to obey emotional vagaries, we make of them another group which we call the psychical world. …

The two kinds of groups are made up of experiences, but the relations of the experiences among themselves differ from one group to the other. It is, therefore, by addition of other phenomena that a given phenomenon becomes conscious or known, and not by a splitting in two of an interior essence. (The Notion of Consciousness, p. 107-108)

In one of my favorite parts of Bricklin’s essay, he takes Basho’s famous poem

Old pond
Frog jumps in
Sound of the water

and rewrites it to show the effect of ordinary consciousness reacting to the bare succession of experiences:

Old pond!
Feels peaceful
What’s that?!
Wow, a frog!
There goes the silence! (p. 55)

Sciousness will appeal most to readers already interested in non-dual philosophy, who can now find a spiritual ancestor in William James, or to those interested in James’s philosophy, who may discover a new aspect of his thought.

Many of James’s essays can be found online:
The Notion of Consciousness is newly translated from the French by Jonathan Bricklin; this translation by Carl Manchester is available online.

Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?

A World of Pure of Experience

See also: review by Jerry Katz at Nonduality Blog

Conscious Entities on William James

Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood by Simon Evnine (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Product description:

Simon Evnine examines various epistemic aspects of what it is to be a person. Persons are defined as finite beings that have beliefs, including second-order beliefs about their own and others’ beliefs, and are agents, capable of making long-term plans. It is argued that for any being meeting these conditions, a number of epistemic consequences obtain. First, all such beings must have certain logical concepts and be able to use them in certain ways. Secondly, there are at least two principles governing belief that it is rational for persons to satisfy and are such that nothing can be a person at all unless it satisfies them to a large extent. These principles are that one believe the conjunction of one’s beliefs and that one treat one’s future beliefs as, by and large, better than one’s current beliefs. Thirdly, persons both occupy epistemic points of view on the world and show up within those views. This makes it impossible for them to be completely objective about their own beliefs. Ideals of rationality that require such objectivity, while not necessarily wrong, are intrinsically problematic for persons. This “aspectual dualism” is characteristic of treatments of persons in the Kantian tradition. In sum, these epistemic consequences support a traditional view of the nature of persons, one in opposition to much recent theorizing.

More from the publisher, including a sample chapter

Author’s webpage

The list of “best new summer reading of 2008″ at the Telegraph (UK) includes The Baby in the Mirror: A Child’s World from Birth to Three by Charles Fernyhough (“the most poetic popular science book of the year” though more of a fall read in the US) and We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater (“brilliantly comprehensive guide to the revolutionary new era of IT”).

Dance-tech.net has produced this interview with philosopher Alva Noë. If you have any trouble playing the embedded video go here and try a different format.

Alva Noë’s most recent book is Action in Perception (MIT Press, 2005, pbk 2006)

The Case for Qualia (Bradford Books) edited by Edmond Wright (MIT Press, 2008)

Product description:

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists dismiss the notion of qualia, sensory experiences that are internal to the brain. Leading opponents of qualia (and of indirect realism, the philosophical position that has qualia as a central tenet) include Michael Tye, Daniel Dennett, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and even Frank Jackson, a former supporter. Qualiaphiles apparently face the difficulty of establishing philosophical contact with the real when their access to it is seen by qualiaphobes to be second-hand and, worse, hidden behind a “veil of sensation”–a position that would slide easily into relativism and solipsism, presenting an ethical dilemma. In The Case for Qualia, proponents of qualia defend the Indirect Realist position and mount detailed counterarguments against opposing views.

The book first presents philosophical defenses, with arguments propounding, variously, a new argument from illusion, a sense-datum theory, dualism, “qualia realism,” qualia as the “cement” of the experiential world, and “subjective physicalism.” Three scientific defenses follow, discussing color, heat, and the link between the external object and the internal representation. Finally, specific criticisms of opposing views include discussions of the Churchlands’ “neurophilosophy,” answers to Frank Jackson’s abandonment of qualia (one of which is titled, in a reference to Jackson’s famous thought experiment, “Why Frank Should Not Have Jilted Mary”), and refutations of transparency theory.

Contributors:
Torin Alter, Michel Bitbol, Harold I. Brown, Mark Crooks, George Graham, C. L. Hardin, Terence E. Horgan, Robert J. Howell, Amy Kind, E. J. Lowe, Riccardo Manzotti, Barry Maund, Martine Nida-Rümelin, John O’Dea, Isabelle Peschard, Matjaž Potr?, Diana Raffman, Howard Robinson, William S. Robinson, John Smythies, Edmond Wright.

MIT Press has the Table of Contents and samples

Qualia at Wikipedia

• “Brains” on Paul Churchland – Neurophilosophy at Work
   
• new Metapsychology Online Reviews include Poets on Prozac, Dennett and Ricoeur on the Narrative Self 

• Mind Hacks’ review of Kluge

It’s not too late to register for the upcoming DIAC conference to be held at UC Berkeley later this week. The conference is sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) and the UC Berkeley School of Information (which I attended back when it was the School of “Library and Information Studies”). A public event is planned for Sunday June 29.

At the dawn of the 21st century humankind faces challenges of profound proportions. The ability of people around the world to discuss, work, make decisions, and take action collaboratively is one of the most important capabilities for addressing these challenges.

Researchers, scholars, activists, advocates, artists, educators, technologists, designers, students, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, journalists and citizens are rising to these challenges in many ways, including devising new communication technologies that build on the opportunities afforded by the Internet and other new (as well as old) media. The interactions between technological and social systems are of special and central importance in this area.

DIAC-08 combines CPSR’s 11th DIAC symposium with the third Conference on Online Deliberation. The joint conference is intended to provide a platform and a forum for highlighting socio-technological opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls in the area of community and civic action. Technology enhanced community action ranges from informal communities of practice to democratic governance of formal organizations to large social movements.

Visit the conference website for details on the program and registration.

More on Snoop

Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga (Ecco, 2008) has a June 24 release date according to Amazon. (This was one of the books mentioned in the Neuroanthropology post “David Brooks Bonus” on ‘Neural Buddhists.’)

From the publisher:

One of the world’s leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Michael Gazzaniga’s homepage at UCSB

at Edge

[update 6/26] “Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga awarded Humboldt Prize“

These two recent titles seem to go together to describe my way of life these days. ‘Always On’ is a more scholarly examination by a professor of linguistics of the effects of new communication technologies on language, whereas ‘Distracted’ is a journalistic account of the effects of those technologies on attention.

Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World by Naomi S. Baron (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Product description:

In Always On, Naomi S. Baron reveals that online and mobile technologies–including instant messaging, cell phones, multitasking, Facebook, blogs, and wikis–are profoundly influencing how we read and write, speak and listen, but not in the ways we might suppose.
Baron draws on a decade of research to provide an eye-opening look at language in an online and mobile world. She reveals for instance that email, IM, and text messaging have had surprisingly little impact on student writing. Electronic media has magnified the laid-back “whatever” attitude toward formal writing that young people everywhere have embraced, but it is not a cause of it. A more troubling trend, according to Baron, is the myriad ways in which we block incoming IMs, camouflage ourselves on Facebook, and use ring tones or caller ID to screen incoming calls on our mobile phones. Our ability to decide who to talk to, she argues, is likely to be among the most lasting influences that information technology has upon the ways we communicate with one another. Moreover, as more and more people are “always on” one technology or another–whether communicating, working, or just surfing the web or playing games–we have to ask what kind of people do we become, as individuals and as family members or friends, if the relationships we form must increasingly compete for our attention with digital media?
Our 300-year-old written culture is on the verge of redefinition, Baron notes. It’s up to us to determine how and when we use language technologies, and to weigh the personal and social benefits–and costs–of being “always on.” This engaging and lucidly-crafted book gives us the tools for taking on these challenges.

Science Daily article on ‘Always On’

Author Naomi S. Baron’s webpage

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson, with a foreword by Bill McKibben (Prometheus Books, 2008)

Description from the publisher;

We have oceans of information at our fingertips, yet we seek knowledge in Yahoo headlines glimpsed on the run. We are networked as never before, but we connect with friends and family via email and fleeting face-to-face moments that are rescheduled a dozen times.

Welcome to the land of distraction.

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion and detachment. Our attention is scattered among the beeps and pings of a push-button world. We are less and less able to pause, reflect, and deeply connect.

Distracted is a gripping exposé of this hyper-mobile, cyber-centric, attention-deficient life. Day by day, we are eroding our capacity for deep attention — the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. The implications for a healthy society are stark.

And yet we can recover our powers of focus through a renaissance of attention. Neuroscience is just now decoding the workings of attention, with its three pillars of focus, awareness, and judgment, and revealing how these skills can be shaped and taught. This is exciting news for all of us living in an age of overload.

In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its losses, Maggie Jackson introduces us to scientists, cartographers, marketers, educators, wired teens, and even roboticists. She offers us a compelling wake-up call, an adventure story, and reasons for hope.

Pull over, hit the pause button, and prepare for an eye-opening journey. More than ever, we cannot afford to let distraction become the marker of our time.

Author Maggie Jackson’s blog