my mind on books

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n10/fodo01_.html

“Strawson has the kind of expansive metaphysical imagination that used to be at the heart of philosophy, but which positivism and analysis succeeded for a long while in suppressing.”

The book reviewed is Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?

Galen Strawson’s homepage includes a link to the 2006 article ‘Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism’ (a 29-page pdf ).

I hope to find a more systematic way of monitoring new & forthcoming titles, but meanwhile here are some that look interesting (found by the “poking around” method). Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments!

Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner (April 3, 2007)
The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong by Jennifer Michael Hecht (April 10, 2007)
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (April 17, 2007)
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo (March 27, 2007)
Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity And the New Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle (Amazon says “June 5, 2007” but it is already available)
Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, And Language by Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, John Searle (May 2007)
The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God by David J. Linden (March 31, 2007)
Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth (May 15, 2007)
The World in My Mind, My Mind in the World: Key Mechanisms of Consciousness in People, Animals and Machines by Igor Aleksander (May 1, 2007)
The Character of Consciousness (Philosophy of Mind) by David Chalmers (March 1, 2008)
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker (September 11, 2007)

Joseph Levine, Professor of Philosophy at University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently discussed “Can Science Explain Consciousness?” on the radio program Philosophy Talk. A RealAudio file of the program is available here.

Levine is the author of Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness (Philosophy of Mind Series)

‘The mystery of consciousness’ by Paul Broks

Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative) by Nicholas Humphrey

Nicholas Humphrey’s home page includes links to a nice collection of papers available online.

Blindsight by Peter Watts: An interesting SF novel dealing with issues of consciousness, especially questions concerning the costs and benefits of consciousness. The extensive “notes and references” section at the end especially praises Thomas Metzinger’s Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (Bradford Books) (which I haven’t read).

Watts’s website is www.rifters.com.