my mind on books

Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought by John F. Hoffecker (Columbia University Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

John F. Hoffecker explores the origin and growth of the mind, drawing on information from the human fossil record, archaeology, and history. Hoffecker argues that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools, evolving the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thought as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups were integrated into a neocortical internet, or super-brain, thus giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence for the ability to generate novel technology, Hoffecker contends that human creativity, as well as higher-order consciousness, is a product of the collective super-brain. Hoffecker equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and developed alternative realities via toolmaking, tool use, and artistic expression. Hoffecker connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. According to him, subsequent history reflects the varying degrees to which rigid hierarchies of states and empires suppressed the creative powers of the mind, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged from the fragments of a collapsed empire after 1200 AD. In the final chapter, Hoffecker speculates on the possibility of artificial intelligence and a mind without biology.

See also: “Evolution of human ‘super-brain’ tied to development of bipedalism, tool-making” at EurekAlert

Dream Life: An Experimental Memoir by J. Allan Hobson (MIT Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

J. Allan Hobson’s scientific experimentation began in childhood, with a soot-filled investigation into the capacity of a chimney to admit Santa Claus. (He discovered that even with the damper open the chimney was far too narrow.) Hobson’s life as an experimentalist has continued through a pioneering career devoted to aligning psychology and biology and to investigating the relationship of dreaming and consciousness. In Dream Life, Hobson conducts an experimental investigation into his life and work.

Hobson charts his developing consciousness through a vividly imagined conception (in October of 1932), birth, and babyhood, offering a theory about “protoconsciousness” in fetuses and infants. He recounts his youthful zeal for scientific discovery, his early sexual experimentation, and his education. He describes taking on the entrenched Freudians at Harvard Medical School in the 1950s, as a maverick psychiatrist who wanted to replace psychoanalysis with biological science. He describes his further studies, his marriages and love affairs, his travels, and what he learned about the brain from his whiplash-induced amnesia after a 1963 automobile accident and from his “brain death” after a stroke in 2001. Through it all, Hobson uses his life as the ultimate case study for his theory that REM sleep provides a test pattern that allows the brain to develop “offline.” Dreams—most intense in REM sleep, when the brain is active—need no Freudian-style decoding, he says. Dreaming is a glorious mental state, to be enjoyed and studied for what it tells us about consciousness.

See also: Author’s website

This is a list of books on consciousness published or forthcoming in 2011, based on a search at WorldCat, with links to Amazon [& publication month in square brackets]:

Altering Consciousness: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 2 vols. ed. by Etzel Cardeña; Michael Winkelman (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2011-) [May] (amazon.co.uk – May)

Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution of the Sensory Self ed. by Lynn Margulis; Celeste A Asikainen; Wolfgang E Krumbein (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011) [Apr] (amazon.co.uk – Mar)

Consciousness: An Introduction, 2nd ed. by Susan J Blackmore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) [Feb] (amazon.co.uk – Apr)

Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Philosophy of Mind) by Derk Pereboom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) [Mar] (amazon.co.uk – May)

Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition by Michelle Maiese (Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) [Feb] (amazon.co.uk – Dec 2010)

The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English (Frontiers of Narrative) ed. by David Herman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011) [listed as May, but already available in March 2011] (amazon.co.uk – May)

Experimental Phenomena of Consciousness: A Brief Dictionary, Revised Edition by Talis Bachmann; Bruno G Breitmeyer; Haluk Ögmen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) [Apr]

Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Moments of Truth by Russell T Hurlburt (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011) [Jul] (amazon.co.uk -Jul)

Living Consciousness: The Metaphysical Vision of Henri Bergson by G William Barnard (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011) [Dec] (no Amazon link yet – publisher info)

The Living Mind: From Psyche to Consciousness by Richard Dien Winfield (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011) [Jul] “explores the biological foundations of psychology from a broadly Hegelian perspective”

The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, Memory, Consciousness, and Personality by John Brockman (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011) [Aug] (amazon.co.uk – Aug)

Perplexities of Consciousness (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology) by Eric Schwitzgebel (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011) [Feb] (amazon.co.uk – Feb)

Phenomenal Consciousness: Understanding the Relation Between Experience and Neural Processes in the Brain by Dimitris Platchias (Montreal; Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011) [Mar] (amazon.co.uk – Oct 2010)

Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Consciousness by Rex Welshon (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011) [Feb] (amazon.co.uk – Nov 2010)

Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future ed. by Moshe Bar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) [May] (amazon.co.uk – May)

Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness by Nicholas Humphrey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011) [Feb] (kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – Jan)

Wednesday’s Child: From Heidegger to Affective Neuroscience, a Field Theory of Angst by Gregory Schulz (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2011) [Jan] (amazon.co.uk – Jan)

Who Was Mrs Willett?: Landscapes and Dynamics of Mind by Chris Nunn (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2011) [Jan] (amazon.co.uk – Jan)

Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness by J K O’Regan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) [Jun] (amazon.co.uk – Jun)

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril by Margaret Heffernan (New York: Walker, 2011) [Mar] (kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – Feb)

*****
These MIT Press titles listed on WorldCat could not be found at Amazon or on the publisher’s website, but may turn up later:

–Meditating selflessly: practical neural Zen by James H Austin (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011)

–Re-emergence: locating conscious properties in a material world by Gerald Vision (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011)

–The wonder of consciousness: understanding the mind through philosophical reflection by Harold L Langsam (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011)

See also: Consciousness books 2007-2010

Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness by Nicholas Humphrey (Princeton University Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the “soul niche.”
Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all–how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature, Soul Dust is an uncompromising yet life-affirming work–one that never loses sight of the majesty and wonder of consciousness.

See also: Book on Facebook

Perplexities of Consciousness (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology) by Eric Schwitzgebel (MIT Press, 2011)
(amazon.co.uk)

Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s, researchers found that most people reported dreaming in black and white. In the 1960s—when most movies were in color and more people had color television sets—the vast majority of reported dreams contained color. The most likely explanation for this, according to philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, is not that exposure to black-and-white media made people misremember their dreams. It is that we simply don’t know whether or not we dream in color. In Perplexities of Consciousness, Schwitzgebel examines various aspects of inner life—dreams, mental imagery, emotions, and other subjective phenomena—and argues that we know very little about our stream of conscious experience. In fact, he contends, we are prone to gross error about our ongoing emotional, visual, and cognitive experiences.

Western philosophical tradition is nearly unanimous on the accuracy of our knowledge or current conscious experience. Schwitzgebel is skeptical. Drawing broadly from historical and recent philosophy and psychology to examine such topics as visual perspective, human echolocation (about which he is doubtful), and the unreliability of introspection even about emotional states (do we really enjoy Christmas? a family dinner?), he finds us singularly inept in our judgments about conscious experience.

See also: Author’s homepage

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