my mind on books

The post title’s a mashup of three new books: The Dao of Neuroscience, Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life, plus Zombies, Vampires and Philosophy.

The Dao of Neuroscience: Combining Eastern and Western Principles for Optimal Therapeutic Change by C. Alexander Simpkins and Annellen M. Simpkins (W.W. Norton, 2010).

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Combining new scientific paradigms with ancient wisdom.

Neuroscientists have made huge advances in our understanding of the brain, and yet as scientists learn more, paradoxes arise. How does the brain—a material substance—relate to and produce nonmaterial thoughts and emotions? What explains the research showing that non-rational, unconscious experiencing can sometimes be more accurate than deliberate, conscious thought? The resolution of these paradoxes has important implications for all the helping fields, suggesting new approaches to mind–brain–body change.

By weaving together Eastern traditions (including Yoga, Buddhism, Zen, and Daoism) and Western science, new understandings previously not considered emerge. The Dao of Neuroscience is an insightful introduction to these traditions which sheds new light on the relationship between the mind and the brain. Dao is an ancient Eastern method, a Way or Path for exploring and learning. From the Eastern perspective, everything has its Dao, its Way, even the brain. As we learn the Dao of neuroscience, we come to understand the brain’s most optimal ways of functioning and how to facilitate its natural processes toward health, happiness, and fulfillment.

Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life by
John B. Arden (Wiley, 2010).

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

How to rewire your brain to improve virtually every aspect of your life-based on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology on neuroplasticity and evidence-based practices

Not long ago, it was thought that the brain you were born with was the brain you would die with, and that the brain cells you had at birth were the most you would ever possess. Your brain was thought to be “hardwired” to function in predetermined ways. It turns out that’s not true. Your brain is not hardwired, it’s “softwired” by experience. This book shows you how you can rewire parts of the brain to feel more positive about your life, remain calm during stressful times, and improve your social relationships. Written by a leader in the field of Brain-Based Therapy, it teaches you how to activate the parts of your brain that have been underactivated and calm down those areas that have been hyperactivated so that you feel positive about your life and remain calm during stressful times. You will also learn to improve your memory, boost your mood, have better relationships, and get a good night sleep.

* Reveals how cutting-edge developments in neuroscience, and evidence-based practices can be used to improve your everyday life
* Other titles by Dr. Arden include: Brain-Based Therapy-Adult, Brain-Based Therapy-Child, Improving Your Memory For Dummies and Heal Your Anxiety Workbook
* Dr. Arden is a leader in integrating the new developments in neuroscience with psychotherapy and Director of Training in Mental Health for Kaiser Permanente for the Northern California Region

Explaining exciting new developments in neuroscience and their applications to daily living, Rewire Your Brain will guide you through the process of changing your brain so you can change your life and be free of self-imposed limitations.

Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy) ed. by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad (Open Culture, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Since 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, zombie culture has steadily limped and clawed its way into the center of popular culture. Today, zombies and vampires have taken over TV shows, comic books, cartoons, video games, and movies. Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy drags the theories of famous philosophers like Socrates and Descartes into the territory of the undead, exploring questions like: Why do vampires and vegetarians share a similar worldview? Why is understanding zombies the key to health care reform? And what does “healthy in mind and body” mean for vampires and zombies? Answers to these questions and more await readers brave enough to make this fun, philosophical foray into the undead….

This is an expanded and re-titled edition of Open Court’s The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless. It includes two new chapters and a new introduction.

My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral Responsibility by Eliezer J. Sternberg (Prometheus Books, 2010).

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

As scientists continue to explore how the brain works, using ever more sophisticated technology, it seems likely that new findings will radically alter the traditional understanding of human nature. One aspect of human nature that is already being questioned by recent developments in neuroscience is free will. Do our decisions arise from purely mechanistic processes? Is our feeling of self-control merely an illusion created by our brains? If so, what will become of free will and moral responsibility?

These thorny questions and many more are examined with great clarity and insight in this engaging exploration of neuroscience’s potential impact on moral responsibility. Author Eliezer J. Sternberg delves into a host of fascinating topics, including:

-the parts of the brain that scientists believe are involved in the exercise of will

-what Parkinson’s, Tourette’s, and schizophrenia reveal about our ability to control our actions

-whether a future of criminal behavior is determined by brain chemistry

-how self-reflective consciousness may have evolved from a largely deterministic brain

Using illustrative examples from philosophy, mythology, history, and criminology, and with thorough discussions of actual scientific experiments, Eliezer J. Sternberg explores the threat of neuroscience to moral responsibility as he attempts to answer the question: Are we truly in control of our actions?

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier (Knopf, 2010) is one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month.

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.

The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure.

Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

Lanier also shows:
How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourse
How file sharing is killing the artistic middle class;
How a belief in a technological “rapture” motivates some of the most influential technologists
Why a new humanistic technology is necessary.

Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.

See also: Author’s website

Though the publication date says Nov 30, Amazon.com promises “In stock on December 4” for Consciousness by Christopher S. Hill (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

It’s in stock at Amazon.co.uk (paradoxically with a publication date of Dec 31).

Product description from the publisher:

This book presents a novel and comprehensive theory of consciousness. The initial chapter distinguishes six main forms of consciousness and sketches an account of each one. Later chapters focus on phenomenal consciousness, consciousness of, and introspective consciousness. In discussing phenomenal consciousness, Hill develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, arguing that all awareness involves representations, even awareness of qualitative states like pain. He then uses this view to undercut dualistic accounts of qualitative states. Other topics include visual awareness, visual appearances, emotional qualia, and meta-cognitive processing. This important work will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

See also: Works by Christopher S. Hill at PhilPapers

Ten Years of Viewing from Within (Journal of Consciousness Studies) ed. by Claire Petitmengin (Imprint Academic, 2009).
(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

The View from Within, edited by the late Francisco Varela in collaboration with Jonathan Shear, was published in 1999 and has proved a major stimulus to the scientific investigation of first-person methodologies in psychology and philosophy of mind.

Ten years on, Claire Petitmengin has organized a collection of essays that examine and refine the research program on first-person methods defined in The View from Within, with contributions based on empirical research. She has kept close to the spirit of the earlier book, in which Varela encouraged a precise description of the very process of becoming aware of one’s experience and describing it.

The View from Within by Francisco Varela (Imprint Academic, 1999)
(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Drawing on a wide range of approaches — from psychiatry and phenomenology to contemplative studies — the View From Within examines the possibility of a disciplined approach to the study of subjective states. The focus is on the practical issues involved.

See also:
Journal of Consciousness Studies website
More on Francisco J. Varela

Journal of Consciousness Studies search at Amazon.com

Journal of Consciousness Studies search at Amazon.co.uk