my mind on books

$2.99 TED book for Kindle: Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks (Kindle Single) by Tiffany Shlain amazon.com/gp/product/B00… via @amazon

— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) November 17, 2012

Book description from the publisher:

While many wonder what the pervasive use of technology is doing to our overloaded mental circuits, ‘Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks’ ponders that question in another way: can cutting-edge neurological research teach us anything about how we shape the electronic global “brain” of the Internet? Can we share lessons between neurons and networks in the way we nurture and develop both? This ebook was created in conjunction with a 10-minute film by author Tiffany Shlain, also titled ‘Brain Power,’ which uses an innovative, participatory filmmaking process called Cloud Filmmaking. The TED Book expands on the ideas in the film by sharing deeper research, videos, graphics, and links that explore the increasingly intertwined worlds of advanced neuroscience research and technology. This release marks the first time a film and TED Book have been released together.

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel (Oxford University Press)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – Nov 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.

Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

Nagel’s skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic.

In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Google Books preview:

See also: Thomas Nagel at Wikipedia

The Conscious Brain (Philosophy of Mind) by Jesse Prinz (Oxford University Press, USA)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – Oct 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

The problem of consciousness continues to be a subject of great debate in cognitive science. Synthesizing decades of research, The Conscious Brain advances a new theory of the psychological and neurophysiological correlates of conscious experience.

Prinz’s account of consciousness makes two main claims: first consciousness always arises at a particular stage of perceptual processing, the intermediate level, and, second, consciousness depends on attention. Attention changes the flow of information allowing perceptual information to access memory systems. Neurobiologically, this change in flow depends on synchronized neural firing. Neural synchrony is also implicated in the unity of consciousness and in the temporal duration of experience.

Prinz also explores the limits of consciousness. We have no direct experience of our thoughts, no experience of motor commands, and no experience of a conscious self. All consciousness is perceptual, and it functions to make perceptual information available to systems that allows for flexible behavior.

Prinz concludes by discussing prevailing philosophical puzzles. He provides a neuroscientifically grounded response to the leading argument for dualism, and argues that materialists need not choose between functional and neurobiological approaches, but can instead combine these into neurofunctional response to the mind-body problem.

The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions, while also surveying, challenging, and extending philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. All readers interested in the nature of consciousness will find Prinz’s work of great interest.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s website

The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning by Daniel Bor (Basic Books, 2012)

(kindle ed. – Aug. 28), (amazon.co.uk – 13 Sep 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

A brash young neuroscientist presents his solution to biology’s hardest problem – what consciousness is, and why we have it, and what it means for our self perception and our mental health. Neuroscientist Daniel Bor was long troubled by the fact that once all our physical needs have been met, humans – uniquely among animals – engage in mentally (and thus biologically) wasteful behaviour, such as solving crossword puzzles and reading. This observation set him on a path toward a new theory of consciousness. In “The Ravenous Brain”, Bor argues that human knowledge evolved to gather knowledge, specifically to extract meaningful patterns from raw information (as we do while playing word games). The ability to structure information offered individuals a distinct evolutionary advantage. Consciousness, therefore, emerged as a natural extension of our drive to innovate. A controversial argument from an up-and-coming researcher, “The Ravenous Brain” is a wide-ranging attempt to elucidate one of science’s biggest mysteries.

See also: Author’s website

Inner Experience and Neuroscience: Merging Both Perspectives by Donald D. Price and James J. Barrell (MIT Press, 2012)

(amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

The study of consciousness has advanced rapidly over the last two decades. And yet there is no clear path to creating models for a direct science of human experience or for integrating its insights with those of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. In Inner Experience and Neuroscience, Donald Price and James Barrell show how a science of human experience can be developed through a strategy that integrates experiential paradigms with methods from the natural sciences. They argue that the accuracy and results of both psychology and neuroscience would benefit from an experiential perspective and methods. Price and Barrell describe phenomenologically based methods for scientific research on human experience, as well as their philosophical underpinnings, and relate these to empirical results associated with such phenomena as pain and suffering, emotions, and volition. They argue that the methods of psychophysics are critical for integrating experiential and natural sciences, describe how qualitative and quantitative methods can be merged, and then apply this approach to the phenomena of pain, placebo responses, and background states of consciousness. In the course of their argument, they draw on empirical results that include qualitative studies, quantitative studies, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, they propose that the integration of experiential and natural science can extend efforts to understand such difficult issues as free will and complex negative emotions including jealousy and greed.