books on the mind, consciousness, cognitive science…
June 16, 2012
400 kindle ebooks as low as $0.99- Amazon.com amazon.com/gp/feature.htm… via @amazon
— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) June 17, 2012
(Prices subject to change and may vary by region so be sure to check before purchasing.)
June 15, 2012
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates (Penguin Press, 2012)
Book description from the publisher:
A successful Wall Street trader turned Cambridge neuroscientist reveals the biology of boom and bust and how risk taking transforms our body chemistry, driving us to extremes of euphoria and risky behavior or stress and depression
The laws of financial boom and bust, it turns out, have more than a little to do with male hormones. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Dr. John Coates identified a feedback loop between testosterone and success that dramatically lowers the fear of risk in men, especially younger men—significantly, the fear of risk is not reduced in women. Similarly, intense failure leads to a rise in levels of cortisol, the antitestosterone hormone that lowers the appetite for risk across an entire spectrum of decisions.
Coates had set out to prove what was already a strong intuition from his previous life: Before he became a world-class neuroscientist, Coates ran a derivatives desk in New York. As a successful trader on Wall Street, “the hour between dog and wolf” was the moment traders transformed-they would become revved up, exuberant risk takers, when flying high, or tentative, risk-averse creatures, when cowering from their losses. Coates understood instinctively that these dispositions were driven by body chemistry-and then he proved it.
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf expands on Coates’s own research to offer lessons from the entire exploding new field-the biology of risk. Risk concentrates the mind-and the body-like nothing else, altering our physiology in ways that have profound and lasting effects. What’s more, biology shifts investors’ risk preferences across the business cycle and can precipitate great change in the marketplace.
Though Coates’s research concentrates on traders, his conclusions shed light on all types of high-pressure decision making-from the sports field to the battlefield. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf leaves us with a powerful recognition: To handle risk in a “highly evolved” way isn’t a matter of mind over body; it’s a matter of mind and body working together. We all have it in us to be transformed from dog into wolf; the only question is whether we can understand the causes and the consequences.
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June 14, 2012
$2.99 kindle ebook: Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty (… by Ginger Campbell amazon.com/gp/product/B00… via @amazon
— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) June 14, 2012
(…prices may vary by region and are subject to change, so be sure to check before purchasing.)
Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy (PublicAffairs)
Book description from the publisher:
What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval officer assessing a threat to his ship, and a comedian about to reveal a punch line?
In this counterintuitive and insightful work, author Frank Partnoy weaves together findings from hundreds of scientific studies and interviews with wide-ranging experts to craft a picture of effective decision-making that runs counter to our brutally fast-paced world. Even as technology exerts new pressures to speed up our lives, it turns out that the choices we make––unconsciously and consciously, in time frames varying from milliseconds to years––benefit profoundly from delay. As this winning and provocative book reveals, taking control of time and slowing down our responses yields better results in almost every arena of life … even when time seems to be of the essence.
The procrastinator in all of us will delight in Partnoy’s accounts of celebrity “delay specialists,” from Warren Buffett to Chris Evert to Steve Kroft, underscoring the myriad ways in which delaying our reactions to everyday choices––large and small––can improve the quality of our lives.
Google Books preview:
See also: Author’s website
June 13, 2012
The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance by Jonardon Ganeri (Oxford University Press, USA)
Book details from the publisher:
What is it to occupy a first-person stance? Is the first-personal idea one has of oneself in conflict with the idea of oneself as a physical being? How, if there is a conflict, is it to be resolved? The Self recommends a new way to approach those questions, finding inspiration in theories about consciousness and mind in first millennial India. These philosophers do not regard the first-person stance as in conflict with the natural–their idea of nature is not that of scientific naturalism, but rather a liberal naturalism non-exclusive of the normative. Jonardon Ganeri explores a wide range of ideas about the self: reflexive self-representation, mental files, and quasi-subject analyses of subjective consciousness; the theory of emergence as transformation; embodiment and the idea of a bodily self; the centrality of the emotions to the unity of self. Buddhism’s claim that there is no self too readily assumes an account of what a self must be. Ganeri argues instead that the self is a negotiation between self-presentation and normative avowal, a transaction grounded in unconscious mind. Immersion, participation, and coordination are jointly constitutive of self, the first-person stance at once lived, engaged, and underwritten. And all is in harmony with the idea of the natural.
Google Books preview:
See also: Author’s webpage
