my mind on books

‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman for $4.99 – kindle ebook at amazon.com amazon.com/gp/product/B00… via @amazon

— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) May 31, 2013

(Price subject to change & may vary by territory, so check before buying.)

free kindle ebook at Amazon ‘Analysis Without Paralysis: 12 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions, 2d ed’ amazon.com/gp/product/B00…

— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) May 31, 2013

Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur and Other Essays by Raymond Tallis (Acumen, 2013)

(amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

In the title essay of “Reflections of a Metaphysical Flaneur”, Raymond Tallis uses the motif of the stroll, the amble, to connect a series of meditations on the freedoms that only humans possess. In subsequent essays, the flaneur thinks about his brain, his relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom, his profession of medicine and about the physical world and the claims of physical science to have rendered philosophical reflection obsolete. The book is a continuation of Tallis’s endeavours to elaborate a vision of humanity that rejects religious myths while not succumbing to scientism or any other form of naturalism. Written with the author’s customary intellectual energy and vigour these essays provoke, stimulate and challenge us to think in new ways.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Reflections of a Metaphysical Flâneur
Part I: Brains, Persons and Beasts
1. Am I my Brain?
2. Was Schubert a Musical Brain?
3. Wickedness and Wit: Is it all in the brain?
4. Are Conscious Machines Possible?
5. David Chalmers’s Unsuccessful Search for the Conscious Mind
6. A Conversation with My Neighbour
7. Silk
Part II: Philosophy and Physics
8. Should We Just Shut Up and Calculate?
9. You Chemical Scum, You
10. Did Time Begin with a Bang?
11. A Hasty Report from a Tearing Hurry
Part III: Philosophy and Physic
12. Medical Ethics in the Real Mess of the Real World
13. Some Reflections on Caring and Not Caring
14. Coinages of the Mind: Hallucinations
15. Becoming the Prisoners of Our Free Choices
16. The Right to an Assisted Death
Epilogue: And so to Bed

See also: Author’s website

The Peripheral Mind: Philosophy of Mind and the Peripheral Nervous System by István Aranyosi (Oxford University Press, USA, 2013)

(amazon.co.uk – Aug 2013)

Book description from the publisher:

The Peripheral Mind introduces a novel approach to a wide range of issues in the philosophy of mind by shifting the focus of analysis from the brain to the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). Contemporary philosophy of mind has neglected the potential significance of the PNS and has implicitly assumed that, ultimately, sensory and perceptual experience comes together in the brain. István Aranyosi proposes a philosophical hypothesis according to which peripheral processes are considered as constitutive of sensory states rather than merely as causal contributors to them. Part of the motivation for the project is explained in the autobiographical opening chapter, which describes the author’s subjective experiences with severe peripheral nerve damage.

Although Aranyosi’s approach could be classified as part of the current “embodied mind” paradigm in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, this is the first time that notions like “embodiment” and “body” in general are replaced by the more focused concept of the PNS. Aranyosi puts the hypothesis to the test and offers novel solutions to puzzles related to physicalism, functionalism, mental content, embodiment, the extended mind hypothesis, tactile-proprioceptive illusions, as well as to some problems in neuroethics, such as abortion and requests for amputation of healthy body parts. The diversity of the volume’s methodology–which results from a combination of conceptual analysis, discussion of neuroscientific data, philosophical speculation, and first-person phenomenological accounts–makes the book both engaging and highly informative.

Google Books preview:

Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Claudia Hammond (Harper Perennial, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, writer and broadcaster Claudia Hammond explores the mysteries of our perception of time in her book Time Warped.

Why does life seem to speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Why is it almost impossible to go a whole day without checking your watch? Is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?

In Time Warped, Claudia Hammond offers insight into how to manage our time more efficiently, how to speed time up and slow it down at will, how to plan for the future with more accuracy, and she teaches how to use the warping of time to our own benefit.

Google books preview (Canadian edition):

See also: Author’s website