“Scientific Approaches to Consciousness” – UC Berkeley course podcast
Written on January 25, 2009
A UC Berkeley course on “Scientific Approaches to Consciousness” has just begun and is available as an audio podcast. The instructor is John F. Kihlstrom.
The first lecture discusses required and recommended texts near the beginning, followed by administrative details about the course, with some substantive discussion of consciousness starting at around 30 min.
Upcoming lecture topics include introspection; the mind-body problem; attention and automaticity; the explicit and the implicit; anesthesia and coma; sleep and dreams; hysteria and hypnosis; daydreaming, absorption and meditation; consciousness and the self; and the origins of consciousness.
Texts for the course:
- The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness
- The Mystery of Consciousness by John Searle
- Thinks . . . by David Lodge
Other recommended titles:
- Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore
- Exploring Consciousness by Rita Carter
- The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates ed. by Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere
- Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness ed. by Bernard J Baars, William P Banks, and James B Newman
Also mentioned was The Psychology of Consciousness by William Farthing, a book that would have been a good text, but is unfortunately out of date.
Filed in: consciousness.
