my mind on books

Science Daily has an article on the new book Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World by Dario Maestripien, while as a counterpoint Dissident Voice discusses “neuroscience and moral politics.”

Also David Chalmers announces a new online bibliography on philosophy of mind and the science of consciousness at MindPapers, with over 18000 entries! (And it appears to be very well organized too, though I haven’t had time yet to delve in there much.)

TedTalks has posted a talk by V.S. Ramachandran.

TEDBlog recently posted a list of all the TEDTalks (as of mid-Oct 07). They also have talks listed by themes; here is the theme “How the Mind Works.”

Ramachandran’s 2003 Reith Lectures

Recent book:

Forthcoming book:

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle (10/21/07) had an excerpt from Love and Language by Ilan Stavans: “The book’s central theme is how the concept of love – whether platonic, courtly, romantic, mystical or metaphysical – changes over time and from one civilization to another.”

Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness by Jeff Warren, reviewed in the Globe and Mail, also has an intriguing website.

The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness is an entrancing taxonomy of waking, sleeping and dreaming states of consciousness. It is a book of psychology and neuroscience, and also of adventure, wherein the author not only comes to a new understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body, but—perhaps mistakenly—comes to believe he possesses thrilling and unusual consciousness superpowers. The many figures, sequential panels and mechanical devices are rendered in the author’s own hand.

“Online Papers in Philosophy” is a blog that tracks, you know, online papers in philosophy, many with abstracts. The latest update (Oct. 19) includes an entry by Thomas Metzinger on “Self Models” at Scholarpedia, part of Scholarpedia’s Encyclopedia of Cognitive Neuroscience. (Metzinger is author of ‘Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity‘)