New Scientist - Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain

Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...33

Your Conscious Mind

Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain

NEW SCIENTIST

Contents

Series introduction

New Scientists Instant Expert books shine light on the subjects that we all wish we knew more about: topics that challenge, engage enquiring minds and open up a deeper understanding of the world around us. Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points for curious readers who want to know how things work and why. Look out for the other titles in the series:

The End of Money

How Evolution Explains Everything about Life

How Your Brain Works

Machines that Think

The Quantum World

Where the Universe Came From

Why the Universe Exists

Contributors

Editor: Caroline Williams is a UK-based science journalist and editor. She is a New Scientist consultant and author of Override: My quest to go beyond brain training and take control of my mind (Scribe, 2017).

Series editor: Alison George is Instant Expert editor for New Scientist.

Articles in this book are based on talks at the 2016 New Scientist masterclass on consciousness and articles previously published in New Scientist. They are authored by a range of experts.

Marc Bekoff is emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, whose research focuses on animal behaviour and cognition. He wrote the section in arguing that animals are conscious and should be treated as such.

Patrick Haggard is professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. His research focuses on the subjective experience of voluntary action and on the brains representation of the body. He wrote the article on free will in .

Nicholas Humphrey is a theoretical psychologist based in Cambridge, UK, who studies the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. He is author of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness and co-wrote The invention of consciousness in .

J. Kevin ORegan is former director of the Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception at the Universit Paris Descartes who has proposed a new way to understand consciousness. He is author of Why Red Doesnt Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness (OUP, 2011) He wrote Can we build feel into machines? in .

Liz Paul is senior research fellow at the University of Bristol where she investigates the emotional and cognitive capacities of a range of animal species. She wrote about animal consciousness in .

Anil Seth is co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, UK, who researches the brain basis for consciousness. He is author of the forthcoming title, The Presence Chamber (Faber & Faber, 2019). His research focuses on understanding the biological basis of consciousness, which he writes about in of this book.

Max Tegmark is professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and specializes in precision cosmology. In his book Our Mathematical Universe he explores the physics of consciousness, and he wrote Is consciousness a state of matter? in of this book.

Adam Zeman is a clinician who researches cognitive and behavioural neurology, including neurological disorders of sleep, at University of Exeter Medical School. He is author of Consciousness: A users guide and writes about disorders of consciousness in .

Thanks also to the following journalists and editors:

Anil Ananthaswamy, Celeste Biever, Michael Brooks, Linda Geddes, Hal Hodson, Valerie Jamieson, Dan Jones, Kirstin Kidd, Graham Lawton, Tiffany OCallaghan, Sean ONeill, David Robson, Laura Spinney, Kayt Sukel, Helen Thomson, Prue Waller.

Introduction

Of all the mysteries of human existence these have to be the biggest: What is consciousness? Is it real or just an illusion? And either way, how does it work?

People have been pondering these kinds of questions since long before we knew that the brain was the place where thinking happens. Not until the 5th century BC, when Hippocrates noticed that people with brain injuries lost aspects of their consciousness, did anybody realize that it had anything to do with the brain.

But the questions didnt stop there. How can the squishy, tofu-like matter of the brain give us such richness of experience? How can we tell whether my experience is anything like yours? Or indeed if either of us are experiencing consciousness in the first place? What happens in the unconscious and how does it affect our notions of free will?

We do not yet have all the answers, and these questions will keep scientists and philosophers busy for a few more centuries yet.

What there are, though, are some fascinating ideas many of them stranger than fiction. To navigate through the deep waters of philosophy and neuroscience we have brought together the ideas of the greatest minds in consciousness research and combined them with the expertise of New Scientist writers. We admit that the following pages do not hold all the answers to the mysteries of our minds, but they will certainly raise some fascinating new questions. They may even make you rethink everything you thought you knew about reality.

Caroline Williams, Editor

An introduction to the hard problem of consciousness

There are a lot of hard problems in the world, but only one of them gets to call itselfthehard problem. And that is the problem of consciousness how a kilogram or so of nerve cells conjures up the seamless kaleidoscope of sensations, thoughts, memories and emotions that occupy every waking moment.

The enigma of consciousness

Ask yourself this: Do you feel conscious? The fact that you are even able to consider such a question suggests that the answer is probably yes. Our own consciousness seems to be such an obvious feature of our lives that most of the time we never even stop to ponder it.

Now take a look into the eyes of the nearest human being. Are they conscious too? This time its much more difficult to be sure. It doesnt matter whether you are gazing into the eyes of your beloved or a complete stranger; there is no way of truly knowing whether they are conscious, too. And even if they are, its impossible to know whether their experience of consciousness is anything like yours. Start trying to ask the same sorts of questions of animals and even machines and things start to get even more complicated.

These basic features of understanding consciousness have had philosophers scratching their heads for centuries. Back in the 17th century, Ren Descartes set the tone for the modern debate about the problem by proclaiming that the body and conscious mind are cut from very different kinds of cloth. In Descartes view, the body and the brain are made of matter in the same way as other physical objects such as tables and chairs, and rocks and plants. The mind, however, with our thoughts, beliefs, mental lives and memories, is immaterial something that can neither be seen nor touched nor directly observed. This observation has set the tone for much of the debate about consciousness since.

The hard problem

In 1995 philosopher David Chalmers, at New York University, updated Descartes point of view, dubbing it the hard problem. Chalmers argued that understanding how the brain works doesnt tell you anything about consciousness because while the brain physically exists, the contents of the conscious mind cannot be observed or measured.

Next page

1234567...33

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain»

Look at similar books to Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Scientific American Editors

The Science of Consciousness

Benjamin Libet

Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness

Angus Gellatly

Introducing Mind and Brain: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...)

Harris

Conscious: a brief guide to the fundamental mystery of the mind

Damasio

Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain

Critchlow

Consciousness

Kaku

The future of the mind: the scientific quest to understand, enhance, and empower the mind

Blackmore

Zen and the Art of Consciousness

Annaka Harris

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

Michael S. Gazzaniga

The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

W.R. Klemm

Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate

Stanislas Dehaene

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

Discussion, reviews of the book Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.