Consciousness and Self-Consciousness: A Defense of the Higher-Order Thought T...

Peter Carruthers's essays on consciousness and related issues have had a substantial impact on the field, and many of his best are now collected here in revised form. Together they develop, defend, and explore the implications of Carruthers's distinctive theory of experiential consciousness; they discuss the differences between conscious experiencing and conscious thinking; and, controversially, they consider what would follow, either for morality or for comparative psychology, if it should turn out that animals lack conscious experiences. This collection will be of great interest to anyone working in philosophy of mind or cognitive science.

This revolutionary study presents new facts and an original theory about the origin of the thought and literature that may be considered "modern." Using fifty-one new translations of sonnets from four languages spanning seven centuries, Oppenheimer argues that "modern" thought and literature were born with the invention of the sonnet in 13th-century Italy. In revealing the sonnet as the first lyric form since the fall of the Roman Empire meant not for music or performance but for silent reading, the book demonstrates that the sonnet was the first modern literary form deliberately intended to portray the self in conflict and to explore self-consciousness. The wide-ranging essay of Part I traces the influences of the sonnet, as invented by Giacomo da Lentino, combining historical fact with the history of ideas and literary criticism. Part II illustrates, in bilingual format, the sonnet's growing appeal and variety during the centuries that followed with translations from Italian, German, French, and Spanis

In The Face of Consciousness, doctors Donovan and Joiner Bey have formulated a new perspective on consciousness and its manifestation as life through the synthesis of essential principles from the biological and physical sciences, psychology, philosophy, mythology and various traditional schools of mystical thought (e.g., Kabbalah, Sufism, etc.). In addition, their unified theory of life explains the "why" of creation and defines the transformational process of healing in a way in which, when practically applied to one’s life, it can enable one to transcend death and transform illness into greater life.

A thought-provoking and accessible guide to how an ancient spiritual practice known as Raja Yoga meditation—Yoga of the mind—can help us develop attitudes that will dramatically improve the quality of our inner lives. Using the author’s own story as a starting point, this illuminating work provides a whole new perspective on matters of the spirit, including rediscovering the nature of the self, understanding and exploring the different levels of consciousness, learning about the natural law that governs the universe, and how to support your spiritual development with the right lifestyle.  Previously published by the Brahma Kumaris Organization—a group that seeks to help everyone rediscover his or her potential for greatness by facilitating a process of spiritual awakening that is both non-denominational and respectful of all traditions—Pathways to Higher Consciousness is an enlightening entry on the very first Sterling Ethos list.  

A thought-provoking and accessible guide to how an ancient spiritual practice known as Raja Yoga meditation—Yoga of the mind—can help us develop attitudes that will dramatically improve the quality of our inner lives. Using the author’s own story as a starting point, this illuminating work provides a whole new perspective on matters of the spirit, including rediscovering the nature of the self, understanding and exploring the different levels of consciousness, learning about the natural law that governs the universe, and how to support your spiritual development with the right lifestyle.  Previously published by the Brahma Kumaris Organization—a group that seeks to help everyone rediscover his or her potential for greatness by facilitating a process of spiritual awakening that is both non-denominational and respectful of all traditions—Pathways to Higher Consciousness is an enlightening entry on the very first Sterling Ethos list.  

"The last great mystery for science, " consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments and clearly describes the major theories, with illustrations and lively cartoons to help explain the experiments. Topics include vision and attention, theories of self, experiments on action and awareness, altered states of consciousness, and the effects of brain damage and drugs. This lively, engaging, and authoritative book provides a clear overview of the subject that combines the perspectives of philosoph

Author's SummaryEvolutionary theory is recognized as one of the most powerful approaches we have for understanding ourselves. But it is only beginning to be applied to our most essential feature, consciousness. This book tells a plausible story of how consciousness evolved, beginning with the simplest forms of existence. Citing recent studies in animal learning, perception and behavior, together with molecular biology, cell biology and neurophysiology, the book shows how dimensions of experienced space and time, together with increasing awareness of self and other, emerged in association with hierarchical complexity of information processing entities. This is the first complete history of consciousness ever written. Review by Kirkus DiscoveriesA lucid, thought-provoking and wide-ranging metaphysical treatise by novelist, scientific researcher and Stanford Ph.D. Smith. Heralded as “the first complete history of consciousness ever written, ” The Dimensions of Experience covers an astonishing amount of ground, from evolutionary theory to postmodern linguistics, physics and even obscure Victorian literature. Smith’s central contention is that ‘the miraculous is much closer to home” than many human beings understand. By this he does not mean a hidden realm of elves and dragons—or any sort of religious transcendence, at least as understood in the biblical sense—but a miracle of dimensions. “However many dimensions there are in the universe, we—all of us, all forms of life—exist in all of them, ” Smith argues. “They are all within our reach. What we lack—some species more than others, but again, all of us to some extent—is the ability to experience all of these dimensions.” Over 11 tightly written and edited chapters, Smith goes on to explicate the evolution of consciousness and how we came to understand the world as we do today. He discusses transcendental meditation and the benefits and fallacies therein; he ventures bravely into the world of coral reefs, worm colonies and bacteria, showing how even the simplest of organisms experience life in a range of dimensions. “According to science, ” he writes, “the three major dimensions of space are a condition of all existence, within which the entire evolutionary history of earth has played out.” Not so, he counters. The Dimensions of Experience makes the case for a more dynamic form of evolution, where beings evolve through time and space, but also through dimensions we do not yet properly understand. Smith’s great accomplishment is verisimilitude; he holds forth with equal skill on both the biology of proto-organisms and the knottiest work of post-structuralists like Derrida, and he weaves every chapter deftly into a convincing narrative. An engaging, supple scientific text, blessedly free of weighty academic jargon.Review from Clarion Foreword (edited for space reasons)The Dimensions of Experience: A Natural History of Consciousness presents the ideas of Andrew P. Smith, a longtime practitioner of meditation and a trained neuroscientist. He endeavors to link his knowledge of science with the intimations of universal consciousness he has perceived through meditation. His exploration, reflective of the ancient concept of panpsychism, supposes that all forms of life experience consciousness... The author writes in a lucid style that makes the book accessible to nonscientists, and his wry humor brings alive the scientific detail he describes… Neither all scientists nor every spiritual seeker will agree with the premises presented in this book. However, it offers people of both disciplines, as well as lay readers, some challenging ideas to consider as they contemplate a possible connection between the material and spiritual worlds.

Store Search search Title, ISBN and Author Your Greater Self or the Inner Consciousness by William Walker Atkinson Estimated delivery 3-12 business days Format Paperback Condition Brand New 1908. This includes a course of lessons on the unexplored regions of the mind, the subliminal self, the superconscious mind, the subconscious mind automatic mentation, intuition, instinct, psychic forethought and other wonderful phases of the great within. Contents: Inner Consciousness; The Planes of Conscio

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge. Sebastian Rödl's thesis is that self-knowledge is not empirical; it does not spring from sensory affection. Rather, self-knowledge is knowledge from spontaneity; its object and its source are the subject's own activity, in the primary instance its acts of thinking, both theoretical and practical thinking, belief and action. The chapters of this book cover action and belief, freedom and reason, receptive knowledge and the second person. Each of these topics deserves its own book. And yet they would all be books on self-consciousness, for self-consciousness is the principle of their respective subject matters. Contemporary theories have been badly served by failing to acknowledge this. Taking the full measure of this insight requires a major conceptual reorientation in action theory, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology, which is begun in this book. As it can be said to be the principal thought animating Kant and his Idealist successors that self-consciousness occupies this central position, the book can be read as an attempt to recover and rejuvenate the achievement of the German Idealist tradition.

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge. Sebastian Rödl's thesis is that self-knowledge is not empirical; it does not spring from sensory affection. Rather, self-knowledge is knowledge from spontaneity; its object and its source are the subject's own activity, in the primary instance its acts of thinking, both theoretical and practical thinking, belief and action. The chapters of this book cover action and belief, freedom and reason, receptive knowledge and the second person. Each of these topics deserves its own book. And yet they would all be books on self-consciousness, for self-consciousness is the principle of their respective subject matters. Contemporary theories have been badly served by failing to acknowledge this. Taking the full measure of this insight requires a major conceptual reorientation in action theory, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology, which is begun in this book. As it can be said to be the principal thought animating Kant and his Idealist successors that self-consciousness occupies this central position, the book can be read as an attempt to recover and rejuvenate the achievement of the German Idealist tradition.