Ontology of Consciousness

Ontology of Consciousness
Author: Helmut Wautischer
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 669
Release: 2008-04-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262232596

Scholars from many different disciplines examine consciousness through the lens of intellectual approaches and cultures ranging from cosmology research and cell biophysics laboratories to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in a volume that extends consciousness studies beyond the limits of current neuroscience research. The "hard problem" of today's consciousness studies is subjective experience: understanding why some brain processing is accompanied by an experienced inner life. Recent scientific advances offer insights for understanding the physiological and chemical phenomenology of consciousness. But by leaving aside the internal experiential nature of consciousness in favor of mapping neural activity, such science leaves many questions unanswered. In Ontology of Consciousness, scholars from a range of disciplines—from neurophysiology to parapsychology, from mathematics to anthropology and indigenous non-Western modes of thought—go beyond these limits of current neuroscience research to explore insights offered by other intellectual approaches to consciousness. These scholars focus their attention on such philosophical approaches to consciousness as Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, North American Indian insights, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilization, and the Byzantine Empire. Some draw on artifacts and ethnographic data to make their point. Others translate cultural concepts of consciousness into modern scientific language using models and mathematical mappings. Many consider individual experiences of sentience and existence, as seen in African communalism, Hindi psychology, Zen Buddhism, Indian vibhuti phenomena, existentialism, philosophical realism, and modern psychiatry. Some reveal current views and conundrums in neurobiology to comprehend sentient intellection. Contributors Karim Akerma, Matthijs Cornelissen, Antoine Courban, Mario Crocco, Christian de Quincey, Thomas B. Fowler, Erlendur Haraldsson, David. J. Hufford, Pavel B. Ivanov, Heinz Kimmerle, Stanley Krippner, Armand J. Labbé, James Maffie, Hubert Markl, Graham Parkes, Michael Polemis, E Richard Sorenson, Mircea Steriade, Thomas Szasz, Mariela Szirko, Robert A.F. Thurman, Edith L.B. Turner, Julia Watkin, Helmut Wautischer

Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties

Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties
Author: Mihretu P. Guta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2018-07-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351598899

This book aims to show the centrality of a proper ontology of properties in thinking about consciousness. Philosophers have long grappled with what is now known as the hard problem of consciousness, i.e., how can subjective or qualitative features of our experience—such as how a strawberry tastes—arise from brain states? More recently, philosophers have incorporated what seems like promising empirical research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology in an attempt to bridge the gap between measurable mental states on the one hand, and phenomenal qualities on the other. In Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties, many of the leading philosophers working on this issue, as well as a few emerging scholars, have written 14 new essays on this problem. The essays address topics as diverse as substance dualism, mental causation, the metaphysics of artificial intelligence, the logic of conceivability, constitution, extended minds, the emergence of consciousness, and neuroscience and the unity and neural correlates of consciousness, but are nonetheless unified in a collective objective: the need for a proper ontology of properties to understand the hard problem of consciousness, both on non-empirical and empirical grounds.

The Mind's Construction

The Mind's Construction
Author: Matthew Soteriou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2013-08-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199678456

Matthew Soteriou provides an original philosophical account of sensory and cognitive aspects of consciousness. He explores distinctions of temporal character in our mental lives—especially in relation to the exercise of agency—and illuminates the more general issue of the place and role of mental action in the metaphysics of mind.

Consciousness and Language

Consciousness and Language
Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2002-07-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521597449

Publisher Description

Ontology after Philosophical Psychology

Ontology after Philosophical Psychology
Author: Michela Bella
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2019-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1498560636

Ontology after Philosophical Psychology addresses the question of William James’s continuity of consciousness, with a view to its possible actualizations. In particular, Michela Bella critically delineates James's discourse. In the wake of Darwin's theory of evolution at the end of the nineteenth century, James's reflections emerged in the field of physiological psychology, where he developed for the case for a renewed epistemology and a new metaphysical framework to help us understand the most interesting theories and scientific discoveries about the human mind. Bella’s analysis of the theme of continuity makes it possible to appreciate, both historically and theoretically, the importance of James's gradual transition from making observations of experimental psychology on the continuity of thought to developing an epistemological and ontological argument that continuity is a characteristic of experience and reality. This analysis makes it possible both to clarify James's position in relation to his historical context and to highlight the most original results of his work.

Existentialist Ontology and Human Consciousness

Existentialist Ontology and Human Consciousness
Author: William L. McBride
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1135631824

Existentialist Ontology and Human Consciousness The majority of the distinguished scholarly articles in this volume focus on Sartre's early philosophical work, which dealt first with imagination and the emotions, then with the critique of Husserl's notion of a transcendental ego, and finally with systematic ontology presented in his best-known book, Being and Nothingness. In addition, since his preoccupation with ontological questions and especially with the meanings of ego, self, and consciousness endured throughout his career, other essays discuss these themes in light of later developments both in Sartre's own thought and in the phenomenological, hermeneutic, and analytic traditions.

Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness

Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness
Author: Nancy J. Holland
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-07-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253035988

Nancy J. Holland turns to the thought of Martin Heidegger to help understand an age-old philosophical question: Is there a split between the body and the mind? Arguing against philosophical positions that define human consciousness as an overarching phenomenon or reduce it to the brain or physicality, Holland contends that consciousness is relational and it is this relationship that allows us to inhabit and negotiate in the world. Holland forwards a complex and nuanced reading of Heidegger as she focuses on consciousness, being, and what might constitute the animal or, more broadly, other-than-human world. Holland engages with the depth and breadth of Heidegger's work as she opens space for a discussion about the uniqueness of human consciousness.

Mental Causation and Ontology

Mental Causation and Ontology
Author: S. C. Gibb
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2013-03-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199603774

This book demonstrates the importance of ontology for a central debate in philosophy of mind. Mental causation seems an obvious aspect of the world. But it is hard to understand how it can happen unless we get clear about what the entities involved in the process are. An international team of contributors presents new work on this problem.

Immanence and Illusion in Sartre’s Ontology of Consciousness

Immanence and Illusion in Sartre’s Ontology of Consciousness
Author: Caleb Heldt
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030495523

This book is a critical re-evaluation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, in which a theory of egological complicity and self-deception informing his later better known theory of bad faith is developed. This novel reinterpretation offers a systematic challenge to orthodox apprehensions of Sartre’s conceputualization of transcendental consciousness and the role that the ego plays within his account of pre-reflective consciousness. Heldt persuasively demonstrates how an adequate comprehension of Sartre’s theories of negation and reflection can reveal the world as it appears to human consciousness as one in which our reality is capable of becoming littered with illusions. As the foundation upon which the rest of Sartre’s philosophical project is built, it is essential that the phenomenological ontology of Sartre’s early writings be interpreted with clarity. This book provides such a reinterpretation. In doing so, a philosophical inquiry emerges which is genuinely contemporary in its aim and scope and which seeks to demonstrate the significance of Sartre’s thought, not only as significant to the history of philosophy, but to ongoing debates in continental philosophy and philosophy of mind.