Living Consciousness

Download or read book Living Consciousness written by G. William Barnard and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 Godbey Authors' Awards presented by the Godbey Lecture Series in Southern Methodist University's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Living Consciousness examines the brilliant, but now largely ignored, insights of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Presenting a detailed and accessible analysis of Bergson's thought, G. William Barnard highlights how Bergson's understanding of the nature of consciousness and, in particular, its relationship to the physical world remain strikingly relevant to numerous contemporary fields. These range from quantum physics and process thought to philosophy of mind, depth psychology, transpersonal theory, and religious studies. Bergson's notion of consciousness as a ceaselessly dynamic, inherently temporal substance of reality itself provides a vision that can function as a persuasive alternative to mechanistic and reductionistic understandings of consciousness and reality. Throughout the work, Barnard offers "ruminations" or neo-Bergsonian responses to a series of vitally important questions such as: What does it mean to live consciously, authentically, and attuned to our inner depths? Is there a philosophically sophisticated way to claim that the survival of consciousness after physical death is not only possible but likely?

Download or read book The Feeling of Life Itself written by Christof Koch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

Download or read book Living in the New Consciousness written by Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 1988 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains how to reach a new level of consciousness in which rationality is transcended, and discusses the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Download or read book Conscious Living written by Gay Hendricks and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2001-01-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his bestselling book Conscious Living, pioneering therapist Gay Hendricks taught couples how to find balance and happiness in relationships.Now he gives us Conscious Living, a practical guide for the individual that brings new insights into a fundamental truth of daily truth of daily life. Five simple lessons of "conscious living", rooted in the ancient traditions of Stoicism and Taoism, help us overcome obstacles and fears and awaken our own creativity.

Download or read book Living Systems, Evolving Consciousness, and the Emerging Person written by Louis Sander and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of previously published papers can be viewed as a story of the gradual emergence of an overarching idea through the course of a life’s work. The idea concerns the way emerging knowledge of developmental processes, biological systems, and therapeutic process can be integrated in terms of basic principles that govern the living system as an ongoing creative process – a process in which there is a continuing impetus, both energizing and motivational, that moves the living system toward an enhanced coherence in its engagement with its surround as it achieves an ever-increasing inclusiveness of complexity. The papers have been selected in a roughly chronological order from a career of early developmental research within the background of psychoanalytic thinking. The biological underpinnings of psychoanalysis can be extended by systems thinking. Our notions of the evolution of consciousness can also be extended from this simple level of a neural machinery essential for adaptation and survival to the capacity for the awareness of one’s own inner state within the flow of one’s engagement with one’s surround. From this enrichment of inner experiencing through evolving self-awareness, the unique organization of the "person" emerges within the developmental process – from expectancies and emotions, to values, meaning, purpose, goals, and "direction". The title of the book has been chosen to capture this sequence. Further evolution of conscious organization will enable the human species to achieve the state of being "together-with" and yet "distinct-from" as the system as a whole, on a wider, more global level, gains increasing coherence as it complexity increases. Hopefully, the implications of this idea will emerge in the reader’s thinking, as the chapters move from the level of adaptation to recognition.

Download or read book Living in the Borderland written by Jerome S. Bernstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the evolution of consciousness, describing the emergence of the Borderland consciousness and the challenge this presents to the Western medicine's concept of pathology.

Download or read book The Living Mind written by Richard Dien Winfield and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As enthusiasm for computational models of the mind has waned and the revolution in neuroscience has progressed, attention in philosophy and cognitive science has shifted toward more biological approaches. The Living Mind establishes that mind cannot be immaterial or reduced to mechanistic or cybernetic processes, but must instead possess a subjectivity embodied in an animal organism. On this basis, the work proceeds to show why mind involves a pre-conscious psyche, a non-discursive consciousness and self-consciousness, and an intelligence overcoming the opposition of consciousness. In so doing, The Living Mind provides a detailed account of the psyche and consciousness, paving the way for conceiving the psychological enabling conditions of rational theory and practice.