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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Vast Panorama of Consciousness, March 9, 2007
This review is from: The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (Paperback)
This book is a typical example of the best type of Blackwell Companion Book. In various incarnations over the years, Blackwell has remained one of the most revered of publishing houses. Their books are written by world experts in their respective fields and something unusual: each chapter or book is heavily peer-reviewed. This is important: so many books appear to be promising, only for us to discover that they are full of mistakes: error of omission or commission, or errors in citations and attributions. I have found very few errors at all in this enormous tome.
Blackwell also produce their books on high quality paper using well-drawn and appropriate illustration. This book is a perfect example.
After an introduction by the editors - Susan Schneider from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and Max Velmans from Goldsmiths College, University of London, the 700 plus pages are divided into five parts and 55 chapters:
Part I: Problems of Consciousness:
1. A Brief History of the Scientific Approach to the Study of Consciousness: Chris Frith (University College London) and Geraint Rees (University College London)
2. Philosophical Problems of Consciousness: Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin)
Part II: The Domain of Consciousness: Origins and Extent of Consciousness:
3. Consciousness in Infants: Colwyn Trevarthen (University of Edinburgh) and Vasuvedi Reddy (University of Portsmouth)
4. Animal Consciousness: Colin Allen (Indiana University) and Mark Bekoff (University of Colorado)
5. Rethinking the Evolution of Consciousness: Thomas Polger (University of Cincinnati)
6. Machine Consciousness: Igor Aleksander (Imperial College, London)
Some Varieties of Conscious Experience:
7. Normal and Abnormal States of Consciousness: J. Allan Hobson (Harvard Medical School)
8. Affective Consciousness: Jaak Panksepp (Washington State University)
9. Clinical Pathologies and Unusual Experiences: Richard P. Bentall (University of Manchester)
10. Altered States of Consciousness: Drug Induced States: Edward F. Pace-Schott (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and J. Allan Hobson (Harvard Medical School)
11. Meditation: David Fontana (Liverpool John Moores University)
12. Mystical Experience: David Fontana (Liverpool John Moores University)
Breakdowns and the Unity of Consciousness:
13. The Case of Blindsight: Lawrence Weiskrantz (University of Oxford)
14. Split-Brain Cases: Mary K. Colvin (Dartmouth College) and Michael S. Gazzaniga (University of California, Santa Barbara)
15. Philosophical Psychopathology and Self-Consciousness: G. Lynn Stephens (University of Alabama) and George Graham (Wake Forest University)
16. Coming Together: the Unity of Conscious Experience: Barry Dainton (University of Liverpool)
Part III: Some Contemporary Theories of Consciousness:
17. The Hard Problem of Consciousness: David Chalmers (Australian National University)
18. The Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness: Bernard J. Baars (Neurosciences Institute, San Diego)
19. The Intermediate Level Theory of Consciousness: Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina)
20. Representationalism about Consciousness: William Seager (University of Toronto at Scarborough) and David Bourget (University of Toronto)
21. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: Peter Caruthers (University of Maryland)
22. The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness: Giulio Tononi (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
23. Quantum Mechanical Theories of Consciousness: Henry Stapp (University of California, Berkeley)
24. Daniel Dennett on the Nature of Consciousness: Susan Schneider (University of Pennsylvania)
25. Biological Naturalism: John Searle (University of California, Berkeley)
26. Mysterianism: Mark Rowlands (University of Hertfordshire)
27. Dualism, Reductionism, and Reflexive Monism: Max Velmans (Goldsmiths, University of London)
28. Naturalistic Dualism: David Chalmers (Australian National University)
Part IV: Some Major Topics in the Philosophy of Consciousness:
29. Anti-materialist Arguments and Influential Replies: Joe Levine (Ohio State University)
30. Functionalism and Qualia: Robert Van Gulick (Syracuse University)
31. The Knowledge Argument: Torin Alter (University of Alabama)
32. The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness: Jaegwon Kim (Brown University)
33. The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness: Pete Mandik (William Paterson University)
34. Type Materialism for Phenomenal Consciousness: Brian McLaughlin (Rutgers University)
35. Sensory and Perceptual Consciousness: Austen Clark (University of Connecticut)
36. Self-Consciousness: José Luis Bermúdez (Washington University)
37. Consciousness and Intentionality: George Graham (Wake Forest University), Terry Horgan (University of Arizona), and John Tienson (University of Memphis)
Part V: Major Topics in the Science of Consciousness: Topics in the Cognitive
Psychology of Consciousness:
38. Attention and Consciousness: Nilli Lavie (University College London)
39. Inattentional Blindness, Change Blindness and Consciousness: Alva Noë (University of California, Berkeley)
40. Preconscious Processing: Phil Merikle (University of Waterloo)
41. Implicit and Explicit Memory and Learning: John Kihlstrom (University of California, Berkeley), Jennifer Dorfman (Northwestern University), and Lillian Park (Rotman Research Institute, Toronto)
42. Consciousness of Action: Marc Jeannerod (Claude Bernard University, Lyon)
Topics in the Neuroscience of Consciousness:
43. Methodologies for Identifying the Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Geraint Rees (University College London) and Chris Frith (University College London)
44. A Neurobiological Framework for Consciousness: Francis Crick (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies) and Christof Koch (California Institute of Technology)
45. A Theory of Micro-consciousness: Semir Zeki (University College London)
46. Global Disorders of Consciousness: Nicholas D. Schiff (Weill Medical College, Cornell University)
47. Large-Scale Temporal Coordination of Cortical Activity as a Prerequisite for Conscious Experience: Wolf Singer (Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt am Main)
48. Duplex Vision: Separate Cortical Pathways for Conscious Perception and the Control of Action: Melvyn A. Goodale (University of Western Ontario)
49. Consciousness and Anesthesia: John F. Kihlstrom (University of California, Berkeley) and Randall C. Cork (Louisiana State University Medical Center)
50. Neural Dominance, Neural Deference, and Sensorimotor Dynamics: Susan Hurley (All Souls College, Oxford)
51. Benjamin Libet's Work on the Neuroscience of Free Will: William P. Banks (Pomona College) and Susan Pockett (University of Auckland)
First-Person Contributions to the Science of Consciousness:
52. Cognition, Fringe Consciousness, and the Legacy of William James: Bruce Mangan (University of California, Berkeley)
53. Phenomenological Approaches to Consciousness: Shaun Gallagher (University of Central Florida)
54. Eastern Methods for Investigating Mind and Consciousness: Jonathan Shear (Virginia Commonwealth University)
55. An Epistemology for the Study of Consciousness: Max Velmans (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Appendix: List of Useful Web Resources in Consciousness Studies
With so many authors, it is inevitable that some experts will lament the absence of some favorite writer or other, or else will take issue with some facts or interpretation. But most chapters do an excellent job of airing each side of an argument, debate or discussion.
This is a big book in every sense of the word. It is not inexpensive, but in my opinion is worth every penny. It will be a long time - if ever - before there will be a last word in a field as enormous as the study of human consciousness. But for now, this is one of the best and most comprehensive books available.
If you have any interest in consciousness, you will find a great deal of fascinating and thought provoking material in this book.
Highly recommended.
Richard G. Petty, MD, author of
Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life
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