Consciousness Studies

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Consciousness Studies is a featured book on Wikibooks because it contains substantial content, it is well-formatted, and the Wikibooks community has decided to feature it on the main page or in other places. Please continue to improve it and thanks for the great work so far! You can edit its advertisement template. This book is also available as a single HTML Document  and as a PDF document.

Consciousness studies embraces the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness.

• Use Google to search Consciousness Studies

A printable version of Consciousness Studies is available. (edit it)

A PDF version is available. File size: 3MB (info)

[edit] Contents

[edit] Introduction

• Introduction
• A note on Naive Realism
• Intended audience and how to read this book

[edit] Part I: Historical review

• Early Ideas
• Medieval Concepts
• Seventeenth And Eighteenth Century Philosophy
• Nineteenth To Twenty First Century Philosophy

[edit] Part II: The problem of consciousness

• What needs to be explained: the description and definition of phenomenal consciousness
• The conflict - where, when and what?
  • The regression argument
  • The subject-object paradox
  • The homunculus argument
  • Phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness
  • Direct Realism
  • Indirect Realism
  • Dualism
  • Idealism
  • Panpsychism
• Breaking down the philosophical and scientific problems
  • The philosophical problem of phenomenal consciousness
  • Epiphenomenalism and the problem of change
  • The problem of time
  • The problem of space
  • The problem of qualia
  • Elementary Information and Information Systems Theory
    • Classification, signs, sense, relations, supervenience etc.
  • Qualia and Information
    • Absent and fading qualia
    • Putnam's twin earth thought experiment
    • The Inverted Qualia Argument
    • The Knowledge Argument
  • The problem of machine and digital consciousness
• Measurement in physics and the preferred basis problem

[edit] Part III: Neuroscience of consciousness

• The neuroscience of consciousness
  • Introduction
  • The substrate of experience
  • Neuroanatomy
  • Topological mapping and cortical columns
• The neurophysiology of sensation and perception
  • Vision
  • Depth perception
• The cortex and thalamus
  • The cortex and consciousness
  • Perception, Imagination, Memory and Dreams
  • More about Models
  • Blindsight
  • The Role of the Thalamus
  • General Anaesthesia and the Thalamus
  • The function of consciousness
• Perceptual "filling in"
• Rivalries and synchronisation
  • Binocular Rivalry, Pattern Rivalry and Binocular Fusion
  • Synchronisation of Neural Processes
  • EEG and synchronisation
  • Event related potentials
  • The integration delay
• Global Workspace Theory
• The "cognitive map" and the neural basis of perceptual space
• Behaviourism And Consciousness
• Models Of Access Consciousness
  • Neural networks
  • Quantum information processing

[edit] Part IV: Explanations of Consciousness

• Contemporary explanations of consciousness
  • The identity theory of mind
    • Scientific theories
  • Functionalism
  • Dualism
  • Intentionalism
  • Higher order thought
  • Eliminativism
  • Mysterianism
  • Idealism and panpsychism
• Other explanations of consciousness
  • Consciousness-only
  • BioPsychoSociology Model 1 BPS Model

[edit] Appendices

Some physical science for consciousness studies:

• Ontology of Newtonian physics: kinetic energy and magnetism
• The origin of the metric tensor
• Action, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics

• Index
• Notes for the Contributors
• Contributors