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Author:   Nicholas Humphrey
Publisher:   Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Imprint:   Copernicus Books
Edition:   Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1992
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.760kg
ISBN:  

9780387987194

ISBN 10:   0387987193
Pages:   238
Publication Date:   18 June 1999
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Mind and Body.- Puzzling Work : An Aside About Language.- What Happened in History: The Inside Story.- The Double Province of the Senses.- What Do We See? .- Color is the Keyboard.- In the Realm of the Senses.- Shuttle Vision.- It Must Look Queer! .- New Arrangements.- Mind-Blindness and Blind-Mindness.- More About Blindsight.- A Fire In The Hand; A Dagger of the Mind.- He Thought He Saw An Elephant.- Here It Lies.- Here What Lies? A Chapter About Definition.- Five Characteristics in Search of A Theory.- The Problem of Ownership (A Tack to Starboard).- The Question Of Indexicals (A Tack to Port).- Plus CA Change....- A Little Mind Music.- Specific Nerve Energies?.- Smoke Without Fire.- Time Present.- Hurrah!.- Being and Nothingness.- 229.- 235.

Reviews

Actually, not a history of the mind, but a theory of consciousness - and an amazingly parsimonious theory at that. Consciousness, contends experimental psychologist Humphrey, is nothing but the having of sensations - sensations that have become internalized and are the origin of actions that transform the universe. Looking at the setting sun over Cambridge (England), Humphrey says, I am representing the light arriving at my retina aa a circular patch of redness happening to me and aa a fiery orb existing in the galaxy. All the while he is living in a continuous present, a persistence of time accompanied by reverberating cerebral sentiments. To arrive at this theory, Humphrey begins with the hypothesis that sensation and perception are separate - that there are two independent channels in the brain rather than a serial order in which, for example, perception follows sensation. Humphrey's championing of the separatist approach involves a discourse on evolution aa well aa the elaboration of experiments in which blind subjects (i.e., devoid of visual sensations) learned visual perception by virtue of having a tiny TV camera image translated to vibrations on a patch of skin. All this is very interesting, and smartly, wittily told: Humphrey has a marvelous repertoire of quotes and anecdotes that make for pleasurable reading. But is the theory convincing? The reader armed with perceptual memory, the daydreamer, and the mind engaged in mentally providing a theorem are not living in a sensory mode engaged in contact with the world, but all enjoy some degree of consciousness. Moreover, what can be said of neuroscience, with its cells and circuitry? If there are dual circuits separating sensation from perception, let's see them. Only then, perhaps, could one argue that Humphrey has developed a new theory of perception - not a touchy-feely one - to explain consciousness. (Kirkus Reviews)

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