Overview

This book is about all things consciousness, great and small. It starts by pointing to the key characteristic of consciousness, without realizing which it cannot be understood: like everything else about the mind, it is fundamentally a kind of computation. Among many other matters, this explains: how it is that we share some aspects of consciousness with bacteria; how it can arise in artificial machines and not just living ones; how the empty cocoon of the self that it spins ends up pretending to be the butterfly; and how consciousness dooms this virtual butterfly to the splendor and the suffering of being awake and aware. Unlike most other books on consciousness, this one includes a discussion of some possible ways whereby we, pinned like butterflies by our species’ history and socioeconomic circumstances, can awake to our collective predicament and join forces to do something about it. It should be of interest to all readers who care about the nature of our lived experience — andabout our survival, which depends on developing critical consciousness of our dire situation and the social dynamics that shape it.

Full Product Details

Author:   Shimon Edelman
Publisher:   Springer International Publishing AG
Imprint:   Springer International Publishing AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2023
Weight:   0.840kg
ISBN:  

9783031240119

ISBN 10:   3031240111
Pages:   226
Publication Date:   07 April 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Part I THE HUMAN CONDITION 1Prelude The story of Oh: a brief account of consciousness, from Amoeba toZoloft. 1 Selfless Consciousness Tower of power. The brain’s virtual reality. Identity theory. Computationall the way down. No cognition without representation.What makes representation special and how it can give rise to basicphenomenal awareness. Stimulus and response and awareness andzombies. Slipping into the future. Once again, with feeling. TheGang of Four. Minimal consciousness. The first revolution.Notes Further reading  2 Minimal Selves Tired starlings. The web of cause and effect. Emergence: the effectiveself as a local causal domain. Emergence and causality: Wherehas all the physics gone? The self and others. The captive scapegoatand the birth of tragedy. The second revolution.Notes Further reading  3 Self-consciousness Self-affirmation. Self-evidencing. Self-creation. Self-location andperspective. Body ownership and agency. Free will. The self as agood regulator. The self’s blankie. Subjectivity of self-models. Phenomenalcontent and phenomenal affect. Virtual reality, real suffering.The third revolution.NotesFurther reading  4 Speech and Sign The dawning of magic. A shared toolbox. Writing. Stories and culture.Narrative selves. Power, persuasion, and propaganda. Manifestodestiny. The fourth revolution.Notes Further reading  5 Self and SocietyA beast or a god. The discovery of critical consciousness. Learningfreedom. Selves and collectives. Morality and cooperation.Conscience and consciousness. The fifth revolution. The counterrevolution,or: What Went Wrong.Notes Further reading  Part II THE ROADS TO FREEDOM Interlude At a crossroads. 6 Self-care Suffering: eliminable and not. Too much self, too little social. Thedance of life. The heart of a heartless world. Being and nothingnessand zombies. The science of getting help. The sixth revolution.Notes Further reading 7 A World to Win The status quo. False consciousness and alienation. Critical consciousness:coming to senses. Optimism of the will. Selves in society.Armed love. The last revolution.Notes Further reading Epilogue The way out. Index 

Reviews

“This is an unconventional book. It is a fusion of scientific review, psychological analysis, personal memoir, and political manifesto. It works. … The erudition of the author is amazing. … There are plenty of endnotes that can be read almost as a parallel chapter to the main text. Each chapter has an extensive bibliography as well. This book is a job well done.” (Anthony J. Duben, Computing Reviews, October 9, 2023)

Author Information

Shimon Edelman holds degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science and is presently Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Having worked and published in computer and human vision and motor control, language acquisition and evolution, computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, brain imaging, theoretical and computational neuroscience, and computational social science, he is now primarily interested in consciousness in all its manifestations: from the basic sentience of an amoeba to critical and class consciousness of human selves in their natural social settings. His most recent book is Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths: A Realist's View of the Human Condition.

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