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Theory Of Consciousness
Models of consciousness are used to illustrate and aid in understanding and explaining distinctive aspects of consciousness. Sometimes the models are labeled theories of consciousness. Anil Seth defines such models as those that relate brain phenomena such as fast irregular electrical activity and widespread brain activation to properties of consciousness such as qualia. Seth allows for different types of models including mathematical, logical, verbal and conceptual models. Neuroscience Neural correlates of consciousness The Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) formalism is used as a major step towards explaining consciousness. The NCC are defined to constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept, and consequently sufficient for consciousness. In this formalism, consciousness is viewed as a state-dependent property of some undefined complex, adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system. Dehaene–Changeux ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electromagnetic Theories Of Consciousness
Electromagnetic theories of consciousness propose that consciousness can be understood as an electromagnetic phenomenon. Overview Theorists differ in how they relate consciousness to electromagnetism. Electromagnetic ''field'' theories (or "EM field theories") of consciousness propose that consciousness results when a brain produces an electromagnetic field with specific characteristics. Susan Pockett and Johnjoe McFadden have proposed EM field theories; William Uttal has criticized McFadden's and other field theories. In general, quantum mind theories do not treat consciousness as an electromagnetic phenomenon, with a few exceptions. AR Liboff has proposed that "incorporating EM field-mediated communication into models of brain function has the potential to reframe discussions surrounding consciousness". Also related are E. Roy John's work and Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts theory "Operational Architectonics framework of brain-mind functioning". Cemi theory The sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Mind
The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a group of hypotheses proposing that local physical laws and interactions from classical mechanics or connections between neurons alone cannot explain consciousness. These hypotheses posit instead that quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition that cause nonlocalized quantum effects, interacting in smaller features of the brain than cells, may play an important part in the brain's function and could explain critical aspects of consciousness. These scientific hypotheses are as yet unvalidated, and they can overlap with quantum mysticism. History Eugene Wigner developed the idea that quantum mechanics has something to do with the workings of the mind. He proposed that the wave function collapses due to its interaction with consciousness. Freeman Dyson argued that "mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron". Other contemporary physicists and philosoph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition (psychology), volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: ordered distinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Bohm
David Joseph Bohm (; 20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant Theoretical physics, theoretical physicists of the 20th centuryDavid Peat Who's Afraid of Schrödinger's Cat? The New Science Revealed: Quantum Theory, Relativity, Chaos and the New Cosmology 1997, pp. 316–317 and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum mechanics, quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind. Among his many contributions to physics is his causal and deterministic interpretation of quantum theory known as De Broglie–Bohm theory. Bohm advanced the view that quantum physics meant that the old Dualism (philosophy of mind), Cartesian model of reality—that there are two kinds of substance, the mental and the physical, that somehow interact—was too limited. To complement it, he developed a mathematical and physical theory of Implicate and explicate order, "implicate" and "explicate" order.David Bohm: ''Wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prometheus Rising
''Prometheus Rising'' is a 1983 guidebook by Robert Anton Wilson. The book includes explanations of Timothy Leary eight-circuit model of consciousness, Alfred Korzybski general semantics, Aleister Crowley Thelema, and various other topics related to self-improvement, occult traditions, and pseudoscience. In the introduction written by Israel Regardie, Wilson's purpose for writing the book is given as unleashing humanity's "full stature". Production The book examines many aspects of social mind control and mental imprinting, and provides mind exercises at the end of every chapter, with the goal of giving the reader more control over how one's mind works. The book has found many readers among followers of alternative culture, and discusses the effect of certain psychoactive substances and how these affect the brain, tantric breathing techniques, and other methods and holistic approaches to expanding consciousness. It draws a parallel between the development of one's mind and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American writer, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything." In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called " quantum psychology". Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for ''Playboy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Falcon Publications
Christopher Hyatt (July 12, 1943 – February 9, 2008), born Alan Ronald Miller, was an American psychologist, occultist, and writer. He was founder and president of New Falcon Publications, an independent publisher specializing in psychedelic and occult literature; Hyatt's press published work by several well-known champions of consciousness expansion, including Israel Regardie, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Antero Alli. Hyatt also co-founded with David Cherubim the Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn, an order devoted to the philosophy of Thelema, in Los Angeles on the Vernal Equinox of 1990. Early life A native of Chicago, Alan Miller, the son of police lieutenant Leonard Miller and his wife, Bertha Freidman, was born during what he described as the "roaring war years". Writing and speaking as Christopher Hyatt, Miller claimed to have dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen, working instead as a dishwasher and cook, roaming the United States. Miller's obitua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from "bold oracle" to "publicity hound". According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", while writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". President Richard Nixon disagreed, calling Leary "the most dangerous man in America". During the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the counterculture movement, Leary was arrested 36 times. As a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, Leary founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project after a revealing experience with magic mushrooms he had in Mexico in 1960. For two years, he tested psilocybin's therapeutic effects, in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. He also experimented with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which was also legal in the U.S. at the time. Other Harvard faculty que ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology Of Human Consciousness
The sociology of human consciousness or the sociology of consciousness uses the theories and methodology of sociology to explore and examine consciousness. Overview The foundations of this work may be traced to philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead, whose work provided major insights into the formation of mind, concepts of self and other, and the internalization of society in individual social beings, viewing these as emerging out of human interaction and communication. Recent work brings such a sociological and social psychological perspective to bear on several key aspects of consciousness, and in doing so inverts explanation: starting from collective phenomena, one ends up analyzing individual consciousness. In making this inversion, they do not totally reject reductionist approaches—nor deny their value in identifying the "hardware" through which collective and social psychological processes operate. However, they would reject the idea that a complete explan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consciousness Explained
''Consciousness Explained'' is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. Dennett describes consciousness as an account of the various calculations occurring in the brain at close to the same time. He compares consciousness to an academic paper that is being developed or edited in the hands of multiple people at one time, the "multiple drafts" theory of consciousness. In this analogy, "the paper" exists even though there is no single, unified paper. When people report on their inner experiences, Dennett considers their reports to be more like theorizing than like describing. These reports may be informative, he says, but a psychologist is not to take them at face value. Dennett describes several phenomena that show that perception is more limited and less reliable than we perceive it to be. Dennett's views set out in ''Consciousness Exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiple Drafts Model
Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts model (MDM) of consciousness is a physicalist theory of consciousness based upon cognitivism, which views the mind in terms of information processing. The theory is described in depth in his book, '' Consciousness Explained'', published in 1991. As the title states, the book proposes a high-level explanation of consciousness which is consistent with support for the possibility of strong AI. Dennett describes the theory as ''first-person operationalism''. As he states it: The thesis of multiple drafts Dennett's thesis is that our modern understanding of consciousness is unduly influenced by the ideas of René Descartes. To show why, he starts with a description of the phi illusion. In this experiment, two different coloured lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to the positio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
