Traditional cognitive science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the mind and the world. This leads to the claim that cognition is representational and best explained using models derived from AI and computational theory. The authors depart radically from this model.

The mind is the brain. Each mental state -- each hope, fear, thought -- can be identified with a particular physical state of the brain, without remainder. So argues Nicholas Humphrey in this highly readable yet scholarly essay. He offers strong support for his "identity theory" from evolution. His controversial claim is discussed and challenged in commentaries by authors such as Andy Clark (Being There, 1997), Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, 1991; Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995) and Ralph Ellis (Questioning Consciousness, 1995). Humphrey rounds...

How does the conscious mind relate to the physical body? Two common views from the past offered the stark choice between dualism which said mind and body were quite separate and physicalism which said that the mind was in fact 'nothing but' the physical brain. Both these views are now widely rejected. 'Emergence' theory offers a compromise: the mind 'emerges' from the physical body but the whole person, mind and body, is more than the sum of the physical parts. In The Emergence of Consciousness philosopher Robert Van Gulick gives a clear and masterly overview and comparison of the...

Emotion experience has failed to date to gain a central place in the study of consciousness. This special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies presents the most recent views on the matter, with discussions of several aspects of emotion experience. Contributors from different disciplines address links between feelings, brain, body and world. What happens in the brain and in the body when we have feelings? How do feelings relate to our understanding of the world? The contributors also analyse emotion experience per se -- the character of moods, the role of emotion...

The View from Within, edited by the late Francisco Varela in collaboration with Jonathan Shear, was published in 1999 and has proved a major stimulus to the scientific investigation of first-person methodologies in psychology and philosophy of mind. Ten years on, Claire Petitmengin has organized a collection of essays that examine and refine the research program on first-person methods defined inThe View from Within, with contributions based on empirical research. She has kept close to the spirit of the earlier book, in which Varela encouraged a precise description of the...

Folk psychology refers to our everyday practice of making sense of actions, both our own and those of others, in terms of reasons. This volume, which is a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, brings together new work by scholars from a range of disciplines (anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy) whose aim is to clarify, develop and challenge the claim that folk psychology may be importantly -- perhaps even constitutively -- related to narrative practices.

This book is part of a wider project by its editor, Daniel D. Hutto, Professor of...

A special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies to mark the centenary of the death of the pioneer psychologist William James. Contents include an Editor's Foreword (by Allan Combs) and a Psychological Commentary on the Essays (by Eugene Taylor). The main papers included are: Nineteenth Century Pioneers in the Study of Dissociation: William James and Psychical Research (Carlos S. Alvarado & Stanley Krippner); The Ever-New Flow of Time: Henri Bergson's View of Consciousness (G. William Barnard); Consciousness Already There Waiting to be Uncovered: William James's Mystical Suggestion...

This special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is the sequel to Ten Years of Viewing from Within, JCS Vol. 16, No. 10-12 (2009), commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication of The View from Within, JCS Vol. 6, No. 2-3 (1999), where Francisco Varela in collaboration with Jonathan Shear designed the foundations of a research program on lived experience. The commemorative issue aimed to examine and refine this research program on first-person methods, through contributions based on empirical research. At the end of the Introduction, guest editor Claire Petitmengin...

This volume represents the combination of two special issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on the topic of the technological singularity. Could artificial intelligence really out-think us, and what would be the likely repercussions if it could? Leading authors contribute to the debate, which takes the form of a target chapter by philosopher David Chalmers, plus commentaries from the likes of Daniel Dennett, Nick Bostrom, Ray Kurzweil, Ben Goertzel, Frank Tipler, among many others. Chalmers then responds to the commentators to round off the discussion.

This volume represents the combination of two special issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on the topic of the technological singularity. Could artificial intelligence really out-think us, and what would be the likely repercussions if it could? Leading authors contribute to the debate, which takes the form of a target chapter by philosopher David Chalmers, plus commentaries from the likes of Daniel Dennett, Nick Bostrom, Ray Kurzweil, Ben Goertzel, Frank Tipler, among many others. Chalmers then responds to the commentators to round off the discussion.