Product Description

Modern science may have split the atom and solved the mystery of life, but it has yet to explain the source of conscious feelings. Eminent thinkers from many areas of science are turning to this problem, and a wide range of theories are currently on offer. Yet sceptics doubt whether consciousness can be tamed by conventional science, or even can be understood at all.

Introducing Consciousness provides a comprehensive guide to the current state of consciousness studies. It starts with the history of the philosophical relation between mind and matter, and proceeds to scientific attempts to explain consciousness in terms of neural mechanisms, cerebral computation and quantum mechanics. Along the way, readers will be introduced to zombies and Chinese Rooms, ghosts in machines and Schrödinger's cat. This is the perfect inauguration in a subject widely viewed as the last frontier of science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #310892 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

I'm none the wiser
I've read a few of these "introducing..." books. Generally I like them, although they never provide much depth and often move to quickly. I tend to like them because they do (usually) provide a rough outline of the subject area and you can whiz through them in a couple of hours or so.

So picking up this book I expected to find two things. Firstly A broad description of the historical arguments surrounding the nature of consciousness. And secondly, the main areas of overlap with other spheres of thought.

I'm no consciousness guru but, I couldn't help thinking that for such a big issue the scope of the book is very narrow. The book only focuses on philosophical arguments and western thinking. There's absolutely no mention of Freud or Jung, almost no mention of neuropsychology, religion, sociological theory, any ideas from eastern schools of thought.

What makes this worst is the fact that the authors of this book demonstrate many of the ideas without crediting the original thinkers. Usually the "introducing..." books at least have illustrations of the big thinkers to support their sound-bite format. This time however, most pages contain illustrations of an anonymous, possibly random woman.

For me at least the book's lack of breadth and context has made it a pretty useless introduction. It offers few leads for further investigation and doesn't connect with much else I've read. Having read the book cover-to-cover I'm none the wiser.

A good, simple introduction to a complex subject
Although I'm generally rather unimpressed with the "Introducing ..." series (too many snazzy, and sometimes inappropriate, pictures, not enough depth), this particular book I found rather enjoyable and informative. Consciousness is a notoriously difficult subject to write about. Many authors feel rather too strongly about their views on consciousness, produce pedantic prose, and find it hard to steer away from prejudice. This book provides a whirlwind tour of 2000 years of philosophical thought on consciousness and manages to remain very accessible and refreshingly non-partisan. When finishing this book you won't know what consciousness really is, nor will you be entirely sure what the author's own views on the subject are, but you will have had a nice little intellectual journey exploring the dead ends and muddles that previous (and contemporary) thinkers on the subject got themselves into.

Solid Introduction to Philosophy of Mind
This is a good introduction, but it is to the Philosophy of Mind, if you're interested in the Science of Mind there are other introductions.

As this is a huge area, the book necessarily concentrates on Descartes to Wittgenstein with a bit of more modern debate (Nagel/ Searle/ Chalmers etc.)- it's difficult to see how they could have included non Western ideas without bulking the book up.

However it gets all the main points across and it includes a quote from Dizzy Gillespie, so it can't be all bad! This can be a useful guide if you're revising the subject, I managed to get through an exam question based on this book and Ravenscroft's chapter summaries.

The only slightly annoying bit is the author seems to appear in a lot of the illustrations, otherwise a good effort.