The Unity of Consciousness
Binding, Integration, and Dissociation
Published on 12. June 2003
Book
Hardback
328 pages
978-0-19-850857-1 (ISBN)
Description
Consciousness has many elements, from sensory experiences such as vision, audition, and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as volition, emotion, memory, and thought. The apparent unity of these elements is striking; all are presented to us as experiences of a single subject, and all seem to be contained within a unified field of experience. But this apparent unity raises many questions. How do diverse systems in the brain co-operate to produce a unified experience? Are there conditions under which this unity breaks down? Is conscious experience really unified at all?
In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields, including, neurophysiologists and computational modellers, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought-provoking book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.
Contributors include - Chris Frith, David Chalmers, Guilio Tononi, Anne Treisman, Andrew Young, Sydney Shoemaker, Glyn Humphreys, Rodney Cotterill, Zoltan Dienes, Susan Hurley, Randall O'Reilly, Andreas Engel, Pierre Perruchet, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, and Francisco Varela.
In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields, including, neurophysiologists and computational modellers, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought-provoking book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.
Contributors include - Chris Frith, David Chalmers, Guilio Tononi, Anne Treisman, Andrew Young, Sydney Shoemaker, Glyn Humphreys, Rodney Cotterill, Zoltan Dienes, Susan Hurley, Randall O'Reilly, Andreas Engel, Pierre Perruchet, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, and Francisco Varela.
Reviews / Votes
The book may be most useful for illustrating the breadth of approaches applied to the unity of consciousness and the different levels at which the concept can be considered. It offers few solid conclusions but raises many questions. Overall, there is much that is stimulating and thought provoking, and anyone with an interest in consciousness will find something worth reading. * Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18 *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
numerous figures and tables
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
750 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-850857-1 (9780198508571)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
Foreword ; Acknowledgements ; Introduction ; PART 1: WHAT IS UNITY? ; 1.1 What is the unity of consciousness? ; 1.2 Consciousness and co-consciousness ; 1.3 Action, the unity of consciousness, and vehicle externalism ; PART 2: BINDING (THE MECHANISMS OF UNITY) ; 2.1 Consciousness and perceptual binding ; 2.2 Conscious visual representations built from multiple binding processes: evidence from neuropsychology ; 2.3 Temporal binding and the neural correlates of consciousness ; 2.4 Oscillatory synchrony as a signature for the unity of visual experience in humans ; 2.5 Three forms of binding and their neural substrates: Alternatives to temporal synchrony ; PART 3: DISSOCIATIONS (WHEN UNITY BREAKS DOWN) ; 3.1 Linking learning and consciousness: The self-organizing consciousness (SOC) Model ; 3.2 Unifying consciousness with explicit knowledge ; 3.3 Face recognition with and without awareness ; PART 4: INTEGRATION (THE EMERGENCE OF UNITY) ; 4.1 Consciousness differentiated and integrated ; 4.2 Neural synchrony and the unity of mind: A neurophenomenological perspective ; 4.3 Conscious unity, emotion, dreaming, and the solution of the hard problem