Foundations of Consciousness (Foundations of Psychology)

Foundations of Consciousness (Foundations of Psychology)

by Antti Revonsuo (Author)

Synopsis

The conscious mind is life as we experience it; we see the world, feel our emotions and think our thoughts thanks to consciousness. This book provides an easy introduction to the foundations of consciousness; how can subjective consciousness be measured scientifically? What happens to the conscious mind and self when the brain gets injured? How does consciousness, our subjective self or soul, arise from the activities of the brain?

Addressing the philosophical and historical roots of the problems alongside current scientific approaches to consciousness in psychology and neuroscience, Foundations of Consciousness examines key questions as well as delving deeper to look at altered and higher states of consciousness. Using student-friendly pedagogy throughout, the book discusses some of the most difficult to explain phenomena of consciousness, including dreaming, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, and mystical experiences.

Foundations of Consciousness provides an essential introduction to the scientific and philosophical approaches to consciousness for students in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. It will also appeal to those interested in the nature of the human soul, giving an insight into the motivation behind scientist's and philosopher's attempts to understand our place as conscious beings in the physical world.

$37.27

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 186
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 01 Oct 2016

ISBN 10: 0415594677
ISBN 13: 9780415594677

Media Reviews

With Consciousness: the Science of Subjectivity Antti Revonsuo has written a wonderfully clear, very well-organized and insightful introduction to the philosophical and empirical study of consciousness. ... He employs a crystal clear language and organizes his paragraphs and introduction of very diverse philosophical and empirical theories in an explanatory order. The shortness of the paragraphs makes it easy to digest new information. This is further aided by the short summaries and enumeration of discussion questions at the end of each chapter and the glossary at the end of the book. All of this makes this an excellent introduction in the study of subjectivity for the beginning student, but equally so for the conference participants in the big interdisciplinary conferences on consciousness. - Fauve Lybaert, University of Leuven, in Metapsychology Online Reviews

Everybody talks about consciousness, but hardly anyone has written a textbook about it that could be used as the basis for a survey course. Revonsuo s book closes that gap. - John F. Kihlstrom, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

This book provides a major new discussion of consciousness, suitable for a wide range of readers. It is written in an admirably clear and scholarly way, and covers a wide range of issues thrown up by recent philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific research on consciousness. It would be excellent as a primary text for many introductory courses on consciousness, and I think this book will quickly become a major text in the area. - Steve Torrance, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex

Revonsuo s book is very well organized and as such offers a highly systematic approach to what is often a chaotic assembly of conflicting ideas. Students will particularly like the range and the inclusion of chapters on altered states, hypnosis and meditation, etc., particularly as some of this i

Author Bio
Antti Revonsuo is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Skoevde, Sweden, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Turku, Finland. He has been conducting research on consciousness and the philosophical mind-brain -problem since the early 1990s, focusing on dreaming and consciousness and on the neural correlates of visual consciousness. He has published two books on consciousness, Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon (MIT Press, 2006) and Consciousness, The Science of Subjectivity (Psychology Press, 2010). Revonsuo is also known for his evolutionary-psychological theory of dreaming, the threat-simulation theory.