What is consciousness? What is the place of consciousness in nature? These and related questions occupy a prominent place in contemporary studies in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, often involving complex interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, biology, and cognitive neuroscience. At the same time, these questions play a fundamental role in the philosophies of great thinkers of the past such as, among others, Plotinus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, William James, and Edmund Husserl. This new collection of essays by leading contemporary philosophers of mind and historians of philosophy seeks to address these questions from both a systematic and a theoretical perspective and to create a new and fruitful forum for future discussion. In the attempt to do justice to the richness of our mental life, the volume features in-depth examinations not solely of mainstream physicalist doctrines, but also of largely neglected positions such as Cartesian dualism, idealism, and panpsychism.
Author: Pauline Phemister Publisher: Cambridge University Press Published: 08/05/2010 Pages: 296 Binding Type: Paperback Weight: 0.90lbs Size: 8.80h x 5.90w x 0.60d ISBN: 9780521173919
About the Author Kiverstein, Julian: - Julian Kiverstein is a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. The author of a number of papers on consciousness, temporality and the self, he is also editing Heidegger and Cognitive Science (2010, with Michael Wheeler) and Decomposing the Will (2010, with Till Vierkant and Andy Clark).Phemister, Pauline: - Pierfrancesco Basile teaches Philosophy at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His publications include two books, Experience and Relations: An Examination of F. H. Bradley's Conception of Reality (1999) and Leibniz, Whitehead and the Metaphysics of Causation (2009), as well as several essays on issues in metaphysics, process thought, British idealism and early analytic philosophy.
