Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh, 2021
We face a potent intersection of crises: ecological destruction, rising inequality, racial injustice, and the lasting impacts of a devastating pandemic. The situation is beyond urgent. To face these challenges, we need to find ways to strengthen our clarity, compassion, and courage to act.
Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind by Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, 1997
Peppered with wit and controversial topics, this is a refreshing new look at the co-evolution of mind and culture. Bestselling authors Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen (The Collapse of Chaos, 1994) eloquently argue that our minds evolved within an inextricable link with culture and language.
AI, Consciousness and the New Humanism: Fundamental Reflections on Minds and Machines by Sangeetha Menon
This edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human?
The Emergence of Mind: Where Technology Ends and We Begin by Jeffrey Kane demonstrates the profound and fundamental limitations of the technology and its use as a model of human thinking. In response, the book offers an emergent model of the human mind rooted in our experiences as living, sentient, social and conscious beings.
“I argue that in spite of the ingenuity of Burge’s objections, they fail to show that there is no motivation for taking representational states as reducible to more fundamental natural states or that the core thesis of teleosemantics is flawed.”
The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind
Most of us know it well--the almost physical sensation that we are the object of someone’s attention. Is the feeling all in our heads? What about related phenomena, such as telepathy and premonitions? Are they merely subjective beliefs?
The Mind: Consciousness, Prediction, and the Brain
An accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain.
The mind encompasses everything we experience, and these experiences are created by the brain—often without our awareness. Experience is private; we can't know the minds of others. But we also don't know what is happening in our own minds.
In this stimulating anthology, twenty-five philosophers and scientists offer fresh insights into the mind-brain debate, drawing on psychology, neurology, philosophy, computer science, and neurosurgery. Their provocative conclusion? The mind is indeed more than the brain.
"This book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatric ideas."