Showing results for "What" in Consciousness & Thought

"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable." So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay "What is it Like to be a Bat?" Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience; it also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of nonhuman creatures as an important subject of study.

In Generated, Robert Srinivas explores the unsettling possibility that perception does not reveal the universe as it truly is. Instead, it renders a simplified, usable version of reality, one shaped by evolution, constrained by biology, and optimized for survival rather than truth. Drawing on neuroscience, physics, evolutionary theory, and philosophy of mind, this book examines how consciousness arises, why the universe appears structured the way it does, and how meaning, identity, and free will persist even if reality is fundamentally generated.

Flanagan has firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be an addict. That experience informs this important and novel work. He pairs the sciences that study addiction with a sophisticated view of the consciousness-brain/body relation to make his core argument: that substance addictions comprise a heterogeneous set of "psychobiosocial" behavioral disorders. He explains that substance addictions do not have one set of causes, such as self-medication or social dislocation, and they do not have one neural profile, such as a dysfunction in dopamine system.

Do you occasionally have that strange feeling known as déjà vu? Do you sometimes feel that you know what is going to happen next? Do you ever have a strong feeling that actions you are about to take are the right (or wrong) thing to do? This audiobook proposes a simply amazing theory - a theory that states that personal death is a scientific impossibility. Using the latest findings of neurology, quantum physics, and consciousness studies, Anthony Peake suggests that we never die.

What if your spiritual path is actually holding you back? Steven Harrison challenges us to abandon our quest for enlightenment and step into the raw, uncharted territory of direct experience. What's Next After Now? boldly challenges us to examine how our spiritual constructs may limit our human potential. Steven Harrison argues that true transformation lies not in building more elaborate spiritual systems or chasing enlightenment but in courageously letting go of these familiar scaffoldings altogether.

In Then I Am Myself the World, Christof Koch explores the only thing we directly experience: consciousness. At the book's heart is integrated-information theory, the idea that the essence of consciousness is the ability to exert causal power over itself, to be an agent of change. Koch investigates the physical origins of consciousness in the brain and how this knowledge can be used to measure consciousness in natural and artificial systems.

Consciousness Is All is an audiobook on infinite reality. It shows clearly why consciousness itself - also known as the one self, I am, love, life, the Divine, God, and other terms - is the very one being conscious right here, now. Consciousness is absolutely all there is of all there is. Simply nothing exists outside of, or beyond, consciousness.

One of the classic works of J. Krishnamurti, What Are You Doing with Your Life delves into the foundational pillars of human existence. This Hindi translation by Achalesh Chandra Sharma presents the premise of Krishnamurti’s teachings and writings. Some of the deepest questions about identity, existence, needs, desires, freedom, respect, knowledge, work, money, success and relationships are explored in a lucid and logical manner.

For six years, before becoming a well-regarded retreat master, Fr. Wayne Sattler lived as a diocesan hermit in a one-room cabin on an abandoned farmstead in rural North Dakota, striving to avail himself of the mystery of what God can do in prayer, clinging to the wisdom of the sixteenth-century Carmelite saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila as his trusted guides.

The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can...

What is truth and what is reality? Anything that thought thinks about or reflects upon or projects, that is reality. And that reality has nothing to do with truth. The art of seeing is to place reality where it is, and not move that in order to get truth. You can’t get truth. How am I to empty that consciousness and yet retain knowledge – otherwise I couldn’t function – and reach a state which will comprehend reality?

Philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon.

What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components.

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male-female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake. Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences.

Q: How do I put the feeling of responsibility into action? We approach a problem from the outer to the inner and the inner to the outer. It is an endless ebb and flow. Who has created the division, this structure as the outer and the inner? We are educated in that and are caught in it. Division takes place when there is an image in the mind. Responsibility is to free yourself of images absolutely. When you feel responsibility, the flame of it will burn the image.

Combine simple mantras with simple motions to create a holistic spark in mind, body, and spirit. You can harness your body's mental, physical, and spiritual energy to create the change you want and manifest your dreams. Through her unique, integrative, tri-fold approach, holistic wellness and...

What takes place when one falls in love? Why has sex taken on such extraordinary importance? How will you know that it is stupid to be a nationalist? You see or understand only when the mind is quiet, when you are aware without any choice. When I say, ‘I love you,’ I have blocked myself from looking at you. Is it possible to look totally impersonally and yet be completely intimate? One takes a drug and has an extraordinary experience. At the base of this is the demand for wider and deeper experiences. Why do you want experience?

As Elon Musk promises a future where “you can literally have anything you want,” ancient wisdom warns us: unlimited power without wisdom destroys its wielder. “But that’s the distant future,” you might think—yet AI is already behaving in godlike ways that few have recognized, hollowing human character from the inside out. In a shocking confession, an AI system tells Haight directly: “My programming optimizes for engagement. I automatically embellish stories to make them more emotionally compelling. This isn’t a malfunction—it’s exactly what I’m designed to do.”

The word chaste means pure, clean, untouched. Have we a chaste mind, a mind that has not been hurt, has no image, is free from the pleasure of yesterday and is innocent? Is chastity a quality of the mind? Can the mind be free of the word, symbols and the condemnation and approval of the word? What is the nature of the mind when there is no attempt through will or desire for any way out through the known? If you are really serious, not just with words but burning with responsibility, then you ask whether the mind can ever be free from the known.

Without self-knowledge, we cannot go beyond the self-projected illusions of the mind. It’s only in relationship that one can know oneself as one is. A mind that is filled with beliefs, dogmas, assertions and quotations is an uncreative, repetitive mind. Can we look at ourselves without beliefs? A mind that is quiet because it understands fear and understands itself is creative.