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20% discount with this flyer! 3RD EDITION Consciousness An Introduction Susan Blackmore and Emily T. Troscianko, University of Oxford, UK Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness?Or is consciousness itself just an illusion? The 'last great mystery of science', consciousness is an area of cognitive psychology that was once viewed with extreme scepticism and was consequently avoided by the majority of mainstream scientific researchers. April 2018: 246x189: 618pp 115 illustrations However, it has now become a significant area of research despite the complexity of the subject matter. Hb: 978-1-138-80130-1 | £125.00 £100.00 Pb: 978-1-138-80131-8 | £37.99 £30.39 Consciousness: An Introduction provides a comprehensive eBook: 978-1-315-75502-1 introduction to the study of this complex field. The book draws on theories and examples from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and biology to provide TABLE OF CONTENTS: students with a thorough understanding of this subject. Introduction, Section One: The problem, 1. What’s the problem? 2. What’s it like to be…? Reviews 3. The grand illusion, Section Two: The brain, 4. Neuroscience and the correlates of "Competent, entertaining and accessible. It covers an consciousness, 5. The theatre of the mind, 6. enormous range of topics from machine The unity of consciousness, Section Three: Body consciousness to altered states and secular spirituality. and world, 7. Attention, 8. Conscious and unconscious, 9. Agency and free will, Section This new edition is probably the best introduction to Four: Evolution, 10. Evolution and animal minds, the exploding field of consciousness studies." - Thomas 11. The function of consciousness, 12. The evolution of machines, Section Five: Metzinger, Philosophisches Seminar, Johannes Borderlands, 13. Altered states of consciousness, Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany 14. Reality and imagination, 15. Dreaming and beyond, Section Six: Self and other, 16. Egos, bundles, and theories of self, 17. The view from "Blackmore and Troscianko’s book remains the best within?, 18. Waking up introduction to consciousness on the market. The sheer breadth of literature that is reviewed and evaluated will not only satisfy the most enquiring of academic minds, but also succeeds in delivering a great deal of academic content in an enjoyable, readable and accessible style for any interested * Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other reader." - Guy Saunders, Senior Lecturer in Consciousness offer or discount and only applies to books purchased directly via our website. Studies, University of the West of England, UK For more information visit: www.routledge.com/9781138801318 .

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The Soul-Hypothesis
Thomas Metzinger The pre-scientific concept of a “soul”: A neurophenomenological hypothesis about its origin 1 In this contribution I will argue that our traditional, folk-phenomenological concept of a “soul” may have its origins in accurate and truthful first-person reports about the experiential content of a specific neurophenomenological state-class. This class of phenomenal states is called the “Out-of-body experience” (OBE hereafter), and I will offer a detailed description in section 3 of this paper. The relevant type of conscious experience seems to possess a culturally invariant cluster of functional and phenomenal core properties: it is a specific kind of conscious experience, which can in principle be undergone by every human being. I propose that it probably is one of the most central semantic roots of our everyday, folk-phenomenological idea of what a soul actually is. Interestingly, from a historical perspective, present day philosophical and scientific discussions of mind have developed from a proto-concept of “mind” that bears great similarity to the folk-phenomenological notion of a “soul” just mentioned. This proto- concept of mind is a mythical, traditionalistic, animistic and quasi-sensory theory about what it means to have a mind. Just like the folk-phenomenological notion of a “soul” it can be found in many different cultures. It has a semantic core, which corresponds to the 1 I want to thank Sue Blackmore and Peter Brugger for critical comments on earlier versions of this paper; and Ernst Waelti for the permission to use his figures and many stimulating discussions. 2 functional and phenomenological profile of the naïve notion of a “soul”.
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Dennett's Theory of the Folk Theory of Consciousness
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2006, in Science & Theology News Online, a Response to A
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