Perspectives on Consciousness

$230.00

Series: Neuroscience Research Progress

BISAC: PSY008000

Perspectives on Consciousness bridges ancient views on consciousness with modern neuroscience, quantum physics and higher-dimensional mathematics, as well as real-world application to raising awareness of consciousness in teaching.

Following a description of neurobiological approaches towards understanding the subjective nature of conscious experience in Chapter 1, including the enigma of qualia, the challenging dilemmas of understanding damaged consciousness following brain injury are reviewed in Chapter 2. The nature of qualia is taken up again in Chapter 3, which introduces a Qbit theory of consciousness based on inspirations and insights from quantum mechanics, biology, information theory and thermodynamics.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 bridge ancient and modern views on consciousness, ranging across ancient yet impressively sophisticated Buddhist understandings of perception, feeling and cognition (Chapter 4), the also ancient Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbalistic Zohar (Chapter 6), and insights into brain activity drawn from deep states of meditation (Chapter 5). Chapter 5 also includes a discussion of hierarchies of consciousness including likely interactions at the global-societal level with implications to understanding climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chapter 7 takes readers to the outer reaches of discussions on consciousness to introduce ideas of higher-dimensional structures, and the problem of understanding consciousness within mainstream physics, before the final Chapter 8 sets a refreshing and timely change of pace to consider the need to help children, and their teachers, develop a broader awareness of consciousness as part of life in the global “family.”

The book will be of interest to a general scientific audience, as well as those with specialized interests in neuroscience and consciousness studies, education and philosophy, as well as Buddhist and Kabbalistic spiritual traditions.

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Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors

Preface

Chapter 1. The Neurobiological Approach to Conscious Subjective Experience
(Daniela Altavilla and Valentina Deriu – Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy)

Chapter 2. Assessment of Consciousness after Brain Injury: A Prolonged Disorder of Diagnosis
(Sarah Gunn – Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, UK)

Chapter 3. The QBIT Theory of Consciousness
(Majid Beshkar – Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran)

Chapter 4. The Nature and Roles of Consciousness in Theravāda Buddhism
(Peter Harvey – Emeritus Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Sunderland, UK)

Chapter 5. The Human Default Consciousness, Jhāna Consciousness, Gaia “Consciousness” and Some Thoughts on the COVID-19 Pandemic
(Paul Dennison – Consultant Psychotherapist and Independent Neuroscience Researcher, London, UK)

Chapter 6. The Faces of God: A Kabbalistic “Myth” and its Implications for Consciousness
(B. Les Lancaster – Liverpool John Moores University, UK, The Alef Trust)

Chapter 7. Making Space and Time for Consciousness in Physics
(Bernard Carr – Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy, School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, UK)

Chapter 8. Integration of Consciousness in Teaching and Learning
(Xu Di and Kirsten S.B. Bush – Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, US)

Index

 

Reviews

“Perspectives on Consciousness is an excellent set of essays on the nature of consciousness in relationship to profound questions regarding its spiritual presence, and also on education. This is a resource book for all universities and especially graduate libraries, as well as anyone deeply interested in these topics. It is a valuable contribution to the field of consciousness studies.” – Professor Allan Combs, Ph.D.; Author of Consciousness Explained Better; The Radiance of Being; The Postconventional Personality

“A valuable and sophisticated contribution to interdisciplinary consciousness studies. It is intellectually challenging…” – David Livingstone Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of New England; Author of Less than Human, and The Most Dangerous Animal

“Poetic, profound and insightful, and replete with many jewels! Really made me think, stretching my own boundaries. That makes it dangerously good.” – Harris L. Friedman, PhD, Visiting Scholar, History of Science, Harvard University; Author of Transcultural Competence and A Fractal Epistomology for a Scientific Psychology

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