3 Review(s)

"The last great mystery for science," consciousness has become a controversial topic. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction  challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are opening up these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments and clearly describes the major theories, with illustrations and lively cartoons to help explain the experiments. Topics include vision and attention, theories of self, experiments on action and awareness, altered states of consciousness, and the effects of brain damage and drugs. This lively, engaging, and authoritative book provides a clear overview of the subject that combines the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience--and serves as a much-needed launch pad for further exploration of this complicated and unsolved issue. Salient Features A lively, engaging, and authoritative introduction to the hot topic of consciousness Serves as a much-needed launch pad for the further exploration of this complicated, controversial, and unsolved issue Challenges readers to reconsider key concepts such as personality, free will, and the soul A clear overview of the subject that combines the perspectives of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience--unlike all the other books available on the subject Part of the VSI series; nearly 1 million have been sold