The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness

Updated and revised, the highly-anticipated second edition of The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness offers a collection of readings that together represent the most thorough and comprehensive survey of the nature of consciousness available today.

• Features updates to scientific chapters reflecting the latest research in the field
• Includes 18 new theoretical, empirical, and methodological chapters covering integrated information theory, renewed interest in panpsychism, and more
• Covers a wide array of topics that include the origins and extent of consciousness, various consciousness experiences such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness
• Presents 54 peer-reviewed chapters written by leading experts in the study of consciousness, from across a variety of academic disciplines

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I The Problems of Consciousness

1 A Brief History of the Scientific Approach to the Study of Consciousness

2 Philosophical Problems of Consciousness

3 The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Part II The Origins and Distribution of Consciousness

4Consciousness in Infants

5 Animal Consciousness

6 Rethinking the Evolution of Consciousness

7 Machine Consciousness

8 Panpsychism

Part III Some Varieties of Conscious Experience

9 States of Consciousness Waking, Sleeping, and Dreaming

10 Affective Consciousness

11Clinical Pathologies and Unusual Experiences

12 Altered States of Consciousness Drug-Induced States

13 Anomalous Experiences

14 Mindfulness

15 Altered States Mysticism

Part IV Some Contemporary Theories of Consciousness

16 The Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness Predictions and Results

17 The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness An Outline

18 The Intermediate Level Theory of Consciousness

19 Representationalism about Consciousness

20 Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness

21 Quantum Approaches to Brain and Mind An Overview with Representative Examples

22 Daniel Dennett on the Naturof Consciousness

23 Biological Naturalism

24 Emergentism

25 Dualism, Reductionism, and Reflexive Monism

26 Naturalistic Dualism

27 Physicalist Panpsychism

Part V Some Major Topics in the Philosophy of Consciousness

28 Anti-materialist Arguments and Influential Replies

29 Physicalism and the Knowledge Argument

30 Type Materialism for Phenomenal Consciousness

31 Functionalism and Qualia

32 The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness

33 The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness

34 Self-Consciousness

35 Philosophical Psychopathology and Self-Consciousness

36 Coming Together The Unity of Consciousness

37 Consciousness and Intentionality

Part VI Major Topics in the Science of Consciousness Topics in the Cognitive Psychology of Consciousness

38 Studying Consciousness Through lnattentional Blindness, Change Blindnessand the Attentional Blink

39 Conscious and Unconscious Perception

40 Conscious and Unconscious Memory

41 Consciousness of Action Topics in the Neuroscience of Consciousness

42 Methodologies for Identifying the Neural Correlates of Consciousness

43 Conscious Processing Unity in Time Rather Than in Space

44 1ntegrated Information Theory of Consciousness Some Ontological Considerations

45 Split-brain Cases

46 Duplex Vision Separate Cortical Pathways for Conscious Perception and the Control of Action

47 Altered States of Consciousness after Brain Injury

48 Anesthesia and Consciousness

49 The Neuropsychology of Conscious Volition First-Person Contributions to the Science of Consciousness

50 Phenomenological Approaches to Consciousness

51 Neurophenomenology and the Micro-phenomenological Interview

52 Descriptive Experience Sampling

53 Experiential Neuroscience of Pain

54 An Epistemology for the Study of Consciousness

About the Authors

Susan Schneider is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut, a faculty member in the technology and ethics group at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her work is on the nature of the self and mind, which she examines through issues in philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence (A.I.), metaphysics, astrobiology, epistemology, and neuroscience. She is the author of The Language of Thought: a New Philosophical Direction (2011) and Science Fiction and Philosophy, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), and was responsible for the volume’s philosophical content.

Max Velmans is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been involved in consciousness studies for over 40 years. He has over 100 publications on this topic including Understanding Consciousness (2000/2009) and Towards a Deeper Understanding of Consciousness (2017). He is a co-founder and former Chair of the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, and was responsible for the volume’s scientific content.