Book
Ordering (secure web form)
-
Contents
-
Pre-publication reviewers' comments from David Chalmers,
John Searle, Evan Thompson, Ken Wilber and Arthur Zajonc
-
Full text of
editorial introduction
Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of interest in the
scientific study of consciousness — an area that has been largely ignored
since the time of William James. This renaissance has primarily been stimulated
by developments in PET, fMRI and other brain-scanning technology that enable
scientists to pinpoint the neural correlates of conscious experience with
ever-increasing accuracy.
However, the study of conscious experience itself has not kept pace
with these advances in third-person methodologies. If anything, the standard
approaches to examining the ‘view from within’ involve little more than
cataloging its readily accessible components. Thus the study of lived subjective
experience is still at the level of Aristotelian science. This has led
many to deny that there could possibly be such a thing as a truly scientific
study of conscious experience, or at least to ask: can one be objective
about the subjective?
Drawing on a wide range of approaches — from phenomenology to meditation
— THE VIEW FROM WITHIN examines the possibility of a disciplined approach
to the study of subjective states. The focus is on the practical issues
involved.
Contents
Introduction
-
Francisco Varela and Jonathan Shear: First-person accounts: why,
what, and how full
text
Part I: Introspection
-
Pierre Vermersch: Introspection as practice
-
Claire Peugeot: The intuitive experience: a first-person empirical
investigation
-
Carl Ginsburg: Body-image, movement and consciousness: examples
from a somatic practice in the Feldenkreis method
Part II: Phenomenology
-
Natalie Depraz: Phenomenological reduction as praxis
-
Francisco Varela: The neurophenomenology of time consciousness
-
Andrew R. Bailey: Beyond the Fringe: William James on the transitional
parts of the stream of consciousness
-
Jean Naudin, Caroline Gros-Azorin, Aaron Mishara, Osborne P. Wiggins,
Michael A. Schwartz, Jean-Michel Azorin: Reduction as a method in Psychiatric
experience
Part III: Contemplative traditions
-
Alan Wallace: The Buddhist tradition of samatha: methods for refining
and examining consciousness
-
Jonathan Shear and Ronald Jevning: Pure consciousness: scientific
exporation of meditation techniques
Part IV: Commentaries
-
James H. Austin, Six Points to Ponder
-
Bernard J. Baars, There is Already a Field of Systematic Phenomenology,
and it’s Called ‘Psychology’
-
Guy Claxton, Moving the Cursor of Consciousness: Cognitive science
and human welfare
-
David Galin, Separating First-personness From the Other Problems
of Consciousness, or ‘You had to have been there!’
-
Shaun Gallagher, A Cognitive Way to the Transcendental Reduction
-
E.T. Gendlin, A New Model
-
William S. Haney II, Pure Consciousness and Cultural Studies
-
Piet Hut, Theory and Experiment in Philosophy
-
William Lyons, On the Metaphysics of Introspection
-
Response to Lyons from P. Vermersch
-
Bruce Mangan, The Fringe: A case study in explanatory phenomenology
-
Eduard Marbach, Building Materials for the Explanatory Bridge
-
Gregory Nixon, A ‘Hermeneutic Objection’: Language and the inner
view
-
Response to Nixon from J. Shear
-
Ian Owen and Neil Morris, The Husserlian Phenomenology of Consciousness
and Cognitive Science: We can see the path but nobody is on it
-
Response to Owen and Morris from F.J. Varela
-
John Pickering, Words and Silence
-
Jean-François Richard, Object, Limits and Function of Consciousness
-
Jonathan W. Schooler and Sonya Dougal, The Symbiosis of Subjective
and Experimental Approaches to Intuition
-
Rachel Henley, Distinguishing Insight from Intuition
-
Response to Schooler, Dougal and Henley from C. Petitmengin-Peugeot
-
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Mental Force and the Advertence of Bare Attention
-
Mark Sullivan, Does Psychiatry need the Husserlian Detour?
-
Response to Sullivan from J. Naudin
-
Max Velmans, Intersubjective Science
-
Francisco J. Varela and Jonathan Shear, Editors’ Rejoinder to the
Debate
Pre-publication reviewers' comments
-
This is an important collection addressing what is arguably the greatest
challenge now facing a science of consciousness. Such a science must connect
third-person data about brain and behavior with first-person data about
conscious experience. But how do we gather the first-person data, and how
can we represent it? This book explores sophisti-cated ideas from a variety
of traditions. I hope it sets the agenda for a renewed investiga-tion of
first-person methodologies and formalisms in the next few years.
David Chalmers
-
This looks like a great book series — a valuable extension of the Journal
of Consciousness Studies. You publish a lot of things that would not be
published in routine philosophical and scientific journals, and that seems
to me exactly right at our present state of the investigation of consciousness.
We don't know how it works and we need to try all kinds of different ideas.
John
Searle
-
Since William James, there has been remarkably little attention in the
sciences of the mind to the detailed investigation of conscious experience
at the personal level. THE VIEW FROM WITHIN advances such investigation
along several fronts, with articles on introspection, phenomenology, and
meditative psychology. Especially valuable is the editors introduction,
which provides a useful guide to the methodology of first-person accounts,
and the articles that build bridges to cognitive science, psychiatry, and
the scientific study of meditation techniques. Invited commentaries by
leading investigators of consciousness, together with authors’ replies,
make for a provocative presentation that will be discussed for some time
to come. Evan Thompson
-
THE VIEW FROM WITHIN is a major statement, and a brilliant presentation,
of the need to include first-person accounts in a science of consciousness.
The editors sensibly maintain that a judicious balance of first-, second-,
and third-person perspectives is not only desirable but unavoidable in
any satisfactory study of consciousness. But their integrative approach
is not merely a theoretical call for such; they provide instances of precisely
how such a comprehensive approach can be pragmatically executed. As such,
this book marks a major milestone in the science of consciousness, and
it will surely become one of the standard references in the field. Ken
Wilber
-
THE VIEW FROM WITHIN provides a much needed counterbalance to the reigning
trends in consciousness research. By emphasizing the importance of first
person perspectives, and situating them within the context of third person
accounts, one begins to see how a fully integrated research program into
consciousness might develop in the future. These essays will establish
an important beachhead directed towards a rich, multifaceted investigation
of consciousness. Arthur Zajonc
-
Books homepage
-
Secure
ordering
