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A novel theory of pain, according to which pains are imperatives—commands issued by the body, ordering you to protect the injured part. In What the Body Commands, Colin Klein proposes and defends a novel theory of pain. Klein argues that pains are imperative; they are sensations with a content, and that content is a command to protect the injured part of the body. He terms this view “imperativism about pain,” and argues that imperativism can account for two puzzling features of pain: its strong motivating power and its uninformative nature. Klein argues that the biological purpose of pain is homeostatic; like hunger and thirst, pain helps solve a challenge to bodily integrity. It does ...
Research into peripersonal space has yielded exciting discoveries across many fields, from anthropology to cognitive neuroscience. Bringing these perspectives together for the first time, The World at Our Fingertips presents a fresh, accessible dialogue, challenging entrenched ideas about the way people see and understand the world around them.
Bringing together siloed areas to offer a comprehensive summary of decades of research, Pain, the Opioid Epidemic, and Depression is a comprehensive evaluation of the evidence for bi-directional and mutually reinforcing effects of pain, prescription opioid use, and mental illness, with a focus on depression.
Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and pe...
Organized Hypocrisy is the disconnect between talk, decision-making, and action by multiple actors and is evident in our daily lives and part of our DNA. We cannot ignore or avoid it. It occurs globally in international politics, within a nation-state by its government, and by corporate and government organizations. Significant scandals are connected to organized hypocrisy, such as the VW and Enron scandals, and it is in international climate change discussions, nation-state elections, and proven to be evident in renowned organizations such as the African Union, UNICEF, and the World Bank. This book provides an in-depth understanding of organized hypocrisy by breaking down the concept and it...
Computational intelligence is a component of Encyclopedia of Technology, Information, and Systems Management Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. Computational intelligence is a rapidly growing research field including a wide variety of problem-solving techniques inspired by nature. Traditionally computational intelligence consists of three major research areas: Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, and Evolutionary Computation. Neural networks are mathematical models inspired by brains. Neural networks have massively parallel network structures with many neurons and weighted connections. Whereas each n...
Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first full investigation of multiple realization--the idea that minds can be realized in ways other than the human brain. They cast doubt on the hypothesis and offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, and in chemistry, biology, and related fields.
"Chinese philosophy has long recognized the importance of the body and emotions in extensive and diverse self-cultivation traditions. Philosophical debates about the relationship between mind and body are often described in terms of mind-body dualism and its opposite, monism or some kind of "holism." Monist or holist views agree on the unity of mind and body, but with much debate about what kind, whereas mind-body dualists take body and mind to be metaphysically distinct entities. The question is important for several reasons. Several humanistic and scientific disciplines recognize embodiment as an important dimension of the human condition. One version, the problem of mind-body dualism, is central to the history of both philosophy and religion. Some account of relations between body and mind, spirit or soul is also central to any understanding of the self. Recent work in cognitive and neuroscience underscores the importance of our somatic experience for how we think and feel"--
The prominent contributors provide background information, survey the issues and positions, and take controversial stands from a wide variety of perspectives, including neuroscience and neurology, law and policy, and philosophy and ethics. This collection should interest not only academics but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.
This innovative book proposes a unique and original perspective on the nature of the mind and how phenomenal consciousness may arise in a physical world. From simple sentient organisms to complex self-reflective systems, Faye argues for a naturalistic-evolutionary approach to philosophy of mind and consciousness. Drawing on substantial literature in evolutionary biology and cognitive science, this book offers a promising alternative to the major theories of the mind-body problem: the quality of our experiences should not, as some philosophers have claimed, be associated with subjectivity that is not open for scientific explanation, nor should it be associated with intrinsic properties of the brain. Instead, Faye argues that mental properties are extrinsic properties of the brain caused by the organism’s interaction with its environment. Taking on the explanatory gap, and rejecting the ontological pluralism of present naturalist theories of the mind, Faye thus proposes a unified view of reality in which it is possible to explain qualitative mental presentations as part of the physical world.