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Two neuroscientists reveal why consciousness exists and how it works by examining eighteen increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind—and beyond. Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind—to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos. The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergen...
The book on sex in the twenty-first century “Alfred Kinsey only scratched the surface. Interviewing a mere 18,000 horny humans? Please . . . Drs. Ogas and Gaddam [offer] hot new scientific findings.”—The Washington Post Want to know what really turns your partner on? A Billion Wicked Thoughts offers the clearest picture ever of the differences between male and female sexuality and the teeming diversity of human desire. What makes men attracted to images and so predictable in their appetites? What makes the set up to a romantic evening so important for a woman? Why are women’s desires so hard to predict? Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam reveal the mechanics of sexual relationships based on their extensive research into the mountains of new data on human behavior available in online entertainment and traffic around the world. Not since Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s has there been such a revolution in our knowledge of what is really going on in the bedroom. What Ogas and Gaddam learned, and now share, will deepen and enrich the way you, and your partner, think and talk about sex.
The media today is filled with powerful men in trouble for their sexual behaviors, and invariably, they are diagnosed as sexual addicts. Since Adam first hid his nakedness from God and pointed the finger at Eve, men have struggled to take responsibility for their sexuality. Over the past three decades, these behaviors have come to reflect not a moral failing, but instead, evidence of an ill-defined disease, that of "sexual addiction." The concept of sexual addiction is a controversial one because it is based on questionable research and subjective moral judgments. Labeling these behaviors as sex addiction asserts a false, dangerous myth that undermines personal responsibility. Not only does ...
Fan Culture: Theory/Practice brings together the most current scholarship on fan studies, in a way that makes it accessible and usable for both students and teachers. The essays in this collection explore the relative influence of academic and fan perspectives in the current group of scholar-fans and the ethical dilemmas that sometimes emerge from this interplay of identities, the impact of the increasingly reciprocal relationship between textual producers and consumers, and gender differences in fannish meaning-making and interaction. Fan Studies addresses these current issues through some of the most popular fannish texts, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, Star Wars, Star Trek, Supernatural, Smallville and Twilight. Fan Culture: Theory/Practice is thus designed to challenge some accepted notions, while asking relevant questions about pedagogy. How do we understand the state of the field, and teach fan studies both effectively and responsibly? The essays contained in this volume explore the dominant themes in the field, and seek to situate fan studies as a discipline with a pedagogy of its own.
All species, extant and extinct, from the simplest unicellular prokaryotes to humans, have an existential consciousness. Without sentience, the first cells that emerged some 4 billion years ago would have been evolutionary dead-ends, unable to survive in the chaotic, dangerous environment in which life first appeared and evolved. In this book, Arthur Reber's theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), is outlined and distinguished from those models that argue that minds could be instantiated on artificial entities and those that maintain consciousness requires a nervous system. The CBC framework takes a novel approach to classic topics such as the origin-of-life, philosophy of mind, t...
Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the author takes the reader on a ride through what irks him enough to write about, first in religion/theology and then in science, and includes the ideas that Abraham is a model for relating to God; an anti-dualistic bias is superior to the belief in the survival of the soul; the insistence that scripture is to be defended at all costs; the notion that theology can be systematized; the doctrine of the (paradoxical) atonement is simply a matter of faith; humans have no bearing on climate; evolution can only occur gradually; purity of race is an attainable goal; there is no serious competitor to materialism; mediums and spiritists are reliable guides to what the afterlife holds; and artificial intelligence poses little threat. The short stories are provided to offer lighter fare to the weightier topics in the non-fiction sections. The second such story has also been adapted into a film posted on YouTube.
From New York Times bestselling author Michael Gurian comes a groundbreaking plan for happiness in love and marriage that shows you how to build healthy boundaries, work through past hurts, and create greater intimacy by maintaining emotional separateness. Become separate from your partner yet also become closer—sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? With twenty-five years of family and marital counseling practice, Michael Gurian shows that “intimate separateness” is the key to creating a healthy partnership in life. Recent university studies show that the most frequent reason relationships dissolve is not abuse, alcoholism, money, or even infidelity, but rather a lack of emotional ful...
DATING, RELATIONSHIPS, LIVING TOGETHER & MARRIAGE. Typically, men are good at creating rifts in relationships but terrible at mending them, especially after they've repeatedly betrayed their partner through sexual infidelity. For the most part, cheating men are both intimacy-challenged and empathy-challenged, and, as such, they lack the skills needed to overcome the damage wrought by their infidelity. Robert Weiss has spent over twenty years in the treatment of sex and intimacy issues, helping both cheating men and their betrayed spouses. In Out of the Doghouse he shares his expertise, illuminating the ways in which men can move beyond their usual feeble efforts to smooth things over. Sure, saying "I'm sorry" and trying to "buy forgiveness" with flowers and jewelry may temporarily calm the stormy seas, but these actions do nothing to re-establish trust, which is what a distraught woman needs if she hopes to feel better about her relationship over the long-term.
Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “s...
In this book, Durig presents a full-blown theory of consciousness. By engaging contemplation of the possibility of two brain hemispheres operating as two brains interacting with one another and aware of one another, he claims that it is our brains existing in a System of Interactive Reflexivity (SIR), perpetually aware of the world and each other’s perception of the world, which is the cause of consciousness. He highlights the importance of social interaction for shaping consciousness into meaning, mind, self, language, and emotions, as well as noting weaknesses in the current paradigm.