Consciousness Science

Can you resist everything except temptation? In a hedonistic age full of distractions, it's hard to possess willpower - or in fact even understand why we should need it. Yet it's actually the most important factor in achieving success and a happy life, shown to be more significant than money, looks, background or intelligence. This book reveals the secrets of self-control. Here Roy Baumeister, one of the world's most esteemed and influential psychologists, and journalist John Tierney, turn this notion on its head.

"The Solution is in the Symptom." What does that even mean?! Thawing the Spirit "cracks the code", telling us to STOP treating symptoms of emotional or psychological distress and use them to trace, unpack, and heal the root cause of those symptoms. An Integrative Psychotherapist and Author of the bestselling Thawing the Iceberg Series, Don Carter MSW, LCSW offers Thawing the Spirit as a distillation of his personal, professional, academic, and spiritual experience as he approaches 40 years of service with advanced certification and experience in the treatment of trauma, complex-PTSD, ...

In this audiobook, Oxford biologist John Parrington proposes a radical new theory of human consciousness, arguing that a qualitative leap in consciousness occurred during human evolution as language and tool use transformed our brains. Rejecting outdated views of the brain as a hard-wired circuit diagram, he draws on the latest insights from neuroscience to show that meaning is created within our heads through a dynamic interaction of oscillating brain waves.

In science fiction, artificial intelligence takes the shape of computers that can speak like people, think for themselves, and sometimes act against us. Reality of course is vastly different, though in many ways computers surpass their fictional counterparts. This book reviews work in the field and covers topics from chess-playing to quantum computing. The writers tackle how to make computers more powerful, how we define consciousness, what the hard problems are, and even how computers might be built once the limits of silicon chips have been reached.

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male-female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake. Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences.

In this thoughtful and brilliant new book, the internationally best-selling author of Happy considers the value of friction in our lives. In chapters revealing his own moments of anger and prejudice, anxiety and shyness, loneliness and loss, Derren Brown examines the means to a more rewarding life, be it saving yourself from small talk or navigating middle age.

Changing our relationship to the afterlife will transform our relationship to this world. As the worldview of monistic or analytic idealism displaces the obsolete model of reductive materialism, the values of our civilization will also change profoundly. Hence, on every level, this is a subject of primary importance for humanity's future.

What is the secret to being happy? Does happiness come from outside us or do we need to look within? Can meditation help? Gelong Thubten has worked with everyone from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to Ruby Wax and Benedict Cumberbatch. In his warm and engaging debut book he explores the nature of happiness and explains how to bring meditation into our busy 21st-century lives with simple yet effective exercises. Gelong Thubten, Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author, has always been fascinated by the question of happiness.

What is it that makes us human? Is it language, imagination, morality, or is it that we cook and wear shoes? Or perhaps we are less human than we think - Neanderthal and Denisovan genes can be found within all of us! Once again, New Scientist have all of the unexpected answers, and - just as they did for the universe in The Origin of (Almost) Everything - they take us on a tour around the human body and brain, taking in everything from evolution to email, from the Stone Age to Spotify.

This text draws together central components of Hegel's philosophical system as he explores the development of Mind (Spirit, Geist) in its individual, communal and conceptual aspects. Translator William Wallace writes (1894): 'I here offer a translation of the third or last part of Hegel's encyclopaedic sketch of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind. The volume, like its subject, stands complete in itself. But it may also be regarded as a supplement or continuation of the work begun in my version of his logic.'

Unveil the wisdom of antiquity with the immersive audiobook version of Manly P. Hall's magnum opus, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. This masterwork, expertly revised and narrated by Dennis Logan (producer of the Amazon Best-Seller The Books of Enoch: The Angels, Watchers and Nephilim) lets you engage with the wealth of knowledge that has been revered by truth seekers for nearly a century, all while you're on the move.

The world is louder than ever. It's not just the noise in our ears, but also the noise on our screens and in our heads. 'Silence is golden,' the adage goes. But how do we find it in times like these? Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz take us on an unlikely journey exploring why silence is essential for physical health, mental clarity, professional fulfilment, nourishing relationships, ecological sustainability and vibrant community.

A diabetic woman awakens from a coma having forgotten the last 10 years of her life. A Haitian immigrant has nightmares that begin bleeding into his waking hours. A retired teacher loses the use of her right hand due to pain of no known origin. Noga Arikha began studying these patients and their confounding symptoms in order to explore how our physical experiences inform our identities. Soon after she initiated her work, the question took on unexpected urgency, as Arikha’s own mother began to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

Does free will exist? The question has fueled heated debates spanning from philosophy to psychology and religion. The answer has major implications, and the stakes are high. To put it in the simple terms that have come to dominate these debates, if we are free to make our own decisions, we are accountable for what we do, and if we aren't free, we're off the hook.

A disgraced hero. A galaxy on the brink. The fate of humanity lies in the balance. Kel Chaada was once a celebrated war hero—until his victories uncovered the dark secrets of humanity’s immortal rulers. Branded a fugitive and forced into exile, Kel flees to the edges of the galaxy, only to discover ancient alien civilizations with unimaginable powers. These forces could reshape the future of the Milky Way, but they come with a dangerous allure. When a new galactic threat emerges, Kel must decide: will he harness these newfound powers to protect humanity, or succumb to their temptation ...

Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience. The book carries profound implications for debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter.

This revolutionary treatise starts from one fundamental premise: that our phenomenal consciousness includes direct experience of value. For too long, ethical theorists have looked for value in external states of affairs or reduced value to a projection of the mind onto them. The result, unsurprisingly, is widespread antirealism about ethics. In this book, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette turns our metaethical gaze inward and dares us to consider that value, rather than being something “out there”, is a quality woven into the very fabric of our conscious experience, in a highly objective way.

This powerful, enlightening guide comes from a team of martial arts experts who openly share their triumphs and their failures - and reveal how you too can become more successful, happy, and self-confident. Merging the martial arts' lifestyle and philosophy with sheer business acumen, they teach you not only how to make a living but how to make a life. Their 39 conditioning-for-success exercises compel you to look introspectively as you never have before.

Why were the sordid deeds of Jeffery Epstein concealed for two decades? Why was inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus suppressed? Why are social media sites censoring scientists, doctors, journalists, and scholars? Through dozens of absorbing exposés, Red, White & Blind reveals the corporate media's deliberate lies, tendentious censorship, and ironic use of the term disinformation.

This book is a profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices. In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.