How is life related to the mind? Thompson explores this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness, drawing on sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy. Ultimately he shows that mind and life are more continuous than previously accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind.

A philosopher argues that we know little about our own inner lives. Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s researchers found that most people reported dreaming in black and white. In the 1960s, when most movies were in color and more people had color television sets, the vast majority of reported dreams contained color. The most likely explanation for this, according to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, is not that exposure to black-and-white media made people misremember their dreams. It is that we simply don't know whether or not we dream in color. In Perplexities of Consciousness, Schwitzgebel examines various aspects of inner life (dreams, mental imagery, emotions, and other subjective phenomena) and argues that we know very little about our stream of conscious experience. Drawing broadly from historical and recent philosophy and psychology to examine such topics as visual perspective, and the unreliability of introspection, Schwitzgebel finds us singularly inept in our judgments about conscious experience.

"You take all of Nature together to shed light on individual details; in the totality of her phenomena, you seek to explain the individual. From simple levels of organization, you ascend to the more complex, ultimately assembling the most complex of all--the human being." --Friedrich Schiller (in a letter to Goethe) Dr. Armin Husemann outlines--for doctors, therapists, students, and other interested readers--the basics and essential aspects of anthroposophic medicine. He takes the reader on an exciting journey of discovery through the realms of minerals, plants, animals, and humankind. In doing so, diverse, unfamiliar perspectives open up for the practice of medicine and other forms of healthcare and therapy. Dr. Husemann provides an abundance of scientific details that look at the whole person today. He shows ways to recapture the human being within the context of life, nature, and its spiritual origin. This is the essence and basis of anthroposophically extended medicine. The author uses numerous examples to illustrate how a phenomenological encounter with nature leads to a fuller understanding of the human organism and its various clinical pictures, opening new ways toward a more holistic practice of therapies and the healing process. Form, Life, and Consciousness is one of those rare resources that serve as a guide for the professional while also remaining accessible to those who are interested in gaining a better understanding of the whole human being and a spiritual-scientific approach to medicine and therapy. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- From the foreword by Prof. Peter Heusser, MD: "Medical études" is the title Armin Husemann would have preferred for the studies published here, and rightly so. In this book, Husemann--an anthroposophic physician, Goethean researcher, teacher, and head of the Eugen Kolisko Academy at the Filder Clinic in Filderstadt (near Stuttgart)--develops a medical perspective on the human being that infuses the often highly abstract scientific foundations of medicine with artistic sensibility. The result is a new, supple form of medical thinking that might be called "medical science through art," to use an expression previously coined by Husemann himself.... Armin Husemann's art-imbued study of the human being and the natural world is constantly growing, differentiating, metamorphosing, and developing, as this book also testifies. His "human science" has assumed something of an organismic form itself; it is not a schematic system that can ever be "finalized." In Dr. Husemann, we experience an exemplary enlivening and humanizing of science and teaching. In my view, science and education need to be adapted to conform to the human and natural worlds on a deeper level. The need for evolution in this direction is all too obvious in undesirable developments of the present day. It is my hope that this new book will inspire many readers, especially the younger ones, to participate actively in this urgently needed shift toward living thinking in medicine.

A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

As a cardiologist, Pim van Lommel was struck by the number of his patients who claimed to have near-death experiences as a result of their heart attacks. As a scientist, this was difficult for him to accept: Wouldn't it be scientifically irresponsible of him to ignore the evidence of these stories? Faced with this dilemma, van Lommel decided to design a research study to investigate the phenomenon under the controlled environment of a cluster of hospitals with a medically trained staff. For more than twenty years van Lommel systematically studied such near-death experiences in a wide variety of hospital patients who survived a cardiac arrest. In 2001, he and his fellow researchers published his study on near-death experiences in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. The article caused an international sensation as it was the first scientifically rigorous study of this phenomenon. Now available for the first time in English, van Lommel offers an in-depth presentation of his results and theories in this book that has already sold over 125,000 copies in Europe. Van Lommel provides scientific evidence that the near-death phenomenon is an authentic experience that cannot be attributed to imagination, psychosis, or oxygen deprivation. He further reveals that after such a profound experience, most patients' personalities undergo a permanent change. In van Lommel's opinion, the current views on the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper understanding of the phenomenon. In Consciousness Beyond Life, van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.

How do our unique conscious minds reflect and amplify nature’s vast evolutionary process? This book provides a scientifically informed, psychologically holistic approach to understanding and enhancing our future consciousness, serving as a guide for creating a realistic, constructive, and ethical future. Thomas Lombardo reveals how we can flourish in the flow of evolution and create a prosperous future for ourselves, human society and the planet.

How is life related to the mind? This work draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that modern explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind.