The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness

by Susan Schneider (Editor), Max Velmans (Editor)

Updated and revised, the highly-anticipated second edition of The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness offers a collection of readings that together represent the most thorough and comprehensive survey of the nature of consciousness available today.

- Features updates to scientific chapters reflecting the latest research in the field

- Includes 18 new theoretical, empirical, and methodological chapters covering integrated information theory, renewed interest in panpsychism, and more

- Covers a wide array of topics that include the origins and extent of consciousness, various consciousness experiences such as meditation and drug-induced states, and the neuroscience of consciousness

- Presents 54 peer-reviewed chapters written by leading experts in the study of consciousness, from across a variety of academic disciplines

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Reference, Essays, Neuroscience, Psychology

848 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2006

About the author

SUSAN SCHNEIDER is a philosopher and cognitive scientist. She is the Blumberg-NASA chair at the Library of Congress and NASA and the Director of the AI,Mind and Society group at the University of Connecticut. Podcasts, chapters, videos, etc. are available at her website: Schneiderwebsite.com

Reviews

[Matthew Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I attempted to read this anthology of academic essays on consciousness as a lay person to understand more of what's going on in the field. Some were very interesting, such as the philosophy metaphysics chapters on panpsychism and cosmopsychism, animal consciousness, the science of consciousness in dreams vs. waking states, and distinctions between different types of consciousness I'd never consider. Some were too dry or went way over my head. Chapter 13 seemed to border on pseudoscience, with the author of that chapter (Etzel Cardeña) weirdly overstating the evidence for things like ESP and telepathy, which made me question the other chapters and how well-regarded their authors are in their field. If you're not in the field, I'd suggest taking it with some skepticism and reading the chapters that are interesting to you. I didn't finish the entire collection myself.

[Carolina Nilsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent collection of articles on the topic of consciousness and some different aspects of it.