Reddit reviews Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy Series)
We found 7 Reddit comments about Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy Series). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Oxford University Press USA
I haven't read it, but I can tell you that the consensus about it in the History of Philosophy community is that it's pretty bad. I've only seen it cited in history of philosophy journals as a foil. For a broad introduction, I've heard Kenny's new work is pretty good. And I rather like Copleston's History, though it's nine ~500 page volumes. I think your best bet, though, is just to read some philosophical classics. Perhaps Plato's Five Dialogues (https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Dialogues-Euthyphro-Apology-Classics/dp/0872206335/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467069583&sr=8-1&keywords=five+dialogues), Descartes' Meditations (https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-First-Philosophy-Hackett-Classics/dp/0872201929/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467069631&sr=8-1&keywords=meditations+descartes), Russel's Problems of Philosophy (https://www.amazon.com/Problems-Philosophy-Bertrand-Russell/dp/1613821875/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1467069667&sr=8-7&keywords=problems+of+philosophy), and maybe Searle's Brief Introduction to Mind (https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Brief-Introduction-Fundamentals-Philosophy/dp/0195157346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467069693&sr=8-1&keywords=searle+mind).
There are better, more important, and more recent works than these, but I think these are good intros to philosophy as a whole for two reasons: 1) these are very representative of Ancient, Modern, Early Analytic, and contemporary philosophy of mind. And 2) these are all pretty easy. Philosophy's batshit complicated, at times; but none of these are more difficult than they have to be (and yet, they're not Idiot's Guides … )
I'll pass along wokeupabug's typical recommendations:
>A good broad introduction is Lowe's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (for a broader, philosophy and cognition sort of approach). For an introduction more focused on the mind-body problem, you have lots of options; Kim's Philosophy of Mind and Heil's Philosophy of Mind... are good choices. For a history anthology approach, the Chalmers' Philosophy of Mind... is a good choice; a little more accessible would be Morton's Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind.
And the recommendation from the FAQ page:
>For philosophy of mind, Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction.
I don't really know what you mean by a 'consideration of the future'. Do you mean issues that could crop up in the future germane to phil. mind (A.I., cog. enhancement, etc.)? If so, that's a tough one! Likely just the Cambridge Handbook. The introduciton is avail here if you'd like a preview. And this book on Machine Ethics is recommended on the PhilPapers bibliography.
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I highly recommend John Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction.
Searle's is a bit biased towards his argument for "Emergent consciousness" throughout the book but he does give a very thorough and accessible overview of the history and important arguments/debates about consciousness/free will/personal identity. Also tons of helpful references at the end of each chapter that will lead you towards many of the notable papers. and books if you wish to follow up in more detail.
The books main strength lies in Searle's prose which (in this book at least) is engaging, easy to follow, full of life and energy and informative at the same time.
It is a bit older than the books mentioned by wyzaard above, so it might better serve as a compliment to read alongside the texts he recommended.
Given that all of our neuroscience hasn't shed the slightest glimpse of a glimmer of an idea how we have subjective experience, I wouldn't be quite so celebratory.
Typically posts claiming this are made by people who have only a Popular Science level of knowledge of the subject, but don't actually know that the best we have are what are called NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness), not consciousness itself. In other words, we know that a certain bundle of c fibers fire when people experience pain, but we do not ever see pain, or love, or thoughts, under a microscope. We just see neurons firing.
John Searle has written several excellent books on the subject, of which this is probably the most accessible.
A few suggested additions:
Well, if you want a concentrated course of study you might consider looking for secondary sources that focus on particular areas of research in philosophy rather than trying to read very few (5-10) authors in real depth. I see Kant has been suggested, for example, and while I would never doubt his importance as a philosopher, if you set out with the intention of reading the bulk of his works as you say you might you would have to tackle a great deal of dry, technical material which I think would prove to be a lot more work than you could expect. Same could be said for Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Descartes, nearly anyone you really might care to list. I don't know if you've read much philosophy, but you might instead look at something like an introduction to philosophy, an intro to ethics, or an intro to the philosophy of mind. These are only some examples, there are books like this for pretty much any area of study that attracts your interest. I'm sure others could provide suggestions as well.
The questions you are asking are related to philosphy of mind. Two good, recent, and not too dense books on the topic are http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Brief-Introduction-Fundamentals-Philosophy/dp/0195157346/ and
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Shapes-Mind-Shaun-Gallagher/dp/0199204160/
To understand how consciousness works you probably need to start with the brain. You can look at it from afar and you'll see a mess of grey tissue and up close you'll see a bunch tiny cells and electrical and chemical signals. You won't find any consciousnesses. So you pay more attention and see that the tiny cells (neurons) are constantly interacting with each other and with different parts of the body like eyes and limbs. These interactions start small and gradually build up. Making a big leap, you see that human biology has organized these interactions to perform higher order tasks like using visual information (a ball rushing through the air towards you) to direct limb movement (reaching out your hands to catch it.) But these types of actions aren't necessarily the result of conscious states, they could just be reflex actions.
Making the next step is difficult. You know that you have consciouness and that you have higher order brain activities, but dreams for example seem to be higher order brain activities that occur when you're unconscious. So what makes higher order brain activities into conscious states? Philosophy and cognitive science have a great deal to say here and there's not a definitive answer, but I think Gallagher (in ch. 8 from the second book above) has a pretty good model (building off of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness.)
According to Gallagher's model your ongoing experience of the world breaks down into three time-based phases. You have the sense of the now, of what is happening at this very moment (primal impression.) You feel itchy or see blue or smell cinammon. You also have a working memory (retention) of the recent past. You weren't just feeling itchy or seeing blue or smelling cinammon. And you also are able to anticipate what is just about to happen (protention.) You aniticpate scratching the itch or being crushed by a tidal wave or eating dessert. Your being conscious is the result of your brain performing these phases in unison. Your stream of consciousness is the ongoing temporal connection. When you're unconscious you don't have full access to all three phases, when you're dreaming you don't really utilize retention or protention. There is a lot more to the model and its implications, but that's a very general picture.
Other organisms probably (in most cases certainly) don't have the sophisticated interactions that the human brain does which create consciousness. There are also complications with other aspects of mind stuff (esp. intentionality) would keep a computer from being conscious as we generally understand even if it was programmed with retention, protention, and now-ness (and getting proper anticipation/protention into a computer is a big challenge on its own.) I don't think we know enough to say when evolution produced consciousness. And while consciousness is not reducible to individual cells and electrochemical impulses it is a result of our biology, so when human babies get made and develop normally they end up gaining consciousness