This collection opens a dialogue between process philosophy and contemporary consciousness studies. Approaching consciousness from diverse disciplinary perspectives—philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, neuropathology, psychotherapy, biology, animal ethology, and physics—the contributors offer empirical and philosophical support for a model of consciousness inspired by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Whitehead’s model is developed in ways he could not have anticipated to show how it can advance current debates beyond well-known sticking points. This has trenchant consequences for epistemology and suggests fresh and promising new perspectives on such topics as the mind-body problem, the neurobiology of consciousness, animal consciousness, the evolution of consciousness, panpsychism, the unity of consciousness, epiphenomenalism, free will, and causation.
Cuprins
List of Figures and Tables
Key to Abbreviations of Whitehead’s Work
Introduction
Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes
Part I. Setting the Stage
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of Twentieth-Century Philosophy
Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
Anderson Weekes
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
Anderson Weekes
Part II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as Subjective Form: Whitehead’s Nonreductionist Naturalism
David Griffin
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective
Michael Katzko
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds
Donald Redfield Griffin
Part III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro)Science (and Back Again)
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity
George W. Shields
9. The Evolution of Consciousness
Max Velmans
10. The Carrier Theory of Causation
Gregg Rosenberg
Part IV. Clinical Applications: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics
Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan Mac Queen
12. From Coma to Consciousness: Recovery and the Process of Differentiation
Avraham Schweiger, Michael Frost, and Ofer Keren
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective
Michel Weber
Part V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection According to Whitehead
Xavier Verley
15. Consciousness and Causation in Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming
Anderson Weekes
List of Contributors
Index
Despre autor
Michel Weber is Director of the Center for Philosophical Practice ‘Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, ‘ Brussels, and author of
Whitehead’s Pancreativism: The Basics.
Anderson Weekes is an independent scholar and an educational consultant in New York.