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Explaining Consciousness
Author: Jonathan Shear
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At the 1994 landmark conference Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness, philosopher David Chalmers distinguished between the easy problems and the hard problem of consciousness research. According to Chalmers, the easy problems are to explain cognitive functions such as discrimination, integration, and the control of behavior the hard problem is to explain why these functions should be associated with phenomenal experience. Why doesnt all this cognitive processing go on in the dark, without any consciousness at all? In this book, philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies. Some take issue with Chalmers distinction, arguing that the hard problem is a non-problem, or that the explanatory gap is too wide to be bridged. Others offer alternative suggestions as to how the problem might be solved, whether through cognitive science, fundamental physics, empirical phenomenology, or with theories that take consciousness as irreducible.Contributors Bernard J. Baars, Douglas J. Bilodeau, David Chalmers, Patricia S. Churchland, Thomas Clark, C. J. S. Clarke, Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Stuart Hameroff, Valerie Hardcastle, David Hodgson, Piet Hut, Christof Koch, Benjamin Libet, E. J. Lowe, Bruce MacLennan, Colin McGinn, Eugene Mills, Kieron OHara, Roger Penrose, Mark C. Price, William S. Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, Tom Scott, William Seager, Jonathan Shear, Roger N. Shepard, Henry Stapp, Francisco J. Varela, Max Velmans, Richard WarnerReviewThe volume is determinedly interdisciplinary, with a fair sprinkling of physicists and physiologists, alongside philosophers and psychologists of all denominations... this is a useful survey of the kind of work that has been spawned by the boom in consciousness studies. -- David Papineau, The Times Higher Education Supplement, October 23, 1998 About the AuthorJonathan Shear is Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University and Managing Editor of Journal of Consciousness Studies.
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Author: L. Ron Hubbard
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The Way to HappinessTrue joy and happiness are valuable. If one does not survive, no joy and no happiness are obtainable. Trying to survive in a chaotic, dishonest and generally immoral society is difficult.Any individual or group seeks to obtain from life what pleasure and freedom from pain that they can. Your own survival can be threatened by the bad actions of others around you. Your own happiness can be turned to tragedy and sorrow by the dishonesty and misconduct of others.Undoubtably you can think of instances of this actually happening. Such wrongs reduce ones survival and impair ones happiness. You are important to other people. You are listened to. You can influence others. The happiness or unhappiness of others you could name is important to you.Without too much trouble, using this book, you can help them survive and lead happier lives.While no one can guarantee that anyone else can be happy, their chances of survival and happiness can be improved. And with theirs, yours will be. It is in your power to point the way to a less dangerous and happier life.About the AuthorL. Ron HubbardThere are only two tests of a life well lived L.Ron Hubbard once remarked Did one do as one intended? And were people glad one lived? In testament to the first stands the full body of his lifes work, including some 12,000 writings and 3,000 tape-recorded lectures of Dianetics and Scientology. In evidence of the second are the hundreds of millions of individuals whose lives have been demonstrably bettered because he lived. They are the more than 28 million students now reading superlatively owing to L. Ron Hubbards educational discoveries they are the millions of men and women freed from substance abuse through L.Ron Hubbards breakthroughs in drug rehabilitation they are the near 100 million who have been touched by his nonreligious moral code and they are the many millions more who hold his work to be the spiritual cornerstone of their lives.Although best known for Dianetics and Scientology, L.Ron Hubbard cannot be so simply categorized. If nothing else, his life was too varied, his influence too broad. There are tribesmen in Southern Africa, for example, who know nothing of Dianetics and Scientology, but they know L. Ron Hubbard the educator. Likewise, there are factory workers in Albania who know him only for his administrative discoveries children in China who know him only as the author of their moral code, and readers in dozens of languages who know him only for his novels. So, no, L.Ron Hubbard is not an easy man to categorize and certainly does not fit popular misconceptions of religious founder as an aloof and contemplative figure. Yet the more one comes to know this man and his achievements, the more one comes to realize he was precisely the sort of person to have brought us Scientology, the only major religion to have been founded in the twentieth century.What Scientology offers is likewise what one would expect of a man such as L.Ron Hubbard. For not only does it provide a fully unique approach to our most fundamental questionsWho are we? From where did we come and what is our destiny? But it further provides an equally unique technology for greater spiritual awareness. So how would we expect to characterize the founder of such a religion? Clearly, he would have to be larger than life, attracted to people, liked by people, dynamic, charismatic and immensely capable in a dozen fieldsall exactly L.Ron Hubbard.The fact is, if Mr. Hubbard had stopped after only one of his many accomplishments he would still be celebrated today. For example, with 46 million works of fiction in circulation, including such monumental bestsellers as Battlefield Earth, Fear and the Mission Earth series, Mr. Hubbard is unquestionably one of the most acclaimed and widely read authors of all time. His novels have earned some of the worlds most prestigious literary awards, and he has very genuinely been described as one of the most prolific and influential writers of the twentieth century.His earlier accomplishments are similarly impressive. As a barnstorming aviator through the 1930s he was known as Flash and broke local records for sustained glider flight. As a leader of expeditions, he is credited with conducting the first complete Puerto Rican mineralogical survey under United States protectorship and his navigational annotations still influence the maritime guides for British Columbia. His experimentation with early radio direction finding further became the basis for the Long Range Navigational system (Loran). And, as a lifelong photographer, his works have been displayed in galleries on two continents, with the definitive body of his photographs in traveling and permanent exhibits still drawing tens of thousands every year.Among other avenues of research, Mr. Hubbard developed and codified an administrative technology that is utilized by more than 200,000 organizations worldwide, including multinational corporations, charitable bodies, political parties, schools, youth clubs and every imaginable small business. Likewise Mr. Hubbards internationally acclaimed educational methods are utilized by more than a hundred thousand educators, while his equally acclaimed drug rehabilitation program has proven at least five times more effective than similarly aimed programs.Yet, however impressive these figures, no measure of L.Ron Hubbard is complete without some appreciation of what became his lifes work Dianetics and Scientology. The worlds most effective force for positive change, the Church of Scientology represents spiritual freedom for millions of people the world over. They come from every walk of life, every culture and every strata of society. Moreover, when one is speaking of L.Ron Hubbards discoveries relating to the human mind and spirit, one is ultimately speaking of the philosophic foundation of all he accomplished better education, crime-free cities, drug-free campuses, stable and ethical organizations and cultural revitalization through the artsall this and more is made possible because of the breakthroughs in Dianetics and Scientology.
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