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2187556 Koch, Christof:
Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
  Preis:   € 20,69

Verlag: Roberts and Company Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum: 06/2011
Seiten: 150 S.

ISBN-10: 1-936221-12-8   
ISBN-13: 9781-936221-12-7


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Beschreibung
Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? How can a three pound physical thing with the consistency of tofu give rise to subjective feelings? Christof Koch, a Caltech professor and pioneer of the scientific study of consciousness, tackles this question in plain English in about 150 pages. In Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, he takes you to the laboratory and the clinic and on side trips into the utility of the unconscious, what physics and neuroscience have to say about free will, and the author s 16-year collaboration with Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA who later turned his efforts to unraveling consciousness. But Confessions is not all science. It is also a deeply personal memoire in which Koch relates how his drive to understand consciousness was molded by his family and religious background he grew up as a devout Catholic and how the science in turn affected his search for meaning in the universe. The author concludes the book by describing a revolutionary, mathematical theory that posits that any complex system, whether a person, a honey bee or a silicon simulacrum, can possess at least vestiges of subjective feelings. This is a heartfelt narrative from one of today's most brilliant, flamboyant and spiritual scientists who is not afraid to confess his inner demons. The book is accompanied by ten allegorical paintings by Ann Erpino.
Inhalt
1 In which I introduce the mind-body problem, explain why I am passionate about it, and tell you why science must understand the material basis of sentience. I acquaint you with Francis Crick, tell you how he relates to this quest, make a confession, and end on a sad note

2 In which you find out something about my upbringing and the wellsprings of my inner conflict between religion and reason, my desire to become a scientist, why I wear a lapel pin of Professor Calculus and how I acquired a second mentor late in life

3 In which I explain why the existence and the function of consciousness can challenge the scientific view of the world, how consciousness can be investigated empirically with both feet firmly planted on the ground, why animals share consciousness with humans, and why self-consciousness is not as important as many intellectuals think it is

4 In which you'll hear tales of how scientists are like magicians and make you look but not see, how they track the footprints of consciousness by peering into your skull, why you don't see with your eyes, and why attention and consciousness are not the same

5 In which you learn from neurologists and neurosurgeons that color is fashioned in a small region of the cerebral cortex, that some neurons care a great deal about celebrities, that cutting the cortex in two does not reduce consciousness by half, and that the loss of a sugar-cube-sized chunk of brainstem or thalamic tissue can leave you undead

6 In which I defend the proposition which my younger self found nonsensical—that you are unaware of most of the things that go on in your head and that unconscious zombie agents control much of your life, even though you are confident that you are in charge

7 In which I throw caution to the wind and bring up the problem of free will, discuss what physics says about determinism, and explain the impoverished freedom of the mind to choose, why your conscious urge to act lags behind your brain's decision, and why freedom is a feeling created by the brain

8 In which I argue that consciousness is a fundamental property of net-worked entities and rhapsodize about integrated information theory, how it explains many puzzling facts about consciousness and how it provides a blueprint for building sentient machines

9 In which I muse about final matters considered off-limits to polite scientific discourse: to wit, the relationship between science and religion, the existence of God, whether this God can intervene in the universe and my recent tribulations in life

Autoreninfo
Born in the American Midwest, Christof Koch grew up in Holland, Germany, Canada, and Morocco, where he graduated from the French Lycèe Descartes. He studied Physics and Philosophy in Germany and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics. After four years at MIT, Koch joined the California Institute of Technology, where he is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology. He lives in Pasadena, loves dogs, Apple Computers, climbing and long-distance running in the San Gabriel mountains around Los Angeles.

The author of more than three hundred scientific papers and journal articles, patents, and many books, Koch studies the biophysics of computation, and the neuronal basis of visual perception, attention, and consciousness. He writes and lectures often to the public, and he is the author of the seminal book on the science of consciousness—The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach.
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