Introduction: comprehending Rastafari
Ennis B. Edmonds
in Rastafari: A Very Short Introduction
What is the appeal of the Rastafari movement? Is it the anti-establishment impulse the Rastas have come to represent? To understand Rastafari we must understand that it arose partly from a ...
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10. Dream consciousness
J. Allan Hobson
in Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction
‘Dream consciousness’ describes how modern sleep science has contributed to the dramatic progress of the last decade in understanding the brain basis of consciousness, and how that ...
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6. Thought gone wrong
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
The organs of thought sometimes go wrong. What is a delusion? What kinds of thoughts are delusions? How can they be explained? ‘Thought gone wrong’ acknowledges that there are no solid ...
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8. The limits of thought
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
What is the scope of human thought? Is there a limit on what we can grasp in thought? ‘The limits of thought’ focuses on whether there are thoughts that we cannot entrain and whether there ...
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1. Why the mystery?
Susan Blackmore
in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
What is consciousness? What does it do? Could we have evolved without it? ‘Why the mystery?’ considers the definition of consciousness and how psychologists, neuroscientists, and ...
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2. The human brain
Susan Blackmore
in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
‘The human brain’ considers the brain as a vast network of connections from which come our extraordinary abilities: perception, learning, memory, reasoning, language, and somehow or ...
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1. What is hermeneutics?
Jens Zimmermann
in Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction
‘What is hermeneutics?’ begins with the simple answer that hermeneutics means interpretation. But how and why do we interpret? Hermeneutics is the art of understanding and of making oneself ...
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4. Brute thought
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
Do animals think? What do they think about? Can they make predictions? It is clear that there are profound differences between the cognitive capacities of humans and those of non-human ...
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Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
Susan Blackmore
Consciousness is ‘the last great mystery for science’. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could ...
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2. ‘Rastalogy’ and ‘livity’: the principles and practices of Rastafari
Ennis B. Edmonds
in Rastafari: A Very Short Introduction
Where do the worldview, symbols, and lifestyles of Rastafari come from? Rastas and scholars of Rastafari employ the term ‘Rastology’ to mean the totality of Rastafarian ideas, and ‘livity’ ...
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3. Grounding, houses, and mansions: social formation of Rastafari
Ennis B. Edmonds
in Rastafari: A Very Short Introduction
Rastafari is not like Christian denominations. It is not homogenous. It is not able to regulate the behaviour of its members or dictate their beliefs. It is more like other African diaspora ...
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7. What is a person?
Stephen Mumford
in Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction
‘What is a person?’ asks why a person has special status. What makes a person a different particular from a table or other physical object? Is it intelligence, consciousness, or moral ...
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1. What is thought?
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
We think all the time. A life devoid of thought would not be recognizably human. It is one thing to think and another to understand thinking. ‘What is thought?’ considers this question by ...
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5. ‘They don’t think like we do’
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
Are the structures of thought fundamentally invariant across changes of cultural context, or is it true that ‘they’ do not think like ‘we’ do? Most psychologists consider human thought as ...
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7. The ethics of thought
Tim Bayne
in Thought: A Very Short Introduction
Under what circumstances are we responsible for our thoughts? How can that responsibility be exercised? ‘The ethics of thought’ examines what lies at the heart of the nature of thought and ...
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4. A grand illusion
Susan Blackmore
in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
Is consciousness an illusion? If so, it isn’t that consciousness doesn’t exist, but that it isn’t what it seems. ‘A grand illusion’ considers change and inattentional blindness, challenging ...
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3. Language, creativity, emotion
Margaret A. Boden
in Artificial Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction
If AI cannot model language, creativity, and emotion, hopes of artificial general intelligence (AGI) are illusory. These quintessentially ‘human’ areas have been modeled, but only up to a ...
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4. Alienation and reification
Stephen Eric Bronner
in Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
‘Alienation and reification’ explores the concepts of alienation and reification in Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and how this affected 20th century Western ...
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5. The self
Susan Blackmore
in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
Who—or what—am I? ‘The self’ shows that this question is intimately bound up with the problem of consciousness because whenever there are conscious experiences it is easy to assume they ...
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3. Time and space
Susan Blackmore
in Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edn)
‘Time and space’ discusses a range of experiments and theories of consciousness including neuroscientist Benjamin Libet’s ‘half second lag’ and the ‘cutaneous rabbit’ illusion, dualism, ...
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