A genuine spiritual quest. . . . Extraordinary. -- New York Times

Among the most profound and influential explorations of mind-expanding psychedelic drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books--The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell--in which Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This edition also features an additional essay, Drugs That Shape Men's Minds, now included for the first time.

The fastest growing realization everywhere is that humanity can t go on the way it is going. Indeed, the great fear is we re entering endgame where we appear to have lost the race between self-destruction and self-discovery the race to find the psychologically relieving understanding of our good and evil -afflicted human condition. WELL, ASTONISHING AS IT IS, THIS BOOK BY AUSTRALIAN BIOLOGIST JEREMY GRIFFITH PRESENTS THE 11TH HOUR BREAKTHROUGH BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION NECESSARY FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REHABILITATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF OUR SPECIES The culmination of 40 years of studying and writing about our species psychosis, FREEDOM delivers nothing less than the holy grail of insight we have needed to free ourselves from the human condition. It is, in short, as Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, asserts in his Introduction, THE BOOK THAT SAVES THE WORLD .Griffith has been able to venture right to the bottom of the dark depths of what it is to be human and return with the fully accountable, true explanation of our seemingly imperfect lives. At long last we have the redeeming and thus transforming understanding of human behaviour And with that explanation found all the other great outstanding scientific mysteries about our existence are now also able to be truthfully explained of the meaning of our existence, of the origin of our unconditionally selfless moral instincts, and of why we humans became conscious when other animals haven t. Yes, the full story of life on Earth can finally be told and all of these incredible breakthroughs and insights are presented here in this greatest of all books .REVIEWS I ve never felt the world more threatening, more fractious, more fissiparous, more febrile We need to think, we need new ideas, we need proselytisers, we need obsessed people, which I think Jeremy is. We need him to be questioned. We need FREEDOM to be argued, we need it to be read and talked about and understood. It may be right, it may be wrong. But you need someone as committed as Jeremy to trying to understand what gets us here Jeremy made me think afresh and think differently. I hope he does it with you. -- Sir Bob GeldofBiologist Jeremy Griffin has dedicated the past 40 years to understanding the human condition and considering the question of how we will save our species from self-destruction. By unravelling the mysteries of human behavior, he explains the origin of our moral instincts and why humans became conscious while other animals have not. This may sound hard-going, but it s really interesting. I very much enjoyed it. Three and a half stars -- The Sun NewspaperThis book IS the book all humans need to read for our collective wellbeing. -- Scott D. Churchill, Professor and former Chair, Psychology Department, University of Dallas The sequence of discussion in FREEDOM is so logical and sensible, providing the necessary breakthrough in the critical issue of needing to understand ourselves. Dr. David J. Chivers, primatologist and former President of the Primate Society of Great Britain This book is actually written from a position outside of the human condition. It is just amazing; Griffith walks freely though all the psychosis of our troubled human condition and with such freedom is able to explain everything about us Tim Macartney-Snape, biologist, mountaineer, and twice-honored Order of Australia recipient Frankly, I am blown away as the saying goes The ground-breaking significance of this work is tremendous. -- Dr. Patricia Glazebrook, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Dalhousie University It might help bring about a paradigm shift in the self-image of humanity an outcome that in the past only the great world religions have achieved. Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University This is a most amazing project. It is strongly interdisciplinary, visionary and forwardlooking. Dr Marc Bekoff, Professor of Organismic Biology, University of Colorado A dense but often illuminating book that provides a hopeful look at what it means to be human. Kirkus Reviews

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers, and we have seen in recent years superb volumes by such eminent figures as Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Gerald Edelman, and Roger Penrose, all firing volleys in what has come to be called the consciousness wars. Now, in The Conscious Mind, philosopher David J. Chalmers offers a cogent analysis of this heated debate as he unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.
Writing in a rigorous, thought-provoking style, the author takes us on a far-reaching tour through the philosophical ramifications of consciousness. Chalmers convincingly reveals how contemporary cognitive science and neurobiology have failed to explain how and why mental events emerge from physiological occurrences in the brain. He proposes instead that conscious experience must be understood in an entirely new light--as an irreducible entity (similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space) that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the sum of its parts. And after suggesting some intriguing possibilities about the structure and laws of conscious experience, he details how his unique reinterpretation of the mind could be the focus of a new science. Throughout the book, Chalmers provides fascinating thought experiments that trenchantly illustrate his ideas. For example, in exploring the notion that consciousness could be experienced by machines as well as humans, Chalmers asks us to imagine a thinking brain in which neurons are slowly replaced by silicon chips that precisely duplicate their functions--as the neurons are replaced, will consciousness gradually fade away? The book also features thoughtful discussions of how the author's theories might be practically applied to subjects as diverse as artificial intelligence and the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
All of us have pondered the nature and meaning of consciousness. Engaging and penetrating, The Conscious Mind adds a fresh new perspective to the subject that is sure to spark debate about our understanding of the mind for years to come.

Offering a deeply necessary, clear-eyed look at who we are as flesh-and-bone bodies during the climate crisis, this is a book that searches and finds meaning in both the hard truths and the value of wonder.--Ada Limón

In this luminous collection of essays, Ellen Wayland-Smith probes the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve.

From the Old Testament to Maggie Nelson, these explorations are grounded in a rich network of associations. In an essay on the postpartum body, Wayland-Smith interweaves her experience as a mother with accounts of phantom limbs and Greek mythology to meditate on moments when pieces of our being exist outside our bodies. In order to comprehend diagnoses of depression and breast cancer, she delves into LA hippie culture's love affair with crystals and Emily Dickinson's geological poetry. Her experience with chemotherapy leads to reflection on Western medicine and its intolerance of death and the healing capacity of nature. And throughout, she challenges the false separation between the human and the primeval, animal mode of being.

At once intimate and expansive, The Science of Last Things peels back layers of human thought and behavior, breaking down our modern conceptions of individuality and reframing us as participants in a world of astounding elegance and mystery.

How philosophy can teach us to be less anxious about being anxious by understanding that it's an essential part of being human

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies--Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life--and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.

Chopra shows that many philosophers--including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger--have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.

Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.

The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right. In this influential book, Neumann shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent. The intermediate stages are projected in the universal myths of the World Creation, Great Mother, Separation of the World Parents, Birth of the Hero, Slaying of the Dragon, Rescue of the Captive, and Transformation and Deification of the Hero. Throughout the sequence, the Hero is the evolving ego consciousness.

Featuring a foreword by Jung, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and enduring work.

In 'Combining', Nora Bateson invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity. Insisting on our collective responsibility to confront the looming threats to humanity' s survival, she advocates change through interconnectedness and challenges us to rethink our perspectives on relationships, community, and the very essence of being human. A blend of intellectual inquiry, essays, emotional engagement, storytelling, poetry and graphic art, 'Combining' is an invitation to nurture genuine connections and navigate a world brimming with Warm Data - the interrelationships that integrate elements of every complex system. The book calls on us to shed our linear thinking and embrace Aphanipoiesis - the unseen ways in which life comes together to foster vitality and propel evolution. In 'Combining', love, humor, curiosity, and vulnerability entwine amidst the trials of a world in flux. As we face the Polycrisis, Nora Bateson urges us to swerve from the traditional paths and to dismantle the illusions of fitting in. She beckons us to step into a world where learning, uncutness, and readiness converge, promising both revelation and revolution.

La vida es corta. No nos olvidemos de lo más importante de nuestra vida, vivir para los demás y hacerles el bien.-Marco Aurelio

Convertirse en padre o madre es algo más que un proceso biológico: es un compromiso de por vida, de sacrificio, servicio y, lo más importante, amor. Es un reto levantarse cada día y poner a tus hijos en primer lugar. Experimentarás momentos de heroica compasión y humillante fracaso, a veces en el mismo día.

Incluye ofrece 366 meditaciones atemporales sobre la crianza de los hijos en unas pocos líneas al día, útiles incluso para los padres primerizos que duermen poco.

Basándose en su propia experiencia como padre de dos hijos, así como en lecciones de la vida de leyendas como Theodore Roosevelt, Bruce Springsteen, la reina Isabel II, Marco Aurelio y Toni Morrison, este devocionario diario ofrece sabiduría y orientación para ser el modelo que su hijo necesita.

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Tanto si está esperando su primer hijo como si ya es abuelo, el Diario del Padre Estoico ofrece ánimo, perspectiva y consejos prácticos para cada etapa de la vida de su hijo.

Life is short. Do not forget about the most important things in our life, living for other people and doing good for them.--Marcus Aurelius

Becoming a parent is more than just a biological process - it's a lifelong commitment to sacrifice, service, and most importantly, love. It's a challenge to get up every day and put your kids first. You will experience moments of heroic compassion and humiliating failure, sometimes within the same day.

But you don't have to do it alone. From Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash hit The Daily Stoic, The Daily Dad provides 366 timeless meditations on parenting in a few manageable paragraphs a day - useful for even the most sleep deprived new parent.

Drawing on his own experience as a father of two as well as lessons from the lives of legends such as Theodore Roosevelt, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Elizabeth II, Marcus Aurelius, and Toni Morrison, this daily devotional provides wisdom and guidance on being the role model your child needs. Whether you're expecting your first or already a grandparent, The Daily Dad offers encouragement, perspective, and practical advice for every stage of your child's life.

Sublime . . . Kalman's elegantly witty and at times melancholy narrative runs arm in arm with her unmistakable paintings on a serendipitous romp through the history of the world. --Vanity Fair

Wildly original . . . there's nothing else even remotely like it . . . This hilarious, wise, and deeply moving volume [is] the ultimate picture book for grown-ups. --O Magazine

Maira Kalman paints her highly personal worldview in this inimitable combination of image and text

An irresistible invitation to experience life through a beloved artist's psyche, The Principles of Uncertainty is a compilation of Maira Kalman's New York Times columns. Part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman, these brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images - which initially appear random - ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue.

A powerful and important exploration of how addiction functions on social, psychological and biological levels, integrated with the experience of being an addict, from an acclaimed philosopher and former addict.

What is addiction? Theories about what kind of thing addiction is are sharply divided between those who see it purely as a brain disorder, and those who conceive of it in psychological and social terms. Owen Flanagan, an acclaimed philosopher of mind and ethics, offers a state-of-the-art assessment of addiction science and proposes a new ecumenical model for understanding and explaining substance addiction.

Flanagan has first-hand knowledge of what it is like to be an addict. That experience, along with his wide-ranging knowledge of the philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and the ethics and politics of addiction, informs this important and novel work. He pairs the sciences that study addiction with a sophisticated view of the consciousness-brain/body relation to make his core argument: that substance addictions comprise a heterogeneous set of psychobiosocial behavioral disorders. He explains that substance addictions do not have one set of causes, such as self-medication or social dislocation, and they do not have one neural profile, such as a dysfunction in dopamine system. Some addictions are fun and experimentation gone awry. Flanagan reveals addiction to be a heterogeneous set of disorders, which are picked out by multifarious cultural, social, psychological, and neural features.

Flanagan explores the ways addicts sensibly insist on their own responsibility to undo addiction, as well as ways in which shame for addiction can be leveraged into healing. He insists on the collective shame we all bear for our indifference to many of the psychological and social causes of addiction and explores the implications of this new integrated paradigm for practices of harm reduction and treatment. Flanagan's powerful new book upends longstanding conventional thinking and points the way to new ways of understanding and treating addiction.

A humorous and philosophical trip through life, from the New York Times-bestselling coauthor of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .

Daniel Klein's fans have fallen in love with the warm, humorous, and thoughtful way he shows how philosophy resonates in everyday life. Readers of his popular books Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . and Travels with Epicurus come for enlightenment and stay for the entertainment.

As a young college student studying philosophy, Klein filled a notebook with short quotes from the world's greatest thinkers, hoping to find some guidance on how to live the best life he could. Now, from the vantage point of his eighth decade, Klein revisits the wisdom he relished in his youth with this collection of philosophical gems, adding new ones that strike a chord with him at the end of his life. From Epicurus to Emerson and Camus to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr--whose words provided the title of this book--each pithy extract is annotated with Klein's inimitable charm and insights. In these pages, our favorite jokester-philosopher tackles life's biggest questions, leaving us chuckling and enlightened.

Discover what the future holds for humankind and explore the intersection of human consciousness and the digital age.

- Challenges the boundaries of possibility pointing toward a new Renaissance

- Delves into the creative mysteries of quantum paradox and depth psychology

- Offers a positive vision for these challenging times

Written by the renowned creator and host of the Woodstock Roundtable, Douglas Grunther's The Quantum & The Dream tackles some of the most daring and exhilarating questions of our time, taking readers on a thrilling odyssey through the captivating world of quantum theory, AI, and the creative depths of the unconscious mind. While many foresee a dark and dangerous future, Grunther offers an optimistic view of the consciousness shifts shaping our future.

The Quantum & The Dream celebrates the secret corridors of the mind, the rich tapestry of myth, and the evolving media landscape, urging readers to push past the boundaries of what we thought possible to harness the power of our imaginations. Readers can explore fascinating thought experiments inspired by visionaries like Einstein, Jung, Joseph Campbell, and McLuhan, along with cutting-edge insights from leading creative thinkers of our era. Filled with expansive ideas, The Quantum & The Dream offers a pathway toward the New Renaissance.

A 50th anniversary edition of one of the most widely influential articles of 20th Century philosophy

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay What is it Like to be a Bat? Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience; it also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of nonhuman creatures as an important subject of study. Nagel argued that the essential subjectivity of conscious experience--what it is like for the creature undergoing it--means that reductionist theories of mind, which attempt to analyze it in physical terms, can never succeed. It follows that the physical sciences cannot provide a complete description of reality, and that the physical conception of objective reality must be transcended if science is going to comprehend the mind.

This edition reissues this classic and widely influential article on its 50th anniversary, along with a new preface discussing the origins and influence of the essay, as well as Further Thoughts: The Psychophysical Nexus, a supplementary essay which describes Nagel's later thoughts about how to respond to the problem posed by What Is It Like to Be a Bat? This second essay suggests that the most promising path forward for the mind-body problem, if one accepts the irreducible subjectivity of consciousness, is to seek a necessary connection between mental and neurophysiogical states through a more fundamental type of state which is neither mental nor physical but necessitates them both as essential aspects. In other words, a state that is physical from the outside and mental from the inside, just as we are. This would be a form of monism, requiring the formation of new concepts, since our present concepts of the mental and the physical do not entail such a necessary connection. The essay explains why the relation between the mental and the physical may be necessary, even though our present concepts make it appear contingent.

366 días para un cerebro, mente y vida mejores! Prácticas diarias simples para fortalecer tu mente, memoria, estado de ánimo, enfoque, energía, hábitos y relaciones. El psiquiatra y neurocientífico clínico Daniel Amen, MD, con más de 40 años de práctica clínica con decenas de miles de pacientes, comparte los hábitos diarios más efectivos que ha observado para mejorar el cerebro, dominar la mente, potenciar la memoria y hacerte sentir más feliz, saludable y conectado con tus seres queridos. Incorporar los pequeños hábitos y prácticas del Dr. Amen a lo largo de un año te ayudará a: - Gestionar tu mente para apoyar tu felicidad, paz interior y éxito. - Desarrollar estrategias de por vida para enfrentar cualquier estrés que se presente. - Crear un sentido continuo de propósito que guíe tus acciones diarias. - Aprender lecciones vitales que el Dr. Amen ha extraído del estudio de cientos de miles de escaneos cerebrales. Imagina lo que podrías aprender pasando cada día del año en el diván de un psiquiatra. En las páginas del libro obtendrás un año de sabiduría diaria que cambiará tu vida, cortesía del Dr. Amen, uno de los psiquiatras más prominentes del mundo. Hoy es el día para comenzar a cambiar la trayectoria de tu vida, un pequeño paso a la vez. ///// Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller 366 Days to a Better Brain, Mind, and Life! In Change Your Brain Every Day psychiatrist and clinical neuroscientist Daniel Amen, MD, draws on over 40 years' clinical practice with tens of thousands of patients to give you the most effective daily habits he has seen that can help you improve your brain, master your mind, boost your memory, and make you feel happier, healthier, and more connected to those you love. Incorporating Dr. Amen's tiny habits and practices over the course of a year will help you: - Manage your mind to support your happiness, inner peace, and success - Develop lifelong strategies for dealing with whatever stresses come your way - Create an ongoing sense of purpose in a way that informs your daily actions - Learn major life lessons Dr. Amen has gleaned from studying hundreds of thousands of brain scans Imagine what you could learn by spending every day for a year on a psychiatrist's couch. In the pages of Change Your Brain Every Day, you'll get a year's worth of life-changing daily wisdom from Dr. Amen, one of the world's most prominent psychiatrists. Today is the day to start changing the trajectory of your life, one tiny step at a time.

Key moments of our lives, especially at the beginning and end, are marked by gentleness--but the simplicity of that concept is misleading. Gentleness is an active passivity that may become an extraordinary force of resistance within ethics and politics. In this powerful rethinking by a renowned philosopher and psychoanalyst, whose untimely death captured worldwide attention, gentleness becomes a series of embodied paradoxes: power that is also soft, nobility that is also humble, sweetness that is also intelligent, subtlety that is nevertheless striking, fragility that has the potential to subvert the status quo.

In Greek and Christian myth, in the philosophical and religious traditions of China and India, and across Western literature and art, gentleness occurs in moments of tenderness such as birth, care, and mutual love, but also where least expected, amid danger, humiliation, and cruelty. Gentleness, Dufourmantelle shows, is marked above all by our early human connections to the physical world, uncovered and rediscovered primarily through the senses, with all the ambivalences that entails.

Today, we are most familiar with a gentleness sold to us in the diluted form of mawkishness. This is how we try to evade its subtlety--no longer by fighting it, but by enfeebling it. In the name of our highest values--happiness, truth, security--we enforce gentle safeguards against hurt and are persuaded to participate in our era's three divinities: efficiency, speed, and profitability. But in doing so we seal ourselves off from the life-affirming gamble that a true gentleness affords.

True gentleness entails an ethic of desire. Against a society that crushes human beings gently through consumerist logic and the illusion of total transparency, Dufourmantelle celebrates the uncompromising gentleness discovered by Gandhi and other revolutionaries. At the same time, within the despair confided by her patients, she traces the force of resistance and intangible magic that gentleness offers in the lived experience of ordinary women and men who fully embrace the risk of living.

This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

For Bob, nothing was sacred and nothing was set in stone - except maybe the idea that fundamentalism is a dangerous dead end. Like Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity, Robert Anton Wilson's The New Inquisition seeks to rescue science from fundamentalist materialism, and the rest of us from the broader implications of this approach. It is at once a philosophical treatise and an act of cognitive defiance . . . His message is more important right now than it was when he wrote it. Our digital fundamentalists see human beings as an engineering problem to be solved. Behaviors and thoughts that do not conform to our algorithmically generated profiles are to be eliminated, and humans shepherded into the reality tunnels that obey the laws of rationality alone. We are right now being programmed by the very fundamental materialists RAW is warning us about on these pages.

- from Douglas Rushkoff's Introduction to The New Inquisition

Complete in itself, this volume originated as a commentary and expansion of Manly P. Hall's masterpiece of symbolic philosophy, The Secret Teachings of All Ages.
In Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, Manly P. Hall expands on the philosophical, metaphysical, and cosmological themes introduced in his classic work, The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Hall wrote this volume as a reader's companion to his earlier work, intending it for those wishing to delve more deeply into the esoteric philosophies and ideas that undergird the Secret Teachings. Particular attention is paid to Neoplatonism, ancient Christianity, Rosicrucian and Freemasonic traditions, ancient mysteries, pagan rites and symbols, and Pythagorean mathematics.

First published in 1929-the year after the publication of Hall's magnum opus-this edition includes the author's original subject index, twenty diagrams prepared under his supervision for the volume, and his 1984 preface, which puts the book in context for the contemporary reader.

With contributions from Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Dawkins, John Searle, and Robert Nozick, The Mind's I explores the meaning of self and consciousness through the perspectives of literature, artificial intelligence, psychology, and other disciplines. In selections that range from fiction to scientific speculations about thinking machines, artificial intelligence, and the nature of the brain, Hofstadter and Dennett present a variety of conflicting visions of the self and the soul as explored through the writings of some of the twentieth century's most renowned thinkers.

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre--and why that's a good thing

Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it's hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth--whatever it is--is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open--to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated--or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens.

According to Schwitzgebel's Universal Bizarreness thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary Universal Dubiety thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism--a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

'Know thyself' is said to have been one of the maxims carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. On the face of it, this does not seem like a very difficult task. My self is with me at every moment of every day, I have access to its inner thoughts and feelings, and I am hardly liable to mistake someone else for me. At the same time, however, the self is surprisingly elusive and opaque. What, after all, is a self? Is it some kind of object? If so, what kind? If not an object, what then? Is our sense of self ultimately illusory? Something that disappears when studied too closely? Our understanding of the self is replete with puzzles and paradoxes: I cannot be anyone but who I am, and yet everyone will acknowledge that there are circumstances in which being oneself is an extremely difficult task. If I change enough, I can be said to have become a different person. I cannot get away from myself, and yet I can find and lose myself.

In this Very Short Introduction, Marya Schechtman uses insights from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and popular thought to consider some of the most compelling and puzzling questions about the self, including questions about what kind of object a self is if it is an object at all, what it means to be oneself and why it is important, what kinds of changes the self can and cannot survive, whether a self can be separated from its body, whether more than one self can exist in a single body, and what role engagement with the environment and with other selves plays in constituting and maintaining the self. These investigations yield a complex, multi-dimensional picture of the self as a subject and agent embedded in and interacting with a natural and social world.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.