Reddit reviews Consciousness: An Introduction (2nd ed.)

This is a good introductory essay by Nick Bostrom from The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence. And this is a relevant survey essay by Drew McDermott from The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.

If folks aren't taking well to the background reading, they might at least do alright jumping to Section 5 from the Descartes' Discourse (they can use this accessible translation). One little snippet:

>I worked especially hard to show that if any such machines had the organs and outward shape of a monkey or of some other animal that doesn’t have reason, we couldn’t tell that they didn’t possess entirely the same nature as these animals; whereas if any such machines bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated as many of our actions as was practically possible, we would still have two very sure signs that they were nevertheless not real men. (1) The first is that they could never use words or other constructed signs, as we do to declare our thoughts to others. We can easily conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions that will cause a change in its organs (touch it in one spot and it asks ‘What do you mean?’, touch it in another and it cries out ‘That hurts!’, and so on); but not that such a machine should produce different sequences of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence—which is something that the dullest of men can do. (2) Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would be bound to fail in others; and that would show us that they weren’t acting through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular disposition for each particular action; hence it is practically impossible for a machine to have enough different •organs to make •it act in all the contingencies of life in the way our •reason makes •us act. These two factors also tell us how men differ from beasts [= ‘non-human animals’].

That sets the stage for historically important essay from Turing of Turing-Test-fame. And that essay sets up nicely Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. Scientific America has two accessible articles: Searle presents his argument here, and the Churchland's respond.

As always, the SEP and IEP are good resources for students, and they have entries with bibliographies on consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, AI, computational theories of mind, and so on.

There are countless general introductions to philosophy of mind. Heil's Philosophy of Mind is good. Seager's introduction to theories of consciousness is also quite good, but maybe more challenging than some. Susan Blackmore's book Conversations on Consciousness was a very engaging read, and beginner friendly. She also has a more textbook-style Introduction that I have not read, but feel comfortable betting that it is also quite good.

Searle's, Dennett's and Chalmer's books on consciousness are all good and influential and somewhat partisan to their own approaches. And Kim's work is a personal favorite.

(sorry for the broad answer--it's a very broad question!)

Consciousness: An Introduction, by Susan Blackmore, is great. http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-An-Introduction-Susan-Blackmore/dp/0199739099

There are a plethora of books on consciousness.

From the science side of things the neuroscientist Antti Revonuso has a book "Consciousness: the science of subjectivity" which has a good mix of the philosophy and science of consciousness. Christof Koch, probably one of the leading neuroscientists who study consciousness, has a few books as well. The Quest for Consciousness is one of his, which has lots of neuroscience particularly visual neuroscience in it. That is mainly science, not much philosophy. Another neuroscientist who studies consciousness is Stanislas Dehaene who wrote a good book Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. Click on the image of each book on the left in amazon (which opens up a preview) and scroll to the contents page and see if any of these books are the kind of thing you are looking for.

From the philosophical side there is (among many others) Susan Blackmores "Consciousness: An introduction" (an introductory book David Chalmers recommends) and William Seagers "Theories of Consciousness: An Introduction and Assessment". There is also a great book that has short (5-7 pages) sections on philosophers and neuroscientists and their respective theories of consciousness by Andrea Eugenio Cavanna and Andrea Nani called "Consciousness: Theories in Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind". The first half of Michael Tye's book "Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind" is great for an overview of 10 philosophical problems of consciousness. It is very accessible and there are summaries of each problem provided. There are also great resources online such as Van Gulick's SEP article on consciousness, which would actually be a great place to start, and use it as a place to lead you to areas you are most interested in. Here is also a brief introduction to the philosophy of mind (the main philosophical discipline that deals with consciousness).

So there's a few links to some books and online articles, which should be more than enough to get you going.

By the way, there is a free masterclass on consciousness with Christof Koch on the World Science U website. You may also be interested in that.

Additionally you may like to check out the subreddit /r/sciphilconsciousness, which is all about the sharing and discussion of content related to the science and philosophy of consciousness.

Science will probably never be able to answer this question, it is really more the realm of philosophy. There are many people who have many very different interpretations of what consciousness even is. A good introduction to the variety of different thought on the subject is this [book.] (http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-An-Introduction-Susan-Blackmore/dp/0199739099) I can assure you though, none of your suggested origins really addresses the tough problems we face when we try to wrap our heads around the issue.

BTW, here's Blackmore's book on the US version of Amazon.

> What is consciousness?

Since neuroscience started to research this topic seriously, there's no more reason for mysticism. There's textbooks about it now. I personally read Dehaene's book and it cleared up all of my confusion.

An introduction to philosophy of mind I liked very much is by Susan Blackmore
https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Introduction-2nd-Susan-Blackmore/dp/0199739099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486244346&sr=8-1&keywords=susan+blackmore


You could also find a good bibliography in these 2 sites
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

https://inpho.cogs.indiana.edu/taxonomy/2370/view.html

I love that this includes Susan Blackmore talking about how psychedelics have impacted her!

http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Introduction-Susan-Blackmore/dp/0199739099/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1312576766&sr=8-3