Weber & Weekes, Process Approaches to Consciousness, 2009

II. Process Approaches to Consciousness Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets : first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins ; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis. Table of Contents List of Contributors Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 1. Main Themes of the Book 2. Précis of the Contributions I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness 2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy 3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought 4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind 5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont) 6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen) 7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard) III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again 8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State) 9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths) 10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York) IV. Applications to Psychiatry : Consciousness as Process 11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz) 12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv) 13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques) V. History (and Future ?) of Philosophy 14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail) 15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)