What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
Jonathan Haidt · 297 pages
Applies the latest findings in psychology and brain research to the wisdom of the ancients to define what makes people happy and how you can find more happiness in your life. Confirms and builds on the happiness formula defined by other psychologists: H=S+C+V or Happiness = your biological Setpoint + the Conditions of your life + the Voluntary activities you do
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction
Susan Blackmore · 554 pages
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Iain McGilchrist · 608 pages
"Why is the brain divided? The difference between right and left hemispheres has been puzzled over for centuries. In this book, Iain McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain research, illustrated with case histories, to reveal that the difference is profound - not just this or that function, but two whole, coherent, but incompatible ways of experiencing the world. The left hemisphere is de
The Mystery of Consciousness
John Rogers Searle · 224 pages
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness
Michael Pollan · 320 pages
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steven Pinker · 528 pages
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual
Freedom Evolves
Daniel C. Dennett · 357 pages
"Four billion years ago, there was no freedom on our planet, because there was no life. What kinds of freedom have evolved since the origin of life? Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? If you are free, are you responsible for being free, or just lucky?". "In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, sets out to
I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 424 pages
Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract
Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain
Patricia S. Churchland · 554 pages
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
Robert A. Burton
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Paul Bloom · 280 pages
In this fascinating and witty account, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom draws on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to examine the science behind our curious desires, attractions, and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts for sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music, and stories.
The Society of Mind
Marvin Minsky · 339 pages
An authority on artificial intelligence introduces a theory that explores the workings of the human mind and the mysteries of thought.
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty
Simon Baron-Cohen · 256 pages
Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain
Michael S. Gazzaniga · 260 pages
"The "father of cognitive neuroscience" makes a powerful and provocative argument against today's common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control"--
The Emperor's New Mind Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics
Roger Penrose, Martin Gardner · 480 pages
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Peter Godfrey-Smith · 272 pages
"Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sproute
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
David Eagleman · 290 pages
"This book will shine light on some of the hard-to-reach places in the brain, showing the ways in which we are not the ones driving the boat. Why does the conscious mind know so little? What do visual illusions unmask about the machinery running under the hood? How much of our lives are determined by choices and behaviors that are hard-wired, unconscious, and beyond our control? Do we have any man
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain
Antonio R. Damasio · 336 pages
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan · 229 pages
From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our intelligence and happiness throughout our lives.We’ve all seen the happiness in the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. An
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
Steven Kotler · 234 pages
"An exploration of how extreme athletes are able to break the limits of ultimate human performance and what we can learn from their mastery of the state of consciousness known as "flow." "--
Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
Christof Koch · 181 pages
"What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part fu
Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
Carl Sagan · 398 pages
Explorers various aspects of several fields of science and examines the role of the intellect in scientific achievement.
The Ego Trick: In Search Of The Self
Julian Baggini
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Julian Jaynes · 486 pages
At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, o