The Top Books about Consciousness

**The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes **

Author(s): Donald D. Hoffman

First published: 2019

How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth?

The Ghost in the Machine

Author(s): Arthur Koestler

First published: 1990

Koestler examines the notion that the parts of the human brain-structure which account for reason and emotion are not fully coordinated.

Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research

Author(s): Stanislav Grof

First published: 2000

Summarizes Grof’s experiences and observations from more than forty years of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author(s): Julian Jaynes

First published: 1976

A 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.

Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited

Author(s): Marcel Kuijsten

First published: 2006

Why are gods and idols ubiquitous throughout the ancient world? What is the relationship of consciousness and language? How is it that oracles came to influence entire nations such as Greece?

A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness

Author(s): Nicholas Humphrey

First published: 1992

From the “phantom pain” experienced by people who have lost their limbs to the uncanny faculty of “blindsight,” Humphrey argues that raw sensations are central to all conscious states and that consciousness must have evolved, just like all other mental faculties, over time from our ancestors’ bodily responses to pain and pleasure.

**The Construction of Social Reality **

Author(s): John Rogers Searle

First published: 1995

How we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a ‘five-pound note’ with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch.

Mind: A Brief Introduction

Author(s): John Rogers Searle

First published: 2004

One of the world’s most eminent thinkers, Searle dismantles these theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind.

The Mystery Of Consciousness

Author(s): John Rogers Searle

First published: 1990

John Searle writes, “the most important problem in the biological sciences”: What is consciousness? Is my inner awareness of myself something separate from my body?

The Varieties of Religious Experience

Author(s): William James

First published: 1901

James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which “the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions.

The Savage Mind

Author(s): Claude Lévi-Strauss

First published: 1962

An examination of the structure of the thought of primitive’ peoples, and has contributed significantly to our understanding of the way the human mind works.

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory

Author(s): David J. Chalmers

First published: 1996

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?

The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

Author(s): Michael S. Gazzaniga

First published: 2018

How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff”–atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells–create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads?

Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

Author(s): Annaka Harris

First published: 2019

What is consciousness? How does it arise? And why does it exist? We take our experience of being in the world for granted. But the very existence of consciousness raises profound questions: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? How are we able to think about this? And why should we?

Consciousness Explained

Author(s): Daniel C. Dennett

First published: 1991

Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence.

Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature

Author(s): Richard P. Bentall

First published: 2003

Is madness purely a medical condition that can be treated with drugs? Is there really a clear dividing line between mental health and mental illness – or is it not so easy to classify who is sane and who is insane?

Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

Author(s): Pim van Lommel

First published: 2007

Pim van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.

Life After Life

Author(s): Raymond Moody

First published: 1975

Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything

Author(s): Bernardo Kastrup

First published: 2014

The brain doesn’t generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water. It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain. Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness.

The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics

Author(s): Roger Penrose

First published: 1989

Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose–eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize–puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine.

**The Doors of Perception **

Author(s): Aldous Huxley

First published: 1954

A philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

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