مراجع وقراءات إضافية
الفصل الأول
The series of false awakenings is described by
Yves Delage in his Le Rêve, Étude
psychologique, philosophique, et littéraire,
Paris, 1923. The idea of dreams-within-dreams is
intelligently applied in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film
Inception featuring
four (or five?) stacked levels of dreams.
You can calculate your own risk of death using
Carnegie Mellon’s death calculator at
www.deathriskrankings.com.
The story of Muhammad’s pitcher is referred to in
part 2, chapter 5 of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. More information on testing the
duration of dream time can be found in Stephen LaBerge,
‘Lucid Dreaming: Evidence and Methodology’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
23(6) (2000): 962-3. The same author’s Lucid Dreaming (Ballantine,
1985) is a more popular treatment of various aspects of
lucid dreaming.
How to keep the brains of guinea-pigs alive in a
jar is described in M. Mühlethaler, M. de Curtis, K. Walton,
and R. Llinás, ‘The Isolated and Perfused Brain of the
Guinea-Pig in Vitro’, European
Journal of Neuroscience, 5(7) (2006):
915–26.
For information on brain-computer interfaces, see
Steven Kotler, ‘Vision Quest’, Wired
Magazine, September 2002, pp. 94–101, and
Miguel Nicolelis and John Chapin, ‘Controlling Robots with
the Mind’, Scientific
American, 287(4) (October 2002):
46–53.
Some discussion of the computational power of the
human brain is in Nick Bostrom’s ‘How Long Before
Superintelligence?’, Linguistic and
Philosophical Investigations, 5(1) (2006):
11–30. An updated version can be found at
http://www.nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html.
The miraculous portrait of Dean Liddell (as well
as a variety of similarly spontaneously appearing portraits)
is described in chapter 18 of Charles Fort’s Wild Talents (Claude Kendall,
1932).
The main argument against the possibility of us
being artificially stimulated brains goes back to Hilary
Putnam’s discussion in Reason,
Truth, and History (Cambridge University
Press, 1981). Since then, a vast amount of philosophical
literature dealing with this argument has been written. A
good first point of entry is David Chalmers’s paper ‘The
Matrix as Metaphysics’ at
http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html.
For Jorge Luis Borges’s story ‘The Circular
Ruins’, see his Collected
Fictions (Penguin, 1999), pp.
96–100.
For a quirky brief statement of anti-solipsism,
see Robert Nozick’s ‘Fiction’, chapter 19 of his Socratic Puzzles (Harvard
University Press, 1997), pp. 313–16.
An accessible introduction to cellular automata
is William Poundstone’s The
Recursive Universe (William Morrow, 1984).
For a popular survey of the use of simulations in science
more generally, see John L. Casti, Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation Is Changing the
Frontiers of Science (Wiley,
1997).
For a discussion of whether we are living in a
historical simulation, see Nick Bostrom, ‘Are You Living in
a Computer Simulation?’, Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211) (2003):
243–55. The author also runs a website at
http://www.simulation-argument.com where
this paper, as well as a variety of synopses and responses
are available.
The computer scientist Robert Bradbury argues
that we will be able to build a Matrioshka brain, a
planet-sized supercomputer that can carry out up to
1042
computational operations per second within the next century.
(More information on Matrioshka brains is at
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains.)
Bostrom (247) argues that we need considerably fewer, namely
a maximum of
1036
operations, to run historical simulations. The Astronomer
Royal Martin Rees claims that mankind has a 50% chance of
not being destroyed before the year 2100: Our Final Century? Will the Human Race
Survive the Twenty-First Century? (Heinemann,
2003).
For more information about Zhuangzi, see Angus C.
Graham (tr.), Chuang-tzu: The Seven
Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Book
Chuang-tzu (Allen & Unwin, 1981). A
translation of the butterfly dream story is on p.
61.
An analysis of the geometry underlying Escher’s
print is provided in chapter 6 of Bruno Ernst’s The Magic Mirror of M. C.
Escher (Taschen, 2007).
الفصل الثاني
The Matrix
gave rise to a series of books on popular philosophy of
variable quality. One of the better ones is William Irwin
(ed.), The Matrix and
Philosophy (Open Court,
2002).
The quotation from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is in
chapter 2 of part 3 (p. 249 of the Penguin
edition).
For some discussion of Koro, see B. Y. Ng,
‘History of Koro in Singapore’, Singapore Medical Journal, 38(8) (August
1969): 356-7. A more general study of mass hallucinations is
Robert E. Bartholomew’s Meowing Nuns
and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic
Illnesses and Social Delusion (McFarland,
2001); chapter 8 deals specifically with
Koro.
James Boswell relates Dr Johnson’s reaction to
Berkeley in volume 1 of his Life of
Johnson, edited by George Birckbeck (Hill,
Bigelow, Brown, 1921), p. 545. From a philosophical point of
view, Johnson’s reply is woefully inadequate (nowhere does
Berkeley claim that the mental nature of rocks and stones
entails that they stop being hard), even though it does not
lack a certain rustic charm. For what Berkeley would have
replied, see his Principles of Human
Knowledge and Three Dialogues, edited by
Howard Robinson (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 129. A
more sophisticated variant of Johnson’s definition is given
in chapter 4 of David Deutsch’s The
Fabric of Reality (Penguin,
1997).
The quotation from Philip K. Dick comes from his
‘How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days
Later’, in The Shifting Realities of
Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical
Writings (Vintage, 1996), pp.
259–80.
An interesting exploration of how the world would
develop if all human beings suddenly vanished is presented
by Alan Weisman in The World Without
Us (Virgin Books, 2008).
The quotation from Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding can be found on pp. 391-2 of
the first volume of the Dover edition (New York, 1959). It
is hard to find the Indian source of the cosmological theory
that the earth rests on an elephant and this on a tortoise
(and the tortoise perhaps on something unknown, or nothing
at all, or most intriguing, on adownwards infinite column of
further tortoises). The earliest mention of this theory
traceable so far comes from a letter written by a Jesuit
missionary in India in 1599. Up to now, I have not been able
to find any Indian text describing a stacked
elephant-tortoise support.
A clear discussion of Vasubandhu’s arguments
about the reality of matter is in Matthew Kapstein’s
‘Mereological Considerations in Vasubandhu’s “Proof of
Idealism”’ reprinted in his Reason’s
Traces (Wisdom, 2001), pp. 181–204. The same
issues are taken up later in Immanuel Kant’s so-called
second antinomy, on which see James van Cleve, ‘Reflections
on Kant’s Second Antinomy’, Synthese, 47(3) (1981):
481–94.
The best introduction to Berkeley’s thought is
still his very lively set of Three
Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. See
George Berkeley, Principles of Human
Knowledge and Three Dialogues, edited by
Howard Robinson (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.
97–208.
A tear-free introduction to key quantum
mechanical concepts and a clear comparison of the various
interpretations of the quantum mechanical formalism can be
found in Nick Herbert’s Quantum
Reality (Doubleday, 1985). A highly readable
set of interviews with some of the key players in the
development of quantum physics (originally produced as a BBC
Radio 3 documentary) is P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown’s
The Ghost in the Atom
(Cambridge University Press, 1986).
For an account of the buckyball, see Markus Arndt
et al., ‘Wave– Particle Duality of C60 Molecules’, Nature, 401 (1999):
680–2.
The experiment involving the metal strip is
described in A. D. O’Connell et al., ‘Quantum Ground State
and Single-Phonon Control of a Mechanical Resonator’,
Nature, 464 (2010):
697–703.
Eugene Wigner’s remarks on the role of
consciousness in quantum measurement can be found in his
‘Remarks on the Mind–Body Question’, included in a
collection of essays entitled Symmetries and Reflections (Indiana
University Press, 1967), pp. 171–84. More details on the
case of ‘Wigner’s friend’, an interesting variant of the
thought experiment involving Schrödinger’s cat, can be found
in chapter 7 of Paul Davies, Other
Worlds: Space, Superspace and the Quantum
Universe (Simon & Schuster, 1980). For
more recent developments arguing for the observer-dependence
of what is real, see Matteo Smerlak and Carlo Rovelli,
‘Relational EPR’, http://xxx.
lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0604064.
Roger Penrose describes his theories on the role
of quantum phenomena in the explanation of consciousness in
his Shadows of the Mind: A Search
for the Missing Science of Consciousness
(Oxford University Press, 1994).
The quotation from Werner Heisenberg comes from
his Physics and
Philosophy (Harper & Row, 1962), p.
145.
Some more thoughts on scientific reduction can be
found in W. V. Quine’s ‘Things and Their Place in Theories’,
in his Theories and
Things (Harvard University Press,
1981).
Stewart Shapiro’s Thinking about Mathematics (Oxford
University Press, 2000) provides an accessible introduction
to the Platonic view of mathematical objects, as well as to
a variety of other theories of the nature of
mathematics.
For a popular yet comprehensive account of
theories that conceive of the physical world as the output
of a computational process, see Kevin Kelly’s ‘God Is the
Machine’, Wired, 10(12)
(2002).
For Bohr’s view of the non-existence of quantum
objects, see the discussion in Max Jammer’s The Philosophy of Quantum
Mechanics (Wiley, 1974), pp. 203–11. This is
an excellent if demanding resource for analyses of the key
aspects of the interpretation of the quantum mechanical
formalism.
الفصل الثالث
The curious experiences of the woman who
irretrievably lost her self are described in Suzanne Segal’s
very readable memoir Collision with
the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self
(Blue Dove Press, 1998). For more information on Cotard’s
syndrome, see chapter 8 of David Enoch and Adrian Ball,
Uncommon Psychiatric
Syndromes (Hodder & Stoughton,
2001).
For an overview of the different locations of the
self throughout history, see Giuseppe Santoro et al., ‘The
Anatomic Location of the Soul From the Heart, Through the
Brain, To the Whole Body, and Beyond’, Neurosurgery, 65(4) (2009):
633–43.
Daniel Dennett’s ‘Where Am I?’ is reprinted in
chapter 13 of the excellent anthology The Mind’s I, edited by Douglas
Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (Harvester Press, 1981). The
selection given here is on pp. 218-19. In 1988, the Dutch
director Piet Hoenderdos turned Dennett’s story into a film
(starring Daniel Dennett as Daniel Dennett). You can watch
it at http://video.google.com/vid
eoplay?docid=8576072297424860224#.
The experiment with the virtual full-body
illusion is described in Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind
and the Myth of the Self (Basic Books, 2009),
pp. 98–101.
A variant of the thought experiment of the
self-destroying drug is described in Raymond Smullyan’s
essay ‘An Unfortunate Dualist’ in his This Book Needs No Title (Simon
& Schuster, 1980), pp. 53–5. This piece is discussed in
The Mind’s I, pp.
384–8, where the original essay is also
reprinted.
The quote from David Hume comes from his
Treatise of Human
Nature (Clarendon Press, 1896), p.
252.
The quote from Descartes can be found in John
Cottingham et al., The Philosophical
Writings of Descartes, Vol. III: The Correspondence (Cambridge
University Press, 1991), p. 143.
For more on the total flight simulator, see
Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel:
The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the
Self (Basic Books, 2009), pp.
104–8.
For the text of the entire Mahapunnama Sutta, see Bikkhu
Nanamoli and Bikkhu Bodhi (tr.), The
Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha
(Wisdom, 1995), pp. 887–91. For a related view of the self,
see Derek Parfit’s Reasons and
Persons (Clarendon Press,
1984).
Jorge Luis Borges describes the work of Tsu’i Pen
in his story ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’. See his
Collected Fictions
(Penguin, 1999), pp. 119–28.
Accessible introductions to the many worlds
interpretation are in Nick Herbert’s Quantum Reality (Doubleday, 1985), pp.
172–5, and Paul Davies’s Other
Worlds (Simon & Schuster, 1980). For an
interesting discussion that seeks to dispel some of the
philosophical perplexities generated by this interpretation,
see chapter 13 of Michael Lockwood’s Mind, Brain and Quantum (Basil Blackwell,
1989).
For Libet’s experiments, see Benjamin Libet et
al., ‘Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to
Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness Potential): The
Unconscious Initiation of a Freely Voluntary Act’, Brain, 106(3) (1983):
623–42.
Information on the influence of transcranial
magnetic stimulation on intentional choice can be found in
Joaquim Brasil-Neto et al., ‘Focal Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation and Response Bias in a Forced-Choice Task’,
Journal of Neurology,
Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 55 (1992):
964–6.
The experiment with the shared computer mouse is
described in Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley, ‘Apparent
Mental Causation: Sources of the Experience of Will’,
American
Psychologist, 54 (1999): 480–92. Further
discussion is in Daniel Wegner’s ‘The Mind’s Best Trick: How
We Experience Conscious Will’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(2) (2003):
65–9, and Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego
Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the
Self’ (Basic Books, 2009), pp.
122–6.
Memetics was introduced by Richard Dawkins in his
1976 book The Selfish
Gene, which popularized the idea of
gene-centred (rather than organism-centred) evolution. For
more information on the t-gene in mice, see p. 236 of the
thirtieth anniversary edition (Oxford, 2006). The view of
the relation between memes and the self is set forth in
Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness
Explained (Penguin, 1993), pp. 199–208. A
book-length discussion arriving at similar conclusions is
Susan Blackmore’s The Meme
Machine (Oxford University Press, 1999). For
a different interpretation, see Kate Distin’s The Selfish Meme: A Critical
Reassessment (Cambridge University Press,
2005).
الفصل الرابع
The legend of the monk of Heisterbach is told in
Goswin Peter Rath’s Rheinische
Legenden (Greven Verlag Cologne, 1955), pp.
178–81.
McTaggart describes his proof of the unreality of
time first in a paper of the same title in volume 17 of
Mind (1908: 457–74),
and later in chapter 33 of his two-volume The Nature of Existence
(Cambridge University Press, 1921). An accessible summary of
the argument can be found in chapter 8 of Robin Le
Poidevin’s Travels in Four
Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time
(Oxford University Press, 2003). McTaggart’s argument has
triggered a large amount of philosophical discussion; the
Further Reading in this volume lists the most important
contributions.
A clear discussion of Gödel’s thought on time can
be found in Palle Yourgrau’s Gödel
Meets Einstein (Open Court, 1999). For an
excellent explanation of the relativity of simultaneity, see
Martin Gardner’s Relativity for the
Million (Macmillan, 1962), pp.
40–5.
Russell’s five-minute hypothesis comes from his
The Analysis of Mind
(Allen & Unwin, 1921), p. 159. A similar argument is
used by creationists to explain the existence of objects
apparently pre-dating their preferred date of creation: God,
it is claimed, just created all the apparent records of an
illusory past at the same time as everything else. For some
discussion, see chapter 1 of Martin Gardner’s Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?
(W. W. Norton, 2000).
Felix Eberty first describes his idea of the
present universe as a massive visual archive of the past in
a short anonymous pamphlet Die
Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte; Gedanken über Raum,
Zeit und Ewigkeit published in 1846. It was
further developed by Harry Mulisch in his 1997 novel
The Discovery of
Heaven: ‘If we had the technology to place a
mirror on a celestial object forty light-years away, beamed
images from earth to that mirror, then gazed at it through a
very powerful telescope, we would see right now reflections
of what took place on earth eighty years ago – forty years
for earth’s light to reach the distant planet, and forty
years for the reflection to reach earth. Past and present
merge.’
On the phantom time hypothesis, see Heribert
Illig, Das erfundene Mittelalter.
Die größte Zeitfälschung der Geschichte
(Econ, 1996). Material in English is limited, a summary can
be found in Hans-Ulrich Niemitz’s ‘Did the Early Middle Ages
Really Exist?’, at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf.
For a brief discussion, see also John Grant’s Bogus Science (Wisley, 2009),
pp. 179–85.
For an accessible summary of the delayed-choice
experiment, see Nick Herbert’s Quantum Reality (Doubleday, 1985), pp.
164–8. You can do your own delayed-choice experiment at home
by following the description in Rachel Hillmer and Paul
Kwiat, ‘A Do-It-Yourself Quantum Eraser’, Scientific American (May 2007):
90–5.
The name ‘Andromeda paradox’ derives from the
discussion by Roger Penrose in his The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 260-1. The paradox had previously been
discovered independently by C. W. Rietdijk in ‘A Rigorous
Proof of Determinism Derived from the Special Theory of
Relativity’, Philosophy of
Science, 33 (1966): 341–4, and by Hilary
Putnam in ‘Time and Physical Geometry’, Journal of Philosophy, 64
(1967): 240–4. For a detailed analysis of this paradox, see
section 3 of the entry ‘Being and Becoming in Modern
Physics’ in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy at
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
spacetime-bebecome.
The extract from the Confessions of St Augustine comes from
section 26 of the eleventh book, E. B. Pusey (tr.),
The Confessions of S.
Augustine (John Henry Parker, 1838), p.
239.
For research into the duration of the subjective
present, see Ernst Pöppel, Mindworks: Time and Conscious Experience
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
For some discussion of how the brain represents
time, see pp. 144–53 of Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained
(Penguin, 1991).
A description of Libet’s experiments aimed at a
general readership can be found in chapter 2 of his
Mind Time: The Temporal Factor
in Consciousness (Harvard University Press,
2004).
The ‘timeless’ theory described at the end of the
chapter is due to Julian Barbour and is explained in detail
in his book The End of Time: The
Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the
Universe (Phoenix, 1999). A highly
informative review of this book and a discussion of many
related issues by Jeremy Butterfield was published in the
British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, 53 (2002): 289–330. An
extended version of this piece is available at
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0103055.