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Filters & Reflections


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Filters and Reflections
Perspectives on Reality

Zachary Jones, Brenda Dunne, Elissa Hoeger, Robert Jahn, editors

From the pen of the ancient Roman poet Lucretius Caro, to the banner of the 17th-century woodcut on the front cover, and from the traditions of some Native American cultures - we are advised that when confronting the unexplained it is best to consider it from several different perspectives.

More recently, a similar concept was proposed in a 2004 essay by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, entitled "Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality." Their thesis, that consciousness constructs its reality by ordering the information it derives from the external world through an array of physiological, psychological, and cultural filters, has now been considered by nineteen distinguished scholars who here present their commentaries from a broad spectrum of professional and personal perspectives.

The authors' viewpoints are drawn from such diverse backgrounds as art, Buddhism, evolutionary biology, fantasy, out-of-body experiences, philosophy, physics, psychology, semiotics, and systems engineering, among others, and each contribution offers a unique and fascinating glimpse of how the filters of consciousness bear on the construction of experience and its style of representation.

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I'm overjoyed with the quality of writing in the book. It's things like this that show the real character of the ICRL. No matter what a reader's background, the thorough range of perspectives in the book will provide a perfect means to find their way in. Anyone involved in consciousness research will find the book invaluable.

Annotated Table of Contents

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