Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness

by Allan Combs

Consciousness Explained Better is a unique contribution. This compact volume represents thousands of years of humanity's struggle to understand consciousness from a wide variety of perspectives. It is an up-to-date digest of the search in bite-sized chapters. Allan Combs has managed to encapsulate and synthesize vast bodies of thought and research without dilution. He has made even the most mind-twisting arguments and questions comprehensible, and he has brought forward scholarship and rigorous inquiry in language that speaks to the heart as well as the head. This book satisfies with its comprehensiveness yet intrigues with all that still remains enigmatic. It brings forward the yearning, the brilliance, the awe, and the outrageous audacity of our search to understand conscious. It reminds us that, in a world where much of our lives on a mundane basis has been reduced to the trivial, the logistical, and the manageable, everything about that world and about ourselves is still completely beyond our grasp. We still live and move in the Great Mystery. --From the Foreword by Jenny Wade, author of Changes of Mind and Transcendent Sex

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Psychology

300 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Allan Combs is a consciousness researcher, neuropsychologist, and systems theorist. He considers his most significant work to be the development of a developmental/evolutionary model of the mind using concepts from systems science. Much of this was accomplished in collaboration with his friend and colleague Stanley Krippner. He is most widely known, however, for his collaboration with Ken Wilber on the Wilber-Combs lattice.

Reviews

[Neelesh Marik]

For a panoramic preview to William James, James Mark Baldwin, Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chadrin, Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo and the evolutionary progression of the science of consciousness, consider this book.

Wilberian concepts such as states/ structures, horizontal and vertical progression, and the inner/ outer distinction within quadrants, are dealt with in lucid language.

I guess the name of the book has implicit within it a subtle dig at Daniel Dennett, though I may be mistaken!

[comboy · Rating 2 out of 5]

"we note that a pendulum tends to swing at a certain rate depending on its weight, the length of the shaft or cord that holds it, and so on."

It does not depend of its weight, but bad physics analogies are not even among top reasons why I dislike this book.

The main reason were probably high expectations. My bad. Comparing this to Dennett is like comparing Paw Patrol to Shakespeare.

You can learn something about author's personal life, there are some lessons from Piaget. There are some decent observations too. But it all sounds together like ramblings of a drunk man at a campfire. A man who has read many books.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent readable summary for anyone interested in this fascinating subject

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another solid book by Combs.

[Damon]

Love it! This guy is going to be my PHD advisor.