Bayne and Dumitru: Consciousness, 4-vol. set

Thinking on and around consciousness raises perplexing and dizzying questions. Indeed, many have argued that consciousness is the critical concept with which contemporary philosophers of mind must grapple. Moreover, consciousness studies is now an interdisciplinary enterprise par excellence; for instance, it increasingly draws on the profound insights of neuroscientists and psychologists.

The sheer scale of the existing scholarly corpus, as well as the breathtaking scope of recent advances, makes this new four-volume collection from Routledge especially timely. The editors have carefully selected and assembled the foundational and the best cutting-edge scholarship from a wide range of academic disciplines to create an indispensable reference resource. This one-stop 'mini library' enables users rapidly to access-and make sense of-a huge, and expanding, body of scholarly work.

Volume I ('Historical Aspects of the Study of Consciousness') focuses on the history of the study of consciousness. Volume II ('The Metaphysics of Consciousness') addresses various accounts of the metaphysical structure of consciousness. Volume III, meanwhile, gathers key research on 'The Study of Consciousness'. It covers both first-person (introspection-based) and third-person (behaviourally based) approaches to the study of consciousness. The final volume in the collection ('Theories of Consciousness') embraces both 'philosophical' and 'scientific' theories of consciousness. The major works gathered here include functionalist, higher-order and same-order, and various neurally inspired, accounts of consciousness.

Consciousness is fully indexed and is supplemented by a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context.