Consciousness Mattering

Consciousness Mattering presents a contemporary Buddhist theory in which brains, bodies, environments, and cultures are relational infrastructures for human consciousness. Drawing on insights from meditation, neuroscience, physics, and evolutionary theory, it demonstrates that human consciousness is not something that occurs only in our heads and consists in the creative elaboration of relations among sensed and sensing presences, and more fundamentally between matter and what matters. Hershock argues that without consciousness there would only be either unordered sameness or nothing at all. Evolution is consciousness mattering. Shedding new light on the co-emergence of subjective awareness and culture, the possibility of machine consciousness, the risks of algorithmic consciousness hacking, and the potentials of intentionally altered states of consciousness, Hershock invites us to consider how freely, wisely, and compassionately consciousness matters.

Introduction1. Consciousness as Dynamic Relationality: A Buddhist Perspective2. Creative Anticipation: Consciousness in the Wild 3. Toward a Buddhist Metaphysics of Consciousness: The Sentient Expansion of the Cosmos4. Beyond Organic Consciousness: The Coming of Conscious Machines5. Altering Consciousness: Toward a Neuroscience of Experimental Evolution6. Consciousness Theory Mattering: Responsibilities of Engineered Evolution7. The Future of Human Consciousness: Cultural and Ethical Evolution Appendix: A Genealogy of Contemporary Synthesis NotesWorks CitedIndex