Radiant Cool
Radiant Cool

Author: Dan Edward Lloyd

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780262621939

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An innovative theory of consciousness, drawing on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and supported by brain-imaging, presented in the form of a hardboiled detective story. Professor Grue is dead (or is he?). When graduate student/sleuth Miranda Sharpe discovers him slumped over his keyboard, she does the sensible thing--she grabs her dissertation and runs. Little does she suspect that soon she will be probing the heart of two mysteries, trying to discover what happened to Max Grue, and trying to solve the profound neurophilosophical problem of consciousness. Radiant Cool may be the first novel of ideas that actually breaks new theoretical ground, as Dan Lloyd uses a neo-noir (neuro-noir?), hard-boiled framework to propose a new theory of consciousness.In the course of her sleuthing, Miranda encounters characters who share her urgency to get to the bottom of the mystery of consciousness, although not always with the most innocent motives. Who holds the key to Max Grue's ultimate vision? Is it the computer-inspired pop psychologist talk-show host? The video-gaming geek with a passion for artificial neural networks? The Russian multi-dimensional data detective, or the sophisticated neuroscientist with the big book contract? Ultimately Miranda teams up with the author's fictional alter ego, "Dan Lloyd," and together they build on the phenomenological theories of philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) to construct testable hypotheses about the implementation of consciousness in the brain. Will the clues of phenomenology and neuroscience converge in time to avert a catastrophe? (The dramatic ending cannot be revealed here.) Outside the fictional world of the novel, Dan Lloyd (the author) appends a lengthy afterword, explaining the proposed theory of consciousness in more scholarly form. Radiant Cool is a real metaphysical thriller--based in current philosophy of mind--and a genuine scientific detective story--revealing a new interpretation of functional brain imaging. With its ingenious plot and its novel theory, Radiant Cool will be enjoyed in the classroom and the study for its entertaining presentation of phenomenology, neural networks, and brain imaging; but, most importantly, it will find its place as a groundbreaking theory of consciousness.

Radiant Angel
Radiant Angel

Author: Nelson DeMille

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 145558231X

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Prescient and chilling, DeMille's #1 New York Times bestselling novel takes us into the heart of a new Cold War with a clock-ticking plot that has Manhattan in its crosshairs. After a showdown with the notorious Yemeni terrorist known as The Panther, John Corey has left the Anti-Terrorist Task Force and returned home to New York City, taking a job with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. Although Corey's new assignment with the DSG-surveilling Russian diplomats working at the U.N. Mission-is thought to be "a quiet end," he is more than happy to be out from under the thumb of the FBI and free from the bureaucracy of office life. But Corey realizes something the U.S. government doesn't: The all-too-real threat of a newly resurgent Russia. When Vasily Petrov, a colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service posing as a diplomat with the Russian U.N. Mission, mysteriously disappears from a Russian oligarch's party in Southampton, it's up to Corey to track him down. What are the Russians up to and why? Is there a possible nuclear threat, a so-called radiant angel? Will Corey find Petrov and put a stop to whatever he has planned before it's too late? Or will Corey finally be outrun and outsmarted, with America facing the prospect of a crippling attack unlike anything it's ever seen before?