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Books

Long-form reading list. Grouped by discipline; within each group, sorted by status (reading first, then queued, then read).

Schema

Each entry: status · title (orig. lang. title if translated) — author, year · one-line take · linked KB concept(s).

Status legend — 📖 reading · 🔖 queued · ✅ read · 🗑️ abandoned · 📚 reference (consulted, not read cover-to-cover).

Flags — ⚠️ trust with caveats (specific content concerns in the take) · ↗️ adjacent / applied (real but off-axis from consciousness ontology).

Neuroscience & neurophysiology

  • 🔖 The Brain: The Story of You (rus. Мозг. Ваша личная история) — David Eagleman, 2015. Popular-science companion to the PBS series — surveys perception, decision-making, plasticity, and self across the lifespan; accessible entry point to how the brain constructs experience. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Кто бы мог подумать! Как мозг заставляет нас делать глупости (rus. original; ≈ Who Would Have Thought! How the Brain Makes Us Do Stupid Things) — Asya Kazantseva, 2014. Russian pop-neuroscience tour through addiction, sleep, fear, love, and other "the brain made me do it" stories. Won the Prosvetitel award; useful as a Russian-language entry point and for everyday-life anchors to the molecular and circuit material elsewhere in the KB. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind — Eric R. Kandel, 2006. Nobel laureate's memoir-cum-history of molecular neuroscience: Aplysia, synaptic plasticity, CREB, and how learning was traced to specific molecular cascades. Anchors the KB's molecular ↔ cellular ↔ behavioral chain in a single coherent scientific arc. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind — V.S. Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee, 1998. Clinical neurology read as a probe of normal consciousness — phantom limbs, hemineglect, Capgras, anosognosia. Pathology as the most informative window onto how the intact brain constructs body, self, and reality. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (rus. Человек, который принял жену за шляпу, и другие истории из врачебной практики) — Oliver Sacks, 1985. Sacks's signature collection of neurological case studies — visual agnosia, Korsakov's, Tourette's, phantom limbs — written with literary attention to the patient's first-person experience. Pairs with Ramachandran's Phantoms on the "pathology as window onto normal consciousness" axis, but with more phenomenology and less mechanism. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Brain: A Very Short Introduction — Michael O'Shea, 2005. Oxford VSI compact overview of brain structure and function — orientation read for the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology layers before going deeper. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience (UK title: The 21st Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind) — Steven Rose, 2005. Forward-looking survey by a neurobiologist long critical of biological reductionism — covers enhancement, neuroethics, plasticity, and the limits of treating the brain as a mechanism. Useful as a counterweight on how far neuroscience explanations can be pushed before they overreach. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind — Steven Rose, 1992. Rose's account of his own work on memory in the day-old chick — biochemical cascades, protein synthesis, and the search for the molecular trace of a learned avoidance. Complementary primary-research view alongside Kandel's Aplysia arc; explicit on how molecular results scale (or fail to scale) to "memory" in the everyday sense. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are — Joseph E. LeDoux, 2002. LeDoux's argument that personality and self are constituted by patterns of synaptic connectivity — emotion-systems neuroscientist (amygdala / fear-circuit fame) building a synapse-up account of who-we-are. Direct on-axis read for the KB's "consciousness as emergent from neural ensembles" framing. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Your Brain: The Missing Manual — Matthew MacDonald, 2008. O'Reilly "Missing Manual" pop guide — written by a tech author, not a neuroscientist. Practical / lifestyle framing (memory, sleep, attention, emotion) rather than primary research. Useful for plain-language anchors and as a check on which findings are well-known enough to filter into general-audience books. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human (rus. Мозг рассказывает: Что делает нас людьми) — V.S. Ramachandran, 2011. Ramachandran's broadest synthesis — mirror neurons, synesthesia, autism, language origins, aesthetics — pitched at "what makes humans uniquely human." Covers more ground than Phantoms but with the same case-study method; expect some overlap with the earlier Ramachandran books in the KB. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are (rus. Коннектом: Как мозг делает нас тем, что мы есть) — Sebastian Seung, 2012. Pop-sci anchor for the connectomics project — the case that "you are your connectome": identity / self emerge from the full wiring diagram of neural connections. Pairs naturally with LeDoux's Synaptic Self and seeds the Experimental methods layer (electron-microscopy reconstruction, the C. elegans and fly connectomes, why human-scale mapping is hard). Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know: The Human Brain (rus. Мозг человека: 50 идей, о которых нужно знать) — Moheb Costandi, 2013. 50 short essays on core neuroscience topics — anatomy, plasticity, memory, attention, disorders. Survey-format read; useful for spotting which topics deserve their own concept page in the KB and as a quick check on the standard textbook framing of any given topic. Links: [TODO]
  • 📚 From Neuron to Brain (with companion Neurons in Action simulation software) — John G. Nicholls, A. Robert Martin, Paul A. Fuchs, David A. Brown, Mathew E. Diamond, David A. Weisblat, 5th ed., 2011. Standard graduate textbook in cellular and systems neurobiology — ion channels, synapses, sensory transduction, motor systems, development, plasticity. The wet-biology counterpart to Dayan & Abbott's mathematical Theoretical Neuroscience; together they cover the substrate the higher KB layers will rest on. Links: [TODO]

Computational models of mind

  • 🔖 On Intelligence (rus. Об интеллекте) — Jeff Hawkins & Sandra Blakeslee, 2004. Foundational sketch of the Memory-Prediction framework — the cortex as a hierarchical pattern-completion engine constantly predicting its inputs. Precursor to Hawkins's Thousand Brains theory and a precedent for predictive-coding accounts of consciousness. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World (rus. Мозг и душа: Как нервная деятельность формирует наш внутренний мир) — Chris Frith, 2007. Cognitive-neuroscience case for the Bayesian / predictive brain — perception and self-awareness as inferences the brain runs on its own activity. Pairs naturally with Hawkins on the computational side and Metzinger on the phenomenological side. Links: [TODO]
  • 📚 Theoretical Neuroscience: Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Neural Systems — Peter Dayan & L.F. Abbott, 2001. Graduate-level textbook for computational neuroscience — neural coding, integrate-and-fire dynamics, Hodgkin–Huxley, plasticity, network models, Bayesian inference. The math backbone for everything in the Computational models layer. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 How the Mind Works — Steven Pinker, 1997. Pinker's synthesis of computational theory of mind + evolutionary psychology — mental modules as adapted information processors. Polemical, broad-canvas, and explicitly hostile to mysterian / hard-problem framings; sits in productive tension with Chalmers and Searle in the KB. Links: [TODO]

Phenomenology & philosophy of mind

  • 🔖 What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy — Thomas Nagel, 1987. Compact intro to the core problems of philosophy — mind/body, free will, knowledge, meaning — by the author of What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (rus. Наука о мозге и миф о своём Я. Тоннель Эго) — Thomas Metzinger, 2009. Argues there is no self — only a transparent phenomenal self-model (PSM) the brain runs; consciousness as the user-interface the system has on itself. Directly load-bearing for the KB's "emergent self-modeling" framing. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers — V.S. Ramachandran, 2004. Compact follow-up to Phantoms drawn from Ramachandran's BBC Reith Lectures — synesthesia, Capgras, qualia, and the self treated head-on as topics in consciousness, not just neurology. Bridge between the clinical material and the philosophical questions. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Mind: A Brief Introduction — John R. Searle, 2004. Textbook tour of philosophy of mind by the author of the Chinese Room argument — consciousness, intentionality, free will, and his "biological naturalism" position (consciousness is real, irreducibly first-person, and caused by brain processes). Useful counterweight to functionalist / computational accounts elsewhere in the KB. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Man with the Phantom Twin: Adventures in the Neuroscience of the Human Brain — V.S. Ramachandran, 2008. Pi Press paperback gathering Ramachandran's case-study material on body schema, mirror neurons, synesthesia, and self. Likely overlaps significantly with A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness (2004) — once read, dedupe if it turns out to be a re-issue rather than new material. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Theories of the Mind — Stephen Priest, 1991. Survey of the major positions in philosophy of mind — dualism, logical behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism, double-aspect theory, phenomenology — each presented on its own terms before critique. Useful taxonomy companion to Searle's polemical Mind. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (orig. da. Mærk verden) — Tor Nørretranders, 1991 / 1998 (Eng.). Information-theoretic argument that consciousness is a low-bandwidth user interface (a few bits/sec) onto a vastly larger unconscious substrate (megabits/sec) — "exformation" gets discarded before reaching awareness. Sits naturally next to Metzinger's PSM and the predictive-brain story. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory — David J. Chalmers, 1996. The book that put the hard problem of consciousness at the centre of the field — argues experience can't be reduced to physical / functional descriptions and develops a non-reductive naturalist account (with property dualist leanings, panpsychist sympathies). Anchor reading for the Philosophy layer; the framing every other position in the KB has to position itself against. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (rus. Кто за главного? Свобода воли с точки зрения нейробиологии) — Michael S. Gazzaniga, 2011. Split-brain pioneer's argument that free will and moral responsibility survive contact with neuroscience — agency is real at the social/personal level even if every event has neural causes. Counterweight to hard-determinist readings of Libet-style experiments; sits next to Searle and Chalmers on the "first-person matters" side of the KB. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Consciousness Explained — Daniel C. Dennett, 1991. Dennett's full-length argument that consciousness can be explained — the multiple-drafts model replaces the "Cartesian theatre" with parallel, distributed content streams competing for influence. Anchor for the deflationary / functionalist pole of the KB; the position Chalmers's hard problem and Searle's biological naturalism are arguing against. Links: [TODO]

Psychedelics & altered states

  • 🔖 Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research — Stanislav Grof, 1975. Foundational text of psychedelic psychotherapy — Grof's typology of LSD states (sensory, biographical, perinatal matrices, transpersonal) drawn from clinical observation. Heavy on his own framework; useful as a primary source for how non-ordinary states have been mapped, with care taken on the more speculative claims. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) — Alexander & Ann Shulgin, 1991. Two halves: an autobiographical narrative, then a chemistry-and-experience directory of 179 phenethylamines with synthesis routes, dosages, and structured first-person effect reports. Primary-source bridge between molecular structure (receptor pharmacology) and subjective state — directly on-axis for the KB's molecular ↔ phenomenological chain. (Primary source for the planned psychoactive-substances coverage — see task-0002.) Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives — Stanislav Grof, 1992. More accessible companion to Realms — Grof's three-level framework (biographical, perinatal, transpersonal) reframed for general readers and extended from LSD work to holotropic breathwork. Same caveats apply: strong phenomenological observations, speculative theoretical superstructure. Links: [TODO]

Psychology & psychiatry

  • 📚 ICD-11 — International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision — World Health Organization, 2022. Global standard for diagnostic classification — defines mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental disorders the KB references when discussing pathological states. Links: [TODO]
  • 📚 DSM-5-TR — Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed., text revision — American Psychiatric Association, 2022. US-anchored psychiatric nosology; complements ICD-11 with more granular criteria for mood, anxiety, dissociative, psychotic, and personality disorders. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Psych 101: Psychology Facts, Basics, Statistics, Tests, and More! (rus. Психология: Люди, концепции, эксперименты) — Paul Kleinman, 2012. Popular-press tour through major figures, schools, and experiments in psychology — useful as a survey to map the territory before going deep. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 ↗️ Скрытое управление человеком (rus. original; ≈ Covert Influence over People) — Viktor Sheinov, 2000. Applied-psychology compendium of manipulation and persuasion techniques. Adjacent to the KB's core (not about consciousness as such), but useful for the social-cognition / influence layer when the ontology touches agency, suggestion, and self-deception. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction — Chris Frith & Eve C. Johnstone, 2003. Oxford VSI compact entry on schizophrenia — symptoms, course, neurobiology, treatment. Pairs with Frith's Making Up the Mind: where that book argues perception is predictive inference, this book shows what happens when the inference machinery breaks (delusions of control, agency, and reference). (Anchor read for the planned schizophrenia deep dive — see task-0001.) Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction — Tom Burns, 2006. Oxford VSI overview of psychiatry as a discipline — diagnostic frameworks, history, treatment modalities, contested status. Useful entry-level orientation alongside the ICD-11 / DSM-5-TR reference rows for how clinical practice actually carves up disorder space. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 ⚠️ Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman, 2011. Canonical pop-sci synthesis of dual-process theory and the heuristics-and-biases program. Trust with caveats: prospect theory, loss aversion, anchoring, availability, framing — Kahneman's own Nobel-winning material — have held up. Chapter 4's social-priming studies (Bargh, money priming, professor/hooligan) largely failed to replicate; Kahneman himself acknowledged this in 2017. Read the book; flag the priming chapter as historical. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 ↗️ The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time (rus. Восходящая спираль: Как нейрофизиология помогает справиться с негативом и депрессией) — Alex Korb, 2015. Adjacent / applied: clinical-practical book on depression by a neuroscientist (UCLA, depression circuit research). Grounded in real findings — HPA axis, monoamine systems, prefrontal–limbic loops — but pitched as self-help, not theory. Useful when the KB touches depression as a pathological consciousness state; not primary content for the ontology layers. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 Schizofrenia (rus. Шизофрения. Теория энергетическо-информационного метаболизма) — Antoni Kępiński, 1972. Polish psychiatrist's late-career synthesis on schizophrenia, written the year of his death. Two layers, weighted differently: (1) phenomenologically rich clinical observation — genuine attempt to understand the patient's lived world rather than catalogue symptoms; humanistic stance shaped by his Mauthausen survivor experience; anticipates contemporary phenomenological psychiatry (Stanghellini, Parnas, Sass). (2) The "energy-information metabolism" theoretical scaffolding — rhetorical and heuristic rather than mechanistic; not a formal information-theoretic model despite the name. Read for the clinical phenomenology; treat the framework as historical / dated. Largely untranslated into English, so harder to cross-reference with contemporary literature. (Phenomenology source for the planned schizophrenia deep dive — see task-0001.) Links: Frith & Johnstone Schizophrenia VSI

Other / cross-cutting

  • 🔖 ⚠️ The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind — Michio Kaku, 2014. Theoretical physicist's pop-futurism survey of BCI, memory recording, telepathy, dream reading, consciousness uploading. Trust with caveats: Kaku reports neuroscience secondhand and tends to extrapolate further than the primary literature supports. Useful as a map of the speculative-synthesis end of the KB and to surface the futurist claims that need debunking, less so as primary content. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 ↗️ BrainChains: Discover Your Brain, to Unleash Its Full Potential in a Hyperconnected, Multitasking World — Theo Compernolle, 2014. Belgian psychiatrist's pop-productivity book on attention, multitasking, sleep, and digital distraction in knowledge work. Author has clinical credentials but the framing is executive self-help, not primary research. Adjacent to the KB's core (not about consciousness as such), useful when the ontology touches attention, working memory, and the costs of context-switching. Links: [TODO]
  • 🔖 ↗️ Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life — Daniel C. Dennett, 1995. Dennett's defense of natural selection as a substrate-independent algorithm — "universal acid" that dissolves intuitions about design, mind, and meaning. Adjacent to the KB's core (not directly about consciousness) but essential context for Dennett's broader programme; reads naturally before or after Consciousness Explained. Links: [TODO]

When a book earns its own page

Once a book accumulates more than a row's worth of notes — chapter summaries, contested claims, derived KB concepts — extract to references/books/<slug>.md and replace the entry with a link. The list stays the index.