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Ray Fuller is a Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a professor of Psychology and head of department. He taught and researched aspects of human behaviour and mental processes for 40 years. He has edited seven books on traffic safety, aviation safety and the history of psychology and published widely in the research literature on human risk-taking. Since retirement to S.W. France, he has found time to build stone walls, make furniture, and write.
A ‘prequel’ to this book, Six Confessions of the Self-Serving Brain, was published in 2021.
His first book for children, Mid-Winter Bleak, was published in 2020.
It's mid-winter, not long before Christmas, and snow is falling. Little orphan, Dot, lives in a big house in the country where she is made to work like a slave by her cruel mistress. Exhausted, she falls asleep. Meanwhile, beyond the North Pole, there is trouble in Santa's workshop where all the toys are made. He too has driven his hardworking elves to exhaustion. They can take no more. Santa sacks them and replaces them with goblins to finish the work. But this only makes matters considerably worse. Will something happen to save the day and get all the presents made in time for Christmas? Or is it all a dream?
This book is about everything that goes on in your conscious experience: sensations, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, imagination, plans, expectations. It’s also about your conscious experience of self, the sense that there is a YOU behind everything, a YOU that is having all these experiences, a YOU that seems to control all those activities of the mind.
Some of the questions it explores:
- What is conscious experience?
- How did it evolve?
- Why did it evolve?
- How does it develop in the young child?
- What can we do with it?
- Why might it cause us problems?
- Why is it still a mystery?
This book is NOT about the neurological landscape and its functions studied by the neuroscientist armed with the latest fMRI technology (which incidentally measures brain activity indirectly through the flow of blood in response to different tasks). You don’t have to know brain anatomy, you don’t have to tell your hippocampus from your hypothalamus.
This book will be of interest to YOU if you have ever wondered about the nature of conscious experience and the workings of your own consciousness. It may well tell you more about YOU than any other book you have ever read.
Students of psychology, philosophy and evolution will find it of particular relevance to their areas of inquiry.
The wild wood can be beautiful in the dappled light of a summer’s day. But it can also be a very scary place especially when there may be goblins about, up to no good! What lies in wait for a weak and fragile butterfly, just on the point of emerging from her winter home? Her destiny is to seek a mate. But for this she must learn to fly and then take off into the unknown. Danger may be hidden in the shadows. Or it may come from the air, or from on the ground, or from behind any tree. So it’s no surprise she insists on remaining in her winter home! Can the sun help her overcome her fear? Can she gain the strength to take off and fly? And what strange and terrifying experiences may lie in wait for her? On her journey she makes friends with the sun and the flowers and a bee called Alf. But can they save her? And will she ever find her mate?
JUST LAUNCHED: Six Confessions of the Self-Serving Brain. This short book is a ‘prequel’ to Life of Brain, an exploration of the nature, origin and functions of conscious experience which is cu ........
Mid-Winter Bleak is a story for children 4 years and up. But it was also written for adult amusement. So reading it to a child should entertain both reader and listener (hopefully)! Some unsoli ........
“I must say, adults do say strange things sometimes,” observed Arwen. “How do you mean? asked Tamzin. “Well, did you hear what daddy said this morning? Two’s company and three’s a crow ........
Christmas Curiosity “Did you ever wonder, Arwen, how Santa manages to get his presents delivered to every child around the world on the night before Christmas?” “Yep. Always see ........
“Dick!” exclaimed Arwen. “Ooooh. You just said a really naughty word!” said Tamzin. “No way!” laughed Arwen, “I was just thinking about people’s names—and how they get shorten ........
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