John Hobson

Consciousness undergoes dramatic and stereotyped changes in parallel with changes in brain state over the sleep‐wake cycle. No change is more striking or more informative than that which differentiates waking and REM sleep dreaming. For example, dreaming is characterized by internally generated perceptions, by false beliefs, by cognitive impairments, by emotional intensification, and by amnesia. When they occur in waking, these formal state features characterize what is called mental illness. Because the underlying changes in brain state are well described, it is possible to create a model which links the formal features of the mental state to changes in brain physiology and chemistry. The resulting synthesis of conscious state phenomenology and brain neurophysiology provides a solid foundation for mind‐body integration in both normal and abnormal conditions.

First published in 1930, this book endeavours to trace and express the relations between economic and human values, between wealth and life. Hobson studies everything from the role of production processes and consumption in the determination of human welfare; to the changing attitudes of economic science towards ethical considerations; as well as the tendency of organised society to exercise a control of economic processes in the interests of equity, humanity, and social order. Part I of the book deals with an attempt to provide an intelligible and consistent meaning for human value and welfare. Part II sketches the emergence of an economic science and its formal relations to ethics. Part III discusses the ethical significance of certain basic factors in the modern economic system, especially property and market processes. Part IV is addressed to the notion of industrial peace and progress in the light of modern humanism, with especial regard to the new problems emerging in a world becoming conscious of its widening unity.

Where does consciousness come from and how does it work? Is it a purely biological thing? Where does the brain leave off and the mind begin? These questions, once viewed as ethereal and impossible to study empirically, are now being addressed by science in bold and startling new ways.In Consciousness, world-renowned neuropsychiatrist J. Allan Hobson presents a witty and introspective consideration of this mysterious concept, connecting it to specific areas of the brain and their chemical and physical states. Hobson guides his readers through the various states of waking, dreaming, and nonconsciousness using the theories and data of neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurophysiology. Although his ideas are based in science, his imaginative approach keeps us in touch with the mysterious and seductive nature of his subject.Richly woven, with references to literature, philosophy, and the author's personal experiences, Consciousness is a delightful and compact introduction to a concept central to the human experience.

Consciousness can be studied only if subjective experience is documented and quantified, yet first-person accounts of the effects of brain injury on conscious experience are as rare as they are potentially useful. This report documents the alterations in waking, sleeping, and dreaming caused by a lateral medullary infarct. Total insomnia and the initial suppression of dreaming was followed by the gradual recovery of both functions. A visual hallucinosis during waking that was associated with the initial period of sleep and dream suppression is described in detail. Since the changes in sleep and their recovery are comparable to results of animal experiments, it can be concluded that damage to the medullary brain stem causes extreme but short-lived alterations in conscious state and that substantial recovery occurs even though the damage to the brain stem endures.

First published in 1913, this _Routledge Revivals_ title reissues J. A. Hobson’s seminal analysis of the causal link between the rise in gold prices and the increase in wages and consumer buying power in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Contrary to the assertions of some notable contemporary economists and businessmen, Hobson contended that the relationship between gold prices and wages was in fact much more complex than it initially appeared and that there were significantly more important factors in the rise of contemporary wealth, such as the rapid enlargement of state enterprise and joint stock companies; a wide extension of banking and general financial apparatus; and the opening of profitable fields of investment for the development of underdeveloped countries, which helped raise the rate of interest and profits

First published in 1931, this _Routledge Revivals_ title reissues J.A Hobson’s analysis of financial distribution in the early years of Twentieth Century Britain. The book focuses on the moral questions that he considered to be important in regard to the economic reforms that were necessary to secure the utilisation of modern productivity for the welfare of mankind. In this work, Hobson considers the wasteful working of the economic system, with its over-production, under-consumption and unemployment and states that these errors are due to the unfair way in which income is apportioned among the nations, classes and individuals that produce it. _Poverty in Plenty_ argues for a conscious economic government inspired by a sense of justice and humanity. It makes suggestions towards the establishment of such a government and presents business prosperity as a problem of morals

First published in 1914 and reissued with a new introduction in 1992, _Work and Wealth _is a seminal vision of Hobson's liberal utopian ideals, which desired to demonstrate how economic and social reform could transform existing society into one in which the majority of the population, as opposed to a small elite, could find fulfillment. Hobson attacked conventional economic wisdom which made a division between the cost of production and the utility derived from consumption. Far from being necesarily arduous, Hobson argued that work had the potential to bring about immense utility and enrichment. The qualitative, humanist work argues in favour of a new form of capitalism to minimise cost and maximise utility