"How do I understood mind?" Booklist

Title: The Computational Brain
Authors: Patricia Churchland, Terrence Sejnowski
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: Decent understanding of biology, chemistry (I never actually took chemistry but I could follow more or less); a little differential calculus, linear algebra and discrete mathematical concepts ... know some gross neural anatomy before you read, esp. visual cortex and hippocampus; will make things a lot easier
Additional Comments: Don't get too hung up on the details of Hebbian learning near the front. It's kind of mind-bending. Just get the basic idea and move on. It will make sense later. Skip around if you want, there's some awful dry material towards the end

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Title: The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul
Authors: Paul Churchland
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: High school math and biology and some good sense. Very easy read, I think.
Additional Comments: Comes with equipment for an awesome stereo vision experiment. The section on morality was kind of retarded.

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Title: Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs
Authors: Michael A. Persinger
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: Some understanding of psychology and gross neural anatomy. Author makes reference to temporal lobe frequently, but mostly you just need to know what it is.
Additional Comments: Some claims are made with spotty evidence, and read almost like psychoanalysis. However, the author is an important figure in neurotheology, having done the famous God helmet experiments whereby magnetic fields were used to induce current in the temporal lobe, frequently leading to powerful religious-type experiences. Overall it's very nice, but read with a grain of salt.

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Title: Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications
Author: John R. Anderson
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: If you are reasonably bright and haven't lived under a rock your whole life you should be able to handle this book. (You all remember logarithms, right?) It's very self-contained, and in fact you will likely have some exposure to related fields you may not be familiar with, like computer science and artificial intelligence.
Additional Comments: I have the 5th edition. The current edition is the 6th. Unless it went down the toilet, you should expect good things from this one, although I heard there are a bunch of typos in this release. The format is so clear I will ape it wholesale if I ever write a textbook.

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Title: Introduction to Modern Behaviorism
Authors: Howard Rachlin
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: Essentially self-contained, some math (algebra, precalc)
Additional Comments: Book started to drag towards the end. I couldn't finish it, and skipped ahead to the discussion of the famous matching law. Don't even bother reading the section on language; strictly behaviorist analyses of the same are pretty much only of historical interest now. Discounting was fun. There was a very lucid explanation of why variable ratio reinforcement schedules are least susceptible to extinction based on an example with a vending machine.

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Title: Memory and Brain
Authors: Larry R. Squire
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: Some psychology, mostly gross neural anatomy although there is also reference to cellular level neural effects.
Additional Comments: Squire is really phenomenal in this field. His writing is clear and you will learn a lot from it, although he writes so much about amnesiac patients. It can get a little tiresome. The discussion of localization vs. distribution towards the start is useful not only in the context of memory, but in the discussion of the brain in general. The section about long-term potentiation was a little bogged down in nitty-gritty arguments. You may want to read only part of it. Discussion of psychological vs neurobiological short-term / long term memory distinction was very illuminating, as was evidence for multiple short term memories for different cognitive modalities (e.g., numbers vs words). Incredible hypothesis that declarative memory emerged to unite numerous procedural memories in the evolution of larger more complex brains, to avoid having to retrain constantly. Read closely and you'll find goodies I missed. There's a lot for a short volume.

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Title: Emotion Explained
Authors: Edmund T. Rolls
Epistemological Approach: Empiricist
Prerequisites: Psychology, gross neural anatomy, some low-level neural function
Additional Comments: I read only parts of this book. It was really dense and I didn't feel like reading the whole thing. Some important take-home messages were: there is no brick wall between "emotion" and "reason", i.e. they are integrated and kind of on a continuum; temporal lobe stimulation can elicit a variety of reactions, from euphoric to terrifying to otherworldly, i.e., feelings you would not have under any other circumstances. The author wrote a little about neuroeconomics towards the end ... pretty cool. That's where I learned about quasi-hyperbolic discounting.

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Title: Mind: A Brief Introduction
Author: John R. Searle
Epistemological Approach: Biological Naturalism
Prerequisites: Nothing, other than curiosity. This is probably as low as you can go in regards to introductions. The book touches on a lot of subfields within the philosophy of mind spectrum so there's hardly any redundancy. Also, the book is a little over 200 pages long which doesnt make it a tough read either. Once again, its great for beginners.
Additional Comments: Searle's style of writing is clear and straight to the point. His bias can slip from time to time in other books I've read from him, and its no different in this one but maybe a tad less obvious. There is also another thread about this book here if you're interested.

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Please add further books in the same format I used. I will come back to add more later.

Thanks to odenskrigare, Kielicious,...