Journey Of The Mind How Thinking Emerged From Chaos

Author : Ogi Ogas
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324006587
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos written by Ogi Ogas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two neuroscientists reveal why consciousness exists and how it works by examining eighteen increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind—and beyond. Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind—to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos. The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the universe’s simplest possible mind. From there, the book explores the nanoscopic archaeon, whose thinking machinery consists of a handful of molecules, then advances through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and humans, explaining what each “new” mind could do that previous minds could not. Though they admire the triumph of human consciousness, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam argue that humans are hardly the most sophisticated minds on the planet. The same physical principles that produce human self-awareness are leading cities and nation-states to develop “superminds,” and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness. Written in lively, accessible language accompanied by vivid illustrations, Journey of the Mind is a mind-bending work of popular science, the first general book to share the cutting-edge mathematical basis for consciousness, language, and the self. It shows how a “unified theory of the mind” can explain the mind’s greatest mysteries—and offer clues about the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.

Author : Stephen Grossberg
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190070552
Total Pages : 771 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain written by Stephen Grossberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does your mind work? How does your brain give rise to your mind? These are questions that all of us have wondered about at some point in our lives, if only because everything that we know is experienced in our minds. They are also very hard questions to answer. After all, how can a mind understand itself? How can you understand something as complex as the tool that is being used to understand it? This book provides an introductory and self-contained description of some of the exciting answers to these questions that modern theories of mind and brain have recently proposed. Stephen Grossberg is broadly acknowledged to be the most important pioneer and current research leader who has, for the past 50 years, modelled how brains give rise to minds, notably how neural circuits in multiple brain regions interact together to generate psychological functions. This research has led to a unified understanding of how, where, and why our brains can consciously see, hear, feel, and know about the world, and effectively plan and act within it. The work embodies revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarify how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved. It provides mechanistic explanations of multiple mental disorders, including symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, autism, amnesia, and sleep disorders; biological bases of morality and religion, including why our brains are biased towards the good so that values are not purely relative; perplexing aspects of the human condition, including why many decisions are irrational and self-defeating despite evolution's selection of adaptive behaviors; and solutions to large-scale problems in machine learning, technology, and Artificial Intelligence that provide a blueprint for autonomously intelligent algorithms and robots. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, unifying insights also emerge about shared laws that are found in all living cellular tissues, from the most primitive to the most advanced, notably how the laws governing networks of interacting cells support developmental and learning processes in all species. The fundamental brain design principles of complementarity, uncertainty, and resonance that Grossberg has discovered also reflect laws of the physical world with which our brains ceaselessly interact, and which enable our brains to incrementally learn to understand those laws, thereby enabling humans to understand the world scientifically. Accessibly written, and lavishly illustrated, Conscious Mind/Resonant Brain is the magnum opus of one of the most influential scientists of the past 50 years, and will appeal to a broad readership across the sciences and humanities.

Author : Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393348784
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-05-05 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments. Includes 77 of Dennett's most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders.O

Author : Joseph Jebelli
Publisher : Little, Brown Spark
ISBN 13 : 0316424978
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How the Mind Changed written by Joseph Jebelli and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary story of how the human brain evolved… and is still evolving. We’ve come a long way. The earliest human had a brain as small as a child’s fist; ours are four times bigger, with spectacular abilities and potential we are only just beginning to understand. This is How the Mind Changed, a seven-million-year journey through our own heads, packed with vivid stories, groundbreaking science, and thrilling surprises. Discover how memory has almost nothing to do with the past; meditation rewires our synapses; magic mushroom use might be responsible for our intelligence; climate accounts for linguistic diversity; and how autism teaches us hugely positive lessons about our past and future. Dr. Joseph Jebelli’s In Pursuit of Memory was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and longlisted for the Wellcome. In this, his eagerly awaited second book, he draws on deep insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, and philosophy to guide us through the unexpected changes that shaped our brains. From genetic accidents and environmental forces to historical and cultural advances, he explores how our brain’s evolution turned us into Homo sapiens and beyond. A single mutation is all it takes.

Author : Paul Jerome Croce
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 9780807845066
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.6X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Science and Religion in the Era of William James: Eclipse of certainty, 1820-1880 written by Paul Jerome Croce and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this cultural biography, Paul Croce investigates the contexts surrounding the early intellectual development of American philosopher William James (1842-1910). Croce places the young James at the center of key scientific and religious debates in Americ

Author : Richard Dawkins
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062288466
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Brief Candle in the Dark written by Richard Dawkins and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the twentieth century—The God Delusion. Called “one of the best nonfiction writers alive today” (Stephen Pinker) and a “prize-fighter” (Nature), Richard Dawkins cheerfully, mischievously, looks back on a lifetime of tireless intellectual adventure and engagement. Exploring the halls of intellectual inquiry and stardom he encountered after the publication of his seminal work, The Selfish Gene; affectionately lampooning the world of academia, publishing, and television; and studding the pages with funny stories about the great men and women he’s known, Dawkins offers a candid look at the events and ideas that encouraged him to shift his attention to the intersection of culture, religion, and science. He also invites the reader to look more closely at the brilliant succession of ten influential books that grew naturally out of his busy life, highlighting the ideas that connect them and excavating their origins. On the publication of his tenth book, the smash hit, The God Delusion, a “resounding trumpet blast for truth” (Matt Ridley), Richard Dawkins was catapulted from mere intellectual stardom into a circle of celebrity thinkers dubbed, “The New Atheists”—including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Throughout A Brief Candle in the Dark, Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life’s brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture.

Author : Loren Wilkinson
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666746363
Total Pages : 435 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Circles and the Cross written by Loren Wilkinson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Circles and the Cross is an invitation to explore two mysteries. One is the miracle of the cosmos: why is there something and not nothing? The other is the miracle of consciousness: why should this collection of stardust be an I and not just an it? Our basic response to those mysteries is wonder, and from wonder have grown the three great trees of human culture: religion, art, and science. This exploration is undertaken in the light of a third mystery: the cross of Christ is the clearest picture we have of the triune Creator of both cosmos and consciousness. That self-emptying of the Creator out of love for the creation helps us understand the pleasures, paradoxes, and pains of science; it helps us understand how “evolution” can be another name for creation; it casts light on the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In particular, it illuminates the environmental movement: an ethic in search of a religion. Loren Wilkinson, drawing on fifty years of teaching and writing about our relationship to creation, invites you to join this journey into understanding how the cross of Christ sheds light on the mysteries that surround us—and gives us hope in a difficult age.

Author : Mark Leffert
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000805484
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Psychoanalysis, the Self, and the World written by Mark Leffert and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes psychoanalysis into the 21st century, examining issues of existentialism, postphenomenology, social media, and death and death anxiety that have gone largely ignored in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic literature. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, Leffert explains that it is impossible to close the door of the consulting room. The therapeutic relationship is invaded by the outside world and its relationships for both patient and therapist and cannot be isolated from these influences. Drawing on richly detailed case studies, Leffert demonstrates how the internet, social media, and the metaverse have changed and expanded the self in ways that could not have been imagined in the last century. In turn, Leffert acknowledges recent advances in the neurosciences, and addresses the lack of engagement with their implications for theories and practices of therapeutic action. Finally, the ways in which death and death anxiety impinge on the self, which have also gone mostly undealt with in psychoanalytic literature, become an important focus of this book. As a novel exploration of interdisciplinary connections, this book will be of use to both scholars and practitioners of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, social network theory, philosophy, and neuroscience.

Author : Arthur S. Reber
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198873255
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sentient Cell written by Arthur S. Reber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All species, extant and extinct, from the simplest unicellular prokaryotes to humans, have an existential consciousness. Without sentience, the first cells that emerged some 4 billion years ago would have been evolutionary dead-ends, unable to survive in the chaotic, dangerous environment in which life first appeared and evolved. In this book, Arthur Reber's theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), is outlined and distinguished from those models that argue that minds could be instantiated on artificial entities and those that maintain consciousness requires a nervous system. The CBC framework takes a novel approach to classic topics such as the origin-of-life, philosophy of mind, the role of genes, the impact of cognition, and how biological information is processed by all species. It also calls for a rethinking of a variety of issues including the moral implications of the sentient capacities of all species, how welfare concerns need to be expanded beyond where they currently are, and critically, how all life is intertwined in a coordinated cognitive ecology. The Sentient Cell explores this revolutionary model, which updates the standard neo-Darwinian framework within which current approaches operate and examines the underlying biomolecular features that are the likely candidates for the "invention" of consciousness and outline their role in cellular life.

Author : Mihai Nadin
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031439570
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Disrupt Science written by Mihai Nadin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reaction to breakdowns is more expensive, by many orders of magnitude, than prevention. This again became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic and is evinced in the sustainability crisis. The dynamics of living matter transcends deterministic reaction. Embodied in machines, determinism empowered the human being, providing the path to prosperity. However, in conjunction with reductionism, it does away with complexity, in which life is couched. The living is by necessity anticipatory. Awareness of the future means preserving life not in reaction to, but in anticipation of change. Living entities, from the simplest bacteria, to plants and insects, to human beings, are adaptive, goal-oriented, and capable of self-healing. Anticipatory actions are expressed through non-deterministic processes that unfold in concert with reactions. They engage the wholeness of life, including its interactions with the environment. Awareness of consequences, together with memory of the past, informs actions that reflect the creative nature of human beings. Redefining science—and implicitly, medicine—is not a negation of its past, but rather an affirmation of trust in explaining life’s capacity to renew itself. As opposed to increasingly expensive medicine as a practice of repair, to prevent and to heal is to make life sustainable. The moment of truth can no longer be postponed. At stake is the future of humankind and even of life on planet Earth. Reductionist determinism informs the obsession with progress at any cost. Awareness of the fact that the human condition transcends that of the matter in which it is embodied explains, and indeed justifies, the call to Disrupt Science in its current state. The age of the digital machine, in particular of artificial intelligence, is one of opportunities that pale when compared to its inherent risks. The record of breakdowns (including so-called natural disasters), by now global in scale, is part of the empirical premise for the call for completing the Cartesian Revolution. A “Second Revolution in Science” could unleash humanity’s remaking, free of surrendering to want. Science has the opportunity not only to measure everything—life included—and accumulate data and process it for its own sake, but also to realize its meaning. The future matters.