From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds"A supremely enjoyable, intoxicating work." —Nature How did we come to have minds? For centuries, poets, philosophers, psychologists, and physicists have wondered how the human mind developed its unrivaled abilities. Disciples of Darwin have explained how natural selection produced plants, but what about the human mind? In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. A crucial shift occurred when humans developed the ability to share memes, or ways of doing things not based in genetic instinct. Competition among memes produced thinking tools powerful enough that our minds don’t just perceive and react, they create and comprehend. An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and scientists, From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain all those curious about how the mind works. |
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... cognitive science and neuroscience would not be coined for more than a decade). The fledgling enterprise dubbed Artificial Intelligence by John McCarthy in 1956 was attracting attention, but few philosophers had ever touched a computer ...
... Cognitive Studies, has handled all the logistics of my academic life for years, releasing thousands of prime-time hours for writing and researching, and played a more direct helping role for this book, tracking down books and articles ...
... cognitive talents have recently been discovered and celebrated? Isn't this a barefaced example of the fallacy of “human exceptionalism”? Some readers may be ready to throw the book across the room, and others may just be unsettled by my ...
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds Daniel Clement Dennett,Daniel C. Dennett No preview available - 2017 |