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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... meaning at all if we are just huge collections of proteins and other molecules churning away according to the laws of chemistry and physics? If moral precepts were nothing but extrusions generated by the hordes of microbiological nano ...
... snares of science!”); fear (“If my mind is just my brain, I won't be in charge; life will have no meaning!”); or disdain (“These simple-minded, scientistic reductionists! They have no idea how far short they fall in their puny attempts.
... meaning!”). These diagnoses are often warranted. There is no shortage of pathetic bleats issuing from the mouths of the Defenders, but the concerns that motivate them are not idle fantasies. Those who find Crick's hypothesis not just ...
... meaning is empirically explained.” But a closer look shows that Marx is equivocating between two views that continue to be defended: We should banish all teleological formulations from the natural sciences On the Origin of Reasons.
... meaning” of natural phenomena without ancient ideology (of entelechies, Intelligent Creators and the like), we can replace old-fashioned teleology with new, post-Darwinian teleology. This equivocation is firmly knitted into the practice ...
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds Daniel Clement Dennett,Daniel C. Dennett No preview available - 2017 |