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. |
From inside the book
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... terms 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 ...
... terms romantic and killjoy to refer to the sides of this intense duel over animal minds, and one of my favorite memories of this bipolar reaction to claims about animal intelligence occurred at an international scientific workshop on ...
... terms? But Crick wasn't writing his book for scientists and philosophers, and he knew that among laypeople, the appeal of dualism was still quite overpowering. It seemed not only obvious to them that their private thoughts and ...
... terms have missed the point. This polarization of visions, with cheering, hissing spectators egging on the combatants, is just a conveniently obvious first manifestation of the forces I am trying to render visible to all and neutralize ...
... term for the brand of biology—adaptationism— that relies on the methodological principle of assuming, until proven otherwise, that all the parts of an organism are good for something. That is, they have useful roles to play, such as ...
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From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds Daniel Clement Dennett,Daniel C. Dennett No preview available - 2017 |