From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

Download From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393242080
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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 Bacteria to Bach and Back

Download From Bacteria to Bach and Back PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0393355500
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (933 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis From Bacteria to Bach and Back by : Daniel C Dennett

Download or read book From Bacteria to Bach and Back written by Daniel C Dennett and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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 Bacteria to Bach and Back

Download From Bacteria to Bach and Back PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141978058
Total Pages : 605 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis From Bacteria to Bach and Back by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book From Bacteria to Bach and Back written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Required reading for anyone remotely curious about how they came to be remotely curious' Observer 'Enthralling' Spectator What is human consciousness and how is it possible? These questions fascinate thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. This is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains and human culture. Part philosophical whodunnit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett's career at the forefront of philosophical thought. In his inimitable style, laced with wit and thought experiments, Dennett shows how culture enables reflection by installing a profusion of thinking tools, or memes, in our brains, and how language turbocharges this process. The result: a mind that can comprehend the questions it poses, has emerged from a process of cultural evolution. An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and thinkers, From Bacteria to Bach and Back is essential for anyone who hopes to understand human creativity in all its applications.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Download Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393348784
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (933 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by : Daniel C. Dennett

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: The philosophy professor behind Breaking the Spell and Consciousness Explained offers exercises and tools to stretch the mind, offering new ways to consider, discuss and argue positions on dangerous subject matter including evolution, the meaning of life and free will.

Consciousness Explained

Download Consciousness Explained PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316439487
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Consciousness Explained by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Consciousness Explained written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Brilliant...as audacious as its title....Mr. Dennett's exposition is nothing short of brilliant." --George Johnson, New York Times Book Review Consciousness Explained is a a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life-of people, animal, even robots--are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book.

Brainstorms

Download Brainstorms PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262540377
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Brainstorms by : Daniel Clement Dennett

Download or read book Brainstorms written by Daniel Clement Dennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will. Using careful arguments and ingenious thought-experiments, the author exposes familiar preconceptions and hobbling institutions. This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will. Using careful arguments and ingenious thought-experiments, the author exposes familiar preconceptions and hobbling institutions. The essays are grouped into four sections: Intentional Explanation and Attributions of Mentality; The Nature of Theory in Psychology; Objects of Consciousness and the Nature of Experience; and Free Will and Personhood.

Elbow Room, new edition

Download Elbow Room, new edition PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262527790
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Elbow Room, new edition by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Elbow Room, new edition written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark book in the debate over free will that makes the case for compatibilism. In this landmark 1984 work on free will, Daniel Dennett makes a case for compatibilism. His aim, as he writes in the preface to this new edition, was a cleanup job, “saving everything that mattered about the everyday concept of free will, while jettisoning the impediments.” In Elbow Room, Dennett argues that the varieties of free will worth wanting—those that underwrite moral and artistic responsibility—are not threatened by advances in science but distinguished, explained, and justified in detail. Dennett tackles the question of free will in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of fields that range from physics and evolutionary biology to engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. He shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the “family of anxieties” in which they are often enmeshed—imaginary agents and bogeymen, including the Peremptory Puppeteer, the Nefarious Neurosurgeon, and the Cosmic Child Whose Dolls We Are. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too. He explores reason, control and self-control, the meaning of “can” and “could have done otherwise,” responsibility and punishment, and why we would want free will in the first place. A fresh reading of Dennett's book shows how much it can still contribute to current discussions of free will. This edition includes as its afterword Dennett's 2012 Erasmus Prize essay.

Breaking the Spell

Download Breaking the Spell PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 110121886X
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Breaking the Spell by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Breaking the Spell written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-02-02 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.

Freedom Evolves

Download Freedom Evolves PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101572663
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Freedom Evolves by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Freedom Evolves written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-01-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers “yes!” Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments—drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy—that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Download Darwin's Dangerous Idea PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439126291
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Darwin's Dangerous Idea by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Darwin's Dangerous Idea written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet," focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.

Brainchildren

Download Brainchildren PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262540902
Total Pages : 438 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (49 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Brainchildren by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Brainchildren written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1998-02-17 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection of wide-ranging essays from one of cognitive science's most distingushed figures. Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came into existence and how they work. One of the foremost workers in this multidisciplinary field is Daniel Dennett. This book brings together his essays on the philosphy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Highlights include "Can Machines Think?," "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies," "Artificial Life as Philosophy," and "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why." Collected in a single volume, the essays are now available to a wider audience.

Content and Consciousness

Download Content and Consciousness PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 9781138834491
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (344 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Content and Consciousness by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Content and Consciousness written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Content and Consciousness is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett's future ideas developed. It is his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind.

Sweet Dreams

Download Sweet Dreams PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262250721
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sweet Dreams by : Daniel C. Dennett

Download or read book Sweet Dreams written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-09-08 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years since Daniel Dennett's influential Consciousness Explained was published in 1991, scientific research on consciousness has been a hotly contested battleground of rival theories—"so rambunctious," Dennett observes, "that several people are writing books just about the tumult." With Sweet Dreams, Dennett returns to the subject for "revision and renewal" of his theory of consciousness, taking into account major empirical advances in the field since 1991 as well as recent theoretical challenges. In Consciousness Explained, Dennett proposed to replace the ubiquitous but bankrupt Cartesian Theater model (which posits a privileged place in the brain where "it all comes together" for the magic show of consciousness) with the Multiple Drafts Model. Drawing on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, he asserted that human consciousness is essentially the mental software that reorganizes the functional architecture of the brain. In Sweet Dreams, he recasts the Multiple Drafts Model as the "fame in the brain" model, as a background against which to examine the philosophical issues that "continue to bedevil the field." With his usual clarity and brio, Dennett enlivens his arguments with a variety of vivid examples. He isolates the "Zombic Hunch" that distorts much of the theorizing of both philosophers and scientists, and defends heterophenomenology, his "third-person" approach to the science of consciousness, against persistent misinterpretations and objections. The old challenge of Frank Jackson's thought experiment about Mary the color scientist is given a new rebuttal in the form of "RoboMary," while his discussion of a famous card trick, "The Tuned Deck," is designed to show that David Chalmers's Hard Problem is probably just a figment of theorists' misexploited imagination. In the final essay, the "intrinsic" nature of "qualia" is compared with the naively imagined "intrinsic value" of a dollar in "Consciousness—How Much is That in Real Money?"

Minds, Machines and Evolution

Download Minds, Machines and Evolution PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : CUP Archive
ISBN 13 : 9780521338288
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (382 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Minds, Machines and Evolution by : Christopher Hookway

Download or read book Minds, Machines and Evolution written by Christopher Hookway and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1986-07-31 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays written by philosophers and scientists and dealing with philosophical questions arising from work in evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence.

The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness

Download The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1631490842
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness by : David Gelernter

Download or read book The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness written by David Gelernter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “rock star” (New York Times) of the computing world provides a radical new work on the meaning of human consciousness. The holy grail of psychologists and scientists for nearly a century has been to understand and replicate both human thought and the human mind. In fact, it's what attracted the now-legendary computer scientist and AI authority David Gelernter to the discipline in the first place. As a student and young researcher in the 1980s, Gelernter hoped to build a program with a dial marked "focus." At maximum "focus," the program would "think" rationally, formally, reasonably. As the dial was turned down and "focus" diminished, its "mind" would start to wander, and as you dialed even lower, this artificial mind would start to free-associate, eventually ignoring the user completely as it cruised off into the mental adventures we know as sleep. While the program was a only a partial success, it laid the foundation for The Tides of Mind, a groundbreaking new exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day. Indeed, as Gelernter explains, when we are at our most alert, when reasoning and creating new memories is our main mental business, the mind is a computer-like machine that keeps emotion on a short leash and attention on our surroundings. As we gradually tire, however, and descend the "mental spectrum," reasoning comes unglued. Memory ranges more freely, the mind wanders, and daydreams grow more insistent. Self-awareness fades, reflection blinks out, and at last we are completely immersed in our own minds. With far-reaching implications, Gelernter’s landmark "Spectrum of Consciousness" finally helps decode some of the most mysterious wonders of the human mind, such as the numinous light of early childhood, why dreams are so often predictive, and why sadism and masochism underpin some of our greatest artistic achievements. It’s a theory that also challenges the very notion of the mind as a machine—and not through empirical studies or "hard science" but by listening to our great poets and novelists, who have proven themselves as humanity's most trusted guides to the subjective mind and inner self. In the great introspective tradition of Wilhelm Wundt and René Descartes, David Gelernter promises to not only revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human but also to help answer many of our most fundamental questions about the origins of creativity, thought, and consciousness.

Science and Religion

Download Science and Religion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Point/Counterpoint (Chelsea Ha
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Science and Religion by : Daniel Clement Dennett

Download or read book Science and Religion written by Daniel Clement Dennett and published by Point/Counterpoint (Chelsea Ha. This book was released on 2011 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enlightening discussion that will motivate students to think critically, the book opens with Plantinga's assertion that Christianity is compatible with evolutionary theory because Christians believe that God created the living world, and it is entirely possible that God did so by using a process of evolution.

Cryptocurrency (WIRED guides)

Download Cryptocurrency (WIRED guides) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1473585651
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (735 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Cryptocurrency (WIRED guides) by : Gian Volpicelli

Download or read book Cryptocurrency (WIRED guides) written by Gian Volpicelli and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past decade has seen the relentless rise of cryptocurrency as an alternative form of digital currency. But what precisely is it and what potential does it have to change the world of money? In this brilliantly clear, one-stop guide WIRED Senior Editor Gian Vopicelli explains everything you need to know about cryptocurrency. He outlines its development and describes precisely how it operates. He demystifies the jargon it has spawned, from blockchain, Bitcoin and stablecoins to mining, smart contracts and forking. He looks at the political and economic ideologies that drive it. And he addresses the central question: will cryptocurrency have the transformative economic and social impact that its champions claim for it?