[PDF] The Origin Of Mind eBook

Author : David C. Geary
Publisher : Amer Psychological Assn
Page : 459 pages
File Size : 46,38 MB
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9781591471813

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"Geary also explores a number of issues that are of interest in modern society, including how general intelligence relates to academic achievement, occupational status, and income."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Charles Berg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 17,17 MB
Release : 2021-12-26
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1000518671

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First published in 1962, the original blurb reads: ‘This provocative book explores the whole range of human thought conduct and beliefs. Commencing with primitive man and his superstitions it goes on to study our present-day cultural institutions, customs, ritual and other behaviour upon which we pride ourselves. All of these are shown to have identical primitive mechanisms and to be subjectively determined without reference to scientific knowledge. These delusions are shown to be mostly undesirable and harmful and the author goes on to state that only objective thinking, scientifically based, can lead to any ultimate good. The later chapters contain an aetiological study of the mind. The author states "If we can consider the human mind in the light of its origin and development we may better appreciate its basic nature and its inevitable limitations". The subject matter is amply illustrated with clinical examples in Dr Berg’s usual lively style. This book is one which will affect all readers. None of us is immune from delusions, however much we may delude ourselves to the contrary, and the presentation of these truths will to some of us seem shocking in the extreme.’ Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Author : Julian Jaynes
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 27,31 MB
Release : 2000-08-15
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0547527543

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National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Author : Andrey Vyshedskiy
Publisher : Mobilereference
Page : 518 pages
File Size : 34,44 MB
Release : 2021-06-29
Category :
ISBN : 9781611988888

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The origin of the human mind remains one of the greatest mysteries of all times. The last 150 years since Charles Darwin proposed that species evolve under the influence of natural selection have been marked by great discoveries. However, the discussion of the evolution of the human intellect and specific forces that shaped the underlying brain evolution is as vigorous today as it was in Darwin's times. Using his background in neuroscience, the author offers an elegant, parsimonious theory of the evolution of the human mind and suggests experiments that could be done to test, refute, or validate the hypothesis.

Author : D. Chaplain Nickerson
Publisher : Wentworth Press
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 37,48 MB
Release : 2019-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780530056975

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author : A. Graham Cairns-Smith
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 32,55 MB
Release : 1996-03-21
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780521402200

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Evolving the Mind has two main themes: how ideas about the mind evolved in science; and how the mind itself evolved in nature. The mind came into physical science when it was realised, first, that it is the activity of a physical object, a brain, which makes a mind; and secondly, that our theories of nature are largely mental constructions, artificial extensions of an inner model of the world which we inherited from our distant ancestors. From both of these perspectives, consciousness is the great enigma. If consciousness evolved, however, it is in some sense a material thing whatever else may be said of it. Physics, chemistry, molecular biology, brain function and evolutionary biology - almost the whole of science - is involved, and there can be no expert in all these fields. So the style of the book is simple, almost conversational. The excitement is that we seem to be close to a scientific theory of consciousness.

Author : Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 35,80 MB
Release : 2009-04-17
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0262512394

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An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics—some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science.

Author : Ian Glynn
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 30,63 MB
Release : 2003-04-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 0198031327

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Drawing on a dazzlingly wide array of disciplines--physiology, neurology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy--Ian Glynn explains virtually every aspect of the workings of the brain, unlocking the mysteries of the mind. Here are the mechanics of nerve messages; the functioning of sensory receptors; the processes by which the brain sees, tastes, and smells; the seats of language, memory, and emotions. Glynn writes with exceptional clarity and offers telling examples: to help explain vision, for instance, he discusses optical illusions as well as cases of patients who suffer disordered seeing through healthy eyes (such as the loss of the ability to recognize familiar faces). The breadth of Glynn's erudition is astonishing, as he ranges from parallel processing in computers to the specialization of different regions of the brain (illustrated with fascinating instances of the bizarre effects of localized brain damage). He explains the different types of memory (episodic and semantic, as well as short-term and implicit memory), traces the path through the brain of information leading to emotional responses, and engages in a discussion of language that takes in Noam Chomsky and Hawaiian pidgin. Moreover, for every subject Glynn addresses, he offers a thorough-going scientific history. For example, before discussing the evolution of the brain, he provides an account of the theory of evolution itself, from the writing and success of The Origin of Species to recent work on the fossil record, DNA, and RNA. No other single volume has captured the full expanse of our knowledge of consciousness and the brain. A work of unequaled authority and eloquence, An Anatomy of Thought promises to be a new landmark of scientific writing.

Author : Charles J. Lumsden
Publisher :
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 24,49 MB
Release : 1984-09-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674714465

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Argues that a mutual change in genetics and culture brought about the development of human mental capacity