The Human Mind
The Human Mind

Author: Lord Robert Winston

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2014-07-30

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 1448168686

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It is the most complex and mysterious object in the universe. Covered by a dull grey membrane, it resembles a gigantic, convoluted fungus. Its inscrutability has captivated scientists, philosophers and artists for centuries. It is, of course, the human brain. With the help of science we can now begin to understand the extraordinary complexity of the brain's circuits: we can see which nerve cells generate electricity as we fall in love, tell a lie or dream of a lottery win. And inside the 100 billion cells of this rubbery network is something remarkable: you. In this entertaining and accessible book, Robert Winston takes us deep into the workings of the human mind and shows how our emotions and personality are the result of genes and environment. He explains how memories are formed and lost, how the ever-changing brain is responsible for toddler tantrums and teenage angst, plus he reveals the truth behind extra-sensory perception, déjà vu and out-of-body experiences. He also tells us how to boost our intelligence, how to tap into creative powers we never knew we had, how to break old habits and keep our brain fit and active as we enter old age. The human mind is all we have to help us to understand it. Paradoxically, it is possible that science may never quite explain everything about this extraordinary mechanism that makes each of us unique.

Physics of the Human Mind
Physics of the Human Mind

Author: Ihor Lubashevsky

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-02-12

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 3319517066

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This book tackles the challenging question which mathematical formalisms and possibly new physical notions should be developed for quantitatively describing human cognition and behavior, in addition to the ones already developed in the physical and cognitive sciences. Indeed, physics is widely used in modeling social systems, where, in particular, new branches of science such as sociophysics and econophysics have arisen. However, many if not most characteristic features of humans like willingness, emotions, memory, future prediction, and moral norms, to name but a few, are not yet properly reflected in the paradigms of physical thought and theory. The choice of a relevant formalism for modeling mental phenomena requires the comprehension of the general philosophical questions related to the mind-body problem. Plausible answers to these questions are investigated and reviewed, notions and concepts to be used or to be taken into account are developed and some challenging questions are posed as open problems. This text addresses theoretical physicists and neuroscientists modeling any systems and processes where human factors play a crucial role, philosophers interested in applying philosophical concepts to the construction of mathematical models, and the mathematically oriented psychologists and sociologists, whose research is fundamentally related to modeling mental processes.

The Science of the Human Mind
The Science of the Human Mind

Author: Lyndon LaRouche

Publisher: Executive Intelligence Review

Published:

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13:

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Excerpts from this book: “The science of the mind was broadly defined by Plato—and the opposing view given by Aristotle—during the fourth century B.C. Leading aspects of this were freshly treated by St. Augustine. The science of mental development was famously elaborated in depth by Dante Alighieri in his Commedia. Rigor was added to this by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. These sources are only exemplary of the authoritative classical literature on the matter. The errors of underlying assumptions perpetrated by the professional psychologists of the recent hundred years had all been conclusively exposed and refuted centuries earlier. “Apart from intensive criticism of psychoanalysis and sociology from the standpoint of such classics, what the author has added to the work of his ancient prede­cessors flows chiefly from his successes in economic science. . . . “The purpose is to aid the reader to locate within himself or herself those kinds of developable potentialities, so that the author’s inevitable death will not render the mastery of this method once again a ‘lost art.’ “Our immediate practical concern, in committing ourselves to developing the Good within us, is to contribute to making society Good. The individual who contributes to making society Good is worth a thousand times the individual who wanders through life scatter­ing only individual good deeds. For, a bad society will crush the good contributed by its individual members, and will foster the pleasures of Sodom and Gomorrah. Who makes society Good thus preserves the goods contributed by thousands and millions of individuals.”

The Book of Minds
The Book of Minds

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0226822044

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Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind
Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind

Author: Mark Schaller

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 1136950494

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An enormous amount of scientific research compels two fundamental conclusions about the human mind: The mind is the product of evolution; and the mind is shaped by culture. These two perspectives on the human mind are not incompatible, but, until recently, their compatibility has resisted rigorous scholarly inquiry. Evolutionary psychology documents many ways in which genetic adaptations govern the operations of the human mind. But evolutionary inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. By contrast, cultural psychology documents many ways in which thought and behavior are shaped by different cultural experiences. But cultural inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. Even after decades of intensive research, these two perspectives on human psychology have remained largely divorced from each other. But that is now changing - and that is what this book is about. Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind is the first scholarly book to integrate evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. The contributors include world-renowned evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive psychologists. These chapters reveal many novel insights linking human evolution to both human cognition and human culture – including the evolutionary origins of cross-cultural differences. The result is a stimulating introduction to an emerging integrative perspective on human nature.

Understanding the Human Mind
Understanding the Human Mind

Author: John Terrell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1000093565

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Drawing on current research in anthropology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the humanities, Understanding the Human Mind explores how and why we, as humans, find it so easy to believe we are right—even when we are outright wrong. Humans live out their own lives effectively trapped in their own mind and, despite being exceptional survivors and a highly social species, our inner mental world is often misaligned with reality. In order to understand why, John Edward Terrell and Gabriel Stowe Terrell suggest current dual-process models of the mind overlook our mind’s most decisive and unpredictable mode: creativity. Using a three-dimensional model of the mind, the authors examine the human struggle to stay in touch with reality—how we succeed, how we fail, and how winning this struggle is key to our survival in an age of mounting social problems of our own making. Using news stories of logic-defying behavior, analogies to famous fictitious characters, and analysis of evolutionary and cognitive psychology theory, this fascinating account of how the mind works is a must-read for all interested in anthropology and cognitive psychology.

The Embodied Mind, revised edition
The Embodied Mind, revised edition

Author: Francisco J. Varela

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-01-13

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 026252936X

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A new edition of a classic work that originated the “embodied cognition” movement and was one of the first to link science and Buddhist practices. This classic book, first published in 1991, was one of the first to propose the “embodied cognition” approach in cognitive science. It pioneered the connections between phenomenology and science and between Buddhist practices and science—claims that have since become highly influential. Through this cross-fertilization of disparate fields of study, The Embodied Mind introduced a new form of cognitive science called “enaction,” in which both the environment and first person experience are aspects of embodiment. However, enactive embodiment is not the grasping of an independent, outside world by a brain, a mind, or a self; rather it is the bringing forth of an interdependent world in and through embodied action. Although enacted cognition lacks an absolute foundation, the book shows how that does not lead to either experiential or philosophical nihilism. Above all, the book's arguments were powered by the conviction that the sciences of mind must encompass lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience. This revised edition includes substantive introductions by Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch that clarify central arguments of the work and discuss and evaluate subsequent research that has expanded on the themes of the book, including the renewed theoretical and practical interest in Buddhism and mindfulness. A preface by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program, contextualizes the book and describes its influence on his life and work.

Kluge
Kluge

Author: Gary Marcus

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2009-04

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780547238241

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A New York University psychologist argues that the mind is a "kluge"-a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption-as he ponders the accidents of evolution that caused this structure and what we can do about it.

Human and Machine Consciousness
Human and Machine Consciousness

Author: David Gamez

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2018-03-07

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1783743018

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Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.

How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe?
How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe?

Author: John R. Anderson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-08-28

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0199741263

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"The question for me is how can the human mind occur in the physical universe. We now know that the world is governed by physics. We now understand the way biology nestles comfortably within that. The issue is how will the mind do that as well."--Allen Newell, December 4, 1991, Carnegie Mellon University The argument John Anderson gives in this book was inspired by the passage above, from the last lecture by one of the pioneers of cognitive science. Newell describes what, for him, is the pivotal question of scientific inquiry, and Anderson gives an answer that is emerging from the study of brain and behavior. Humans share the same basic cognitive architecture with all primates, but they have evolved abilities to exercise abstract control over cognition and process more complex relational patterns. The human cognitive architecture consists of a set of largely independent modules associated with different brain regions. In this book, Anderson discusses in detail how these various modules can combine to produce behaviors as varied as driving a car and solving an algebraic equation, but focuses principally on two of the modules: the declarative and procedural. The declarative module involves a memory system that, moment by moment, attempts to give each person the most appropriate possible window into his or her past. The procedural module involves a central system that strives to develop a set of productions that will enable the most adaptive response from any state of the modules. Newell argued that the answer to his question must take the form of a cognitive architecture, and Anderson organizes his answer around the ACT-R architecture, but broadens it by bringing in research from all areas of cognitive science, including how recent work in brain imaging maps onto the cognitive architecture.