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Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261219
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An interdisciplinary examination of the evolutionary breakthroughs that rendered the brain accessible to itself. In The Crucible of Consciousness, Zoltan Torey offers a theory of the mind and its central role in evolution. He traces the evolutionary breakthrough that rendered the brain accessible to itself and shows how the mind-boosted brain works. He identifies what it is that separates the human's self-reflective consciousness from mere animal awareness, and he maps its neural and linguistic underpinnings. And he argues, controversially, that the neural technicalities of reflective awareness can be neither algorithmic nor spiritual—neither a computer nor a ghost in the machine. The human mind is unique; it is not only the epicenter of our knowledge but also the outer limit of our intellectual reach. Not to solve the riddle of the self-aware mind, writes Torey, goes against the evolutionary thrust that created it. Torey proposes a model that brings into a single focus all the elements that make up the puzzle: how the brain works, its functional components and their interactions; how language evolved and how syntax evolved out of the semantic substrate by way of neural transactions; and why the mind-endowed brain deceives itself with entelechy-type impressions. Torey first traces the language-linked emergence of the mind, the subsystem of the brain that enables it to be aware of itself. He then explores this system: how consciousness works, why it is not transparent to introspection, and what sense it makes in the context of evolution. The “consciousness revolution” and the integrative focus of neuroscience have made it possible to make concrete formerly mysterious ideas about the human mind. Torey's model of the mind is the logical outcome of this, highlighting a coherent and meaningful role for a reflectively aware humanity.
Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262261219
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
An interdisciplinary examination of the evolutionary breakthroughs that rendered the brain accessible to itself. In The Crucible of Consciousness, Zoltan Torey offers a theory of the mind and its central role in evolution. He traces the evolutionary breakthrough that rendered the brain accessible to itself and shows how the mind-boosted brain works. He identifies what it is that separates the human's self-reflective consciousness from mere animal awareness, and he maps its neural and linguistic underpinnings. And he argues, controversially, that the neural technicalities of reflective awareness can be neither algorithmic nor spiritual—neither a computer nor a ghost in the machine. The human mind is unique; it is not only the epicenter of our knowledge but also the outer limit of our intellectual reach. Not to solve the riddle of the self-aware mind, writes Torey, goes against the evolutionary thrust that created it. Torey proposes a model that brings into a single focus all the elements that make up the puzzle: how the brain works, its functional components and their interactions; how language evolved and how syntax evolved out of the semantic substrate by way of neural transactions; and why the mind-endowed brain deceives itself with entelechy-type impressions. Torey first traces the language-linked emergence of the mind, the subsystem of the brain that enables it to be aware of itself. He then explores this system: how consciousness works, why it is not transparent to introspection, and what sense it makes in the context of evolution. The “consciousness revolution” and the integrative focus of neuroscience have made it possible to make concrete formerly mysterious ideas about the human mind. Torey's model of the mind is the logical outcome of this, highlighting a coherent and meaningful role for a reflectively aware humanity.
Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674041325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.
Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
Author: Zoltan Torey
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262527103
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
An account of the emergence of the mind: how the brain acquired self-awareness, functional autonomy, the ability to think, and the power of speech. How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and linguistics, Torey reconstructs the sequence of events by which Homo erectus became Homo sapiens. He describes the augmented functioning that underpins the emergent mind—a new (“off-line”) internal response system with which the brain accesses itself and then forms a selection mechanism for mentally generated behavior options. This functional breakthrough, Torey argues, explains how the animal brain's “awareness” became self-accessible and reflective—that is, how the human brain acquired a conscious mind. Consciousness, unlike animal awareness, is not a unitary phenomenon but a composite process. Torey's account shows how protolanguage evolved into language, how a brain subsystem for the emergent mind was built, and why these developments are opaque to introspection. We experience the brain's functional autonomy, he argues, as free will. Torey proposes that once life began, consciousness had to emerge—because consciousness is the informational source of the brain's behavioral response. Consciousness, he argues, is not a newly acquired “quality,” “cosmic principle,” “circuitry arrangement,” or “epiphenomenon,” as others have argued, but an indispensable working component of the living system's manner of functioning.
Author: Monika Wikman
Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc.
ISBN: 0892545690
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Author, psychologist, and astrologer Monika Wikman has worked for decades with clients and their dream symbols and witnessed the presence of the divine hand at work in the psyche. In The Pregnant Darkness, Wikman shows readers that the best way to cope with their darkest hours is by fostering a connection to the deeper current of life, those mysteries that give life form and meaning. Wikman's analysis of dream material leads readers into a practical explanation of alchemical symbolism. Far from being a quaint, ancient practice, The Pregnant Darkness shows that alchemy is at work in contemporary, everyday life. Alchemical symbolism, properly understood, can be applied to unraveling the meaning of visions in meditation, active imagination, and dream work. Wikman shows how readers can participate in the divine energies to help miraculous changes occur in their lives. Wikman writes: "In Greek mythology, Pegasus, upon taking to the air, pushed hard with a back hoof and penetrated the earth. A spring rose up where his hoof dashed the earth, and in this hole . . . the muses reside. One of the roles of the "religious function" of which Jung speaks is to bring us toward that inner spring of the muses where something beyond ego resides, instructs, and inspires. Like a hole created from Pegasus' leaping foot, contact with this inner spring often entails a crack in our field of ordinary consciousness. In the inner world, the spring of living symbols and accompanying presences is the source of dreams and visions, as well as the fountain of inspiration at the heart of poetry, art, ritual, mythology, and even religion."
Author: Robert Allen Bartlett
Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc.
ISBN: 0892545550
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 405
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Book Description
Alchemy is the ancient sacred science concerned with the mysteries of life and consciousness as reflected through all Nature. It is a harmonious blending of physical and subtle forces which lifts the subject, whether it be man or metal, to a more evolved state of being. The Way of the Crucible is a ground-breaking modern manual on the art of Alchemy that draws on both modern scientific technology and ancient methods. A laboratory scientist and chemist, Bartlett provides an overview of how practical alchemy works along with treatises on Astrology, Qabalah, Herbalism, and minerals, as they relate to Alchemy. He also explains what the ancients really meant when they used the term “Philosopher’s Stone” and describes practical methods toward its achievement. The Way of the Crucible provides directions for a more advanced understanding of the mineral work — what some consider the true domain of Alchemy.
Author: Simon Conway Morris
Publisher: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris provides a guided tour of the world's richest treasure trove of fossils--a fantastically rich deposit of bizarre and bewildering Cambrain fossils, located in Western Canada. 4 plates. 90 linecuts.
Author: Arthur Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Darnell Wright
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1950906698
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Have you ever heard the expression “Let your conscience be your guide”? Donnell White is a man determined to ease the guilt of his conscience by volunteering as a mentor at a detention center full of high-risk teens. The message he conveys to them is that the stumbling blocks in their lives can be used as stepping stones to turn things around. Donnell thought he’d seen and heard it all, but one teen named Brandon Bright showed him otherwise. Turns out, Brandon is a roller-coaster ride that Donnell forgot to fasten his seat belt on. In the process of trying to help Brandon turn his life around, Donnell’s life is changed in ways he couldn’t have imagined. In a classic case of the teacher becoming the student, this book brings to life the age-old saying “You’re never too old to learn.”
Author: doug cocks
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461462657
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
Global Overshoot is a multidisciplinary analysis (including history and pre-history) from an ecological and evolutionary perspective of the contemporary world system. This book compares and critiques attitudes held by people with different world views to the hypothetical prospect of large widespread falls in quality of life. It also draws insights from these two analyses to develop and suggest a philosophy of Ecohumanism to people of good will who want to think constructively about the world’s converging problems, i.e. think altruistically and ‘think like an evolving ecosystem.’
