Author: Jean-Pierre Changeux
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691026664
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
Over the past thirty-five years, there has been an explosive increase in scientists' ability to explain the structure and functioning of the human brain. While psychology has advanced our understanding of human behavior, various other sciences, such as anatomy, physiology, and biology, have determined the critical importance of synapses and, through the use of advanced technology, made it possible actually to see brain cells at work within the skull's walls. Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our understanding in the twentieth century.
Author: Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317077237
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture, shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death, or even seek to outlive it, as it were. Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines, Postmortal Society offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for trying to ‘cheat’ death or prolong life, the status of the dead in the modern Western world, the effects of beliefs that address the terror of death in other areas of life, the ‘immortalisation’ of celebrities, the veneration of the dead in virtual worlds, symbolic immortality through work, the implications of understanding ‘immortality’ in chemical-neuronal terms, and the apparent paradox of our greater reverence for the dead in increasingly secular, capitalist societies. A fascinating collection of studies that explore humanity’s attempts to deal with its own mortality in the modern age, this book will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers and scholars of cultural studies with interests in death and dying.
Author: Thom Pain, Jr.
Publisher: Thom Pain Jr.
ISBN: 1413478859
Category : Intellect
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
This book makes the case for realistic faith in the power of intelligence as opposed to blind faith in the pronouncements of those who claim infallibility or divine guidance. The author, Thom Pain, identifies the discoveries of systems and information theory early in the twentieth century as the key to a naturalistic explanation of purposeful life and intelligence and to the last stage in the emancipation of science from theology. He begins his story with the discoveries that revealed the memory mechanism as a built-in "tropisms for truth" that gave even primitive creatures a logical tool for improving their decisions and solving their problems. It is a story that reveals a surprisingly early version of intelligence and an amazing versatility in the types and range of intelligence. When one species developed symbolic languages, it becomes the story of the cultural developments of the human species. As civilization evolved, Thom identifies the rulers and the ruling classes as both the leaders and the obstacles to intellectual progress. In their new role, the rulers either claimed to be gods or the representative of the gods and often led the exploitation that had become the privilege of conquers and of the ruling classes. Indoctrinated faith and loyalty became authoritarian tools of aggression and oppression. In this cruel environment, religion also became a source of moral strength and initiative for the oppressed and religious rebels were often the leaders in the struggles for political and intellectual freedom. These struggles were not about the belief in God but about the abuses of authority by those who claimed to be the representatives of God. Thom follows this story as it sharpened the distinction between reason and theology and led to the modern concepts of democracy and personal and religious freedom.
Author: Alondra Oubre
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134384742
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Instinct and Revelation revolves around the hypothesis that ritual behavior and imaginative awareness in early hominids may have helped to spawn the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness. Using an integral perspective comparable with systems theory, the book carefully interweaves fact and theory from physical and cultural anthropology, psychobiology and the brain sciences, psychology, and to a lesser degree, eastern philosophy. This book breaks from tradition by discussing from a primarily anthropological perspective the origin of human consciousness within a philosophical framework that embraces precepts from human evolution, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, biocultural anthropology, and cultural symbolic anthropology.
Author: Jean-Pierre Changeux
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674029410
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is? Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights. On this view, belief in objective knowledge is not a mere ideological slogan or a naive confusion; it is a characteristic feature of human cognition throughout evolution, and the scientific method its most sophisticated embodiment. Seeking to reconcile science and humanism, Changeux holds that the capacity to recognize truths that are independent of subjective personal experience constitutes the foundation of a human civil society.
Author: Gerald M. Edelman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
One of the nation's leading neuroscientists presents a radically new view of the function of the brain and the nervous system. Its central idea is that the nervous system in each individual operates as a selective system resembling natural selection in evolution, but operating by different mechanisms. This far-ranging theory of brain functions is bound to stimulate renewed discussion of such philosophical issues as the mind-body problem, the origins of knowledge and the perceptual bases of language. Notes and Index.
Author: Craig Eisendrath
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1456858114
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Beyond Permanence: The Great Ideas of the West covers the full range of Western thought. Th e fi rst part reviews Western thought from its earliest beginnings in the civilization of Sumer through the philosophy of Hegel. After Sumer, it covers Egypt, Judaism, Classical philosophy focusing on Plato and Aristotle, Christianity and the Gnostics, the medieval church and the mystics, and the fi nal attempt by philosophers like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant to “pin down” the world in a comprehensive philosophy. Th e aim was permanence of explanation describing a world of permanence whose actions refl ected the essential nature of its constituents. Th e second part moves into the modern age with the new physics and biology and the philosophies of William James and Alfred North Whitehead. It shows, for example, how the mind is not the permanent soul, but is rather the manifestation of the body, particularly the brain. Th rough the work of John Dewey and others, it outlines a new activism whereby people don’t accept society as a permanent order, but think of it as constantly subject to improvement. We are not “in” society, but society is in us, and is open to our needs and desires.
Author: Daniel S. Levine
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134771541
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 523
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Book Description
The second published collection based on a conference sponsored by the Metroplex Institute for Neural Dynamics -- the first is Motivation, Emotion, and Goal Direction in Neural Networks (LEA, 1992) -- this book addresses the controversy between symbolicist artificial intelligence and neural network theory. A particular issue is how well neural networks -- well established for statistical pattern matching -- can perform the higher cognitive functions that are more often associated with symbolic approaches. This controversy has a long history, but recently erupted with arguments against the abilities of renewed neural network developments. More broadly than other attempts, the diverse contributions presented here not only address the theory and implementation of artificial neural networks for higher cognitive functions, but also critique the history of assumed epistemologies -- both neural networks and AI -- and include several neurobiological studies of human cognition as a real system to guide the further development of artificial ones. Organized into four major sections, this volume: * outlines the history of the AI/neural network controversy, the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, and shows the various capabilities such as generalization and discreetness as being along a broad but common continuum; * introduces several explicit, theoretical structures demonstrating the functional equivalences of neurocomputing with the staple objects of computer science and AI, such as sets and graphs; * shows variants on these types of networks that are applied in a variety of spheres, including reasoning from a geographic database, legal decision making, story comprehension, and performing arithmetic operations; * discusses knowledge representation process in living organisms, including evidence from experimental psychology, behavioral neurobiology, and electroencephalographic responses to sensory stimuli.
Author: Roberto Marchesini
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030742032
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
The primary purpose of this book is to contribute to an overcoming of the traditional separation between humanties and life sciences which, according to the authors, is required today both by the developments of these disciplines and by the social problems they have to face. The volume discusses the theoretical, epistemological and ethical repercussions of the main acquisitions obtained in the last decades from the behavioral sciences. Both the authors are inspired by the concept of a “critical ethology”, oriented to archive the nature/culture and human/animal dichotomies. The book proposes a theoretical and methodological restructuring of the comparative study of the animal behavior, learning, and cultures, focused on the fact that thought, culture and language are not exclusively human prerogatives. The proposed analysis includes a critique of speciesism and determinism in the ethical field, and converge with the Numanities, to which the series is dedicated, on a key point: it is necessary to arrive at an education system able to offer scientific, social and ethical skills that are trasversal and transcendent to the traditional humanities/life sciences bipartition. Skills that are indispensable for facing the complex challenges of the contemporary society and promoting a critical reflection of humanity on itself.
Author: Jacques Caubet
Publisher: Xulon Press
ISBN: 159781444X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Jacques Caubet, scientist and entrepreneur of worldwide repute, reconciles here Science and Faith with an amazing history of God's fingerprints disclosed by science through the ages.
