Neither Ghost nor Machine

The Emergence and Nature of Selves

AvJeremy Sherman

Häftad, Engelska, 2017

271 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Fler format och utgåvor

Inbunden

Tillf. slut

Beskrivning

If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current science encourages us to reject the ghost-in-the-machine explanation-that something called spirit, soul, mind, or will was somehow breathed into matter-and instead accept that selves are just matter, in aimless mechanistic motion like everything else. But what about life's many emergent qualities, the multifarious purposes that shape actual physical behavior not just in human lives, but in all of life? Even the simplest life forms have adaptive functions, traits that accomplish goals or ends. How can we explain the nature and origin of selves and aims without resorting to supernatural forces or explaining them away as nothing but cause-and-effect mechanisms? In Neither Ghost nor Machine, Jeremy Sherman explains the emergence of selves and aims in an aimless universe. He distills for a general audience the theory developed by renowned neuroscientist Terrence Deacon, which extends the breakthrough constraint-based insight that inspired evolutionary, information, and self-organization theory.Emergent dynamics theory provides a testable hypothesis for how mattering arose from matter, function from physics, and means-to-ends behavior from cause-and-effect dynamics. It offers a physics of purpose, demonstrating that there is a strictly physical explanation for the emergence and nature of selves and aims, one that shows our existence in an otherwise inanimate universe is not absurd. Neither Ghost nor Machine bridges the gap between the hard and soft sciences, suggesting fresh and exciting solutions to philosophical mysteries that have perplexed humanity for millennia, from free will to causality to morality.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2017-10-10
Mått:152 x 226 x 23 mm
Vikt:386 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:312
Förlag:Columbia University Press
Medarbetare:Terrence Deacon
ISBN:9780231173339

Utforska kategorier

Mer om författaren

Jeremy Sherman writes about biophilosophy, psychology, and politics. He teaches college courses across the social sciences and blogs for Psychology Today and Alternet. He has studied and collaborated with Terrence Deacon for twenty years. Terrence Deacon is professor of biological anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain (1997) and Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (2011).

Recensioner i media

In Neither Ghost nor Machine, Jeremy Sherman takes on a central mystery: How did the universe get from matter to mattering? Whence purpose? Whence selves? These are topics too easily ignored in our rush to find the molecular stuff of life and not the organizational "what is” of life. With this fine book, and that of Deacon, we are well launched.

Innehållsförteckning

Foreword, by Terrence DeaconI. Overview1. The Mystery of Purpose2. The Biggest Mystery We Ever Ignore3. Deacon’s Solution in BriefII. Framing the Mystery4. Two Sources of Change5. Selves6. Two Ghosts, Two Machines7. Interpretation8. Aims9. Evolution’s Limited Limiting RoleIII. Dead Ends, Live Clues10. The History11. Evolutionary Theory’s Elusive Self12. Information About Nothing for Anyone13. The Engineered Ghosts in Our Machines14. Small Is DubiousIV. Grounding a Solution15. Processes of Emergent Elimination16. Second Law Irregularity17. Emergent Regularization18. Emergent Regularization vs. Emergent Self-Regeneration19. Other Emergent Regularization Dynamics20. Coupled Regularization ProcessesV. Deacon’s Solution21. Autogens: Self-Generators22. Evolved Autogens23. Where Is the Self?24. The Consequences of Self-RegenerationVI. The Interpreting Self25. Codes, Signs, Interpreters26. Kinds of SignsVII. Implications27. A Constraint-Based Approach to Evolutionary Theory28. Implications for the Free Will Debate?29. Making Science Safe for ValueAcknowledgmentsAppendixNotesIndex