Mit press aug 2014 (2 Ergebnisse)
Sprache: Englisch
Verlag: MIT Press Aug 2014, 2014
- Softcover
Anbieter: AHA-BUCH GmbH, Einbeck, DeutschlandAHA-BUCH GmbH
Verkäufer/-in kontaktierenVerkäufer/-in mit 5 SternenZustand: Neu
EUR 21,49
EUR 60,90 VersandVersand von Deutschland nach USAAnzahl: 2 verfügbar
Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - What beliefs are, what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe…that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples. But so are theories about astrology, alien abduction, guardian angels, and reincarnation. All are products (with varying degrees of credibility) of fertile minds trying to find explanations for observed phenomena. In this book, Nils Nilsson examines beliefs: what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. We should evaluate our beliefs carefully, Nilsson points out, because they influence so many of our actions and decisions.Some of our beliefs are more strongly held than others, but all should be considered tentative and changeable. Nilsson shows that beliefs can be quantified by probability, and he describes networks of beliefs in which the probabilities of some beliefs affect the probabilities of others. He argues that we can evaluate our beliefs by adapting some of the practices of the scientific method and by consulting expert opinion. And he warns us about belief traps holding onto beliefs that wouldn't survive critical evaluation. The best way to escape belief traps, he writes, is to expose our beliefs to the reasoned criticism of others.
Sprache: Englisch
Verlag: MIT Press Aug 2014, 2014
- Softcover
Anbieter: AHA-BUCH GmbH, Einbeck, DeutschlandAHA-BUCH GmbH
Verkäufer/-in kontaktierenVerkäufer/-in mit 5 SternenZustand: Neu
EUR 21,78
EUR 61,11 VersandVersand von Deutschland nach USAAnzahl: 1 verfügbar
Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - 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.
