How did we come to have minds?
For centuries, this question has intrigued psychologists, physicists, poets, and philosophers, who have wondered how the human mind developed its unrivaled ability to create, imagine, and explain. Disciples of Darwin have long aspired to explain how consciousness, language, and culture could have appeared through natural selection, blazing promising trails that tend, however, to end in confusion and controversy. Even though our understanding of the inner workings of proteins, neurons, and DNA is deeper than ever before, the matter of how our minds came to be has largely remained a mystery.
That is now changing, says Daniel C. Dennett. InFrom Bacteria to Bach and Back, his most comprehensive exploration of evolutionary thinking yet, he builds on ideas from computer science and biology to show how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. Part philosophical whodunit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett’s legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought.
In his inimitable style—laced with wit and arresting thought experiments—Dennett explains that a crucial shift occurred when humans developed the ability to share memes, or ways of doing things not based in genetic instinct. Language, itself composed of memes, turbocharged this interplay. Competition among memes—a form of natural selection—produced thinking tools so well-designed that they gave us the power to design our own memes. The result, a mind that not only perceives and controls but can create and comprehend, was thus largely shaped by the process of cultural evolution.
An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers, scientists, and thinkers,From Bacteria to Bach and Backwill delight and entertain anyone eager to make sense of how the mind works and how it came about.
Author(s): Daniel C. Dennett
Edition: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton Company
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 476
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
TURNING OUR WORLD UPSIDE DOWN......Page 15
Welcome to the jungle......Page 16
A bird’s-eye view of the journey......Page 19
The Cartesian wound......Page 24
Cartesian gravity......Page 27
Why Bach?......Page 36
How investigating the prebiotic world is like playing chess......Page 38
The death or rebirth of teleology?......Page 45
Different senses of “why”......Page 49
The evolution of “why”: from how come to what for......Page 51
Go forth and multiply......Page 53
How Darwin and Turing broke a spell......Page 64
Ontology and the manifest image......Page 70
Automating the elevator......Page 72
The intelligent designers of Oak Ridge and GOFAI......Page 79
Animals designed to deal with affordances......Page 85
Higher animals as intentional systems: the emergence of comprehension......Page 92
Comprehension comes in degrees......Page 100
FROM EVOLUTION TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN......Page 108
Welcome to the Information Age......Page 109
How can we characterize semantic information?......Page 115
Trade secrets, patents, copyright, and Bird’s influence on bebop......Page 127
A new tool for thinking about evolution......Page 136
Cultural evolution: inverting a Darwinian Space......Page 146
Top-down computers and bottom-up brains......Page 152
Competition and coalition in the brain......Page 155
Neurons, mules, and termites......Page 160
How do brains pick up affordances?......Page 165
Feral neurons?......Page 169
The evolution of words......Page 174
Looking more closely at words......Page 180
How do words reproduce?......Page 186
Words and other memes......Page 199
What’s good about memes?......Page 202
Memes don’t exist!......Page 212
Memes are described as “discrete” and “faithfully transmitted,” but much in cultural change is neither......Page 215
Memes, unlike genes, don’t have competing alleles at a locus......Page 222
Memes add nothing to what we already know about culture......Page 226
The would-be science of memetics is not predictive......Page 228
Memes can’t explain cultural features, while traditional social sciences can......Page 229
Cultural evolution is Lamarckian......Page 230
The chicken-egg problem......Page 235
Winding paths to human language......Page 249
Darwinian beginnings......Page 264
The free-floating rationales of human communication......Page 269
Using our tools to think......Page 275
The age of intelligent design......Page 280
Pinker, Wilde, Edison, and Frankenstein......Page 293
Bach as a landmark of intelligent design......Page 300
The evolution of the selective environment for human culture......Page 305
TURNING OUR MINDS INSIDE OUT......Page 309
Keeping an open mind about minds......Page 310
How do human brains achieve “global” comprehension using “local” competences?......Page 314
How did our manifest image become manifest to us?......Page 317
Why do we experience things the way we do?......Page 320
Hume’s strange inversion of reasoning......Page 326
A red stripe as an intentional object......Page 329
What is Cartesian gravity and why does it persist?......Page 334
What are the limits of our comprehension?......Page 341
“Look Ma, no hands!”......Page 347
The structure of an intelligent agent......Page 356
What will happen to us ?......Page 366
Home at last......Page 374
Appendix: The Background......Page 389
References......Page 397
Index......Page 412
