Results for 'Brain Evolution'

967 found
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  1. Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology.Alfred Gierer - 2004 - J. Biosci 29 (3):235-244.
    Biological evolution and technological innovation, while differing in many respects, also share common features. In particular, implementation of a new technology in the market is analogous to the spreading of a new genetic trait in a population. Technological innovation may occur either through the accumulation of quantitative changes, as in the development of the ocean clipper, or it may be initiated by a new combination of features or subsystems, as in the case of steamships. Other examples of the latter (...)
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  2. Information Based Hierarchical Brain Organization/Evolution from the Perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness.Florin Gaiseanu - 2020 - Archives in Neurology and Neuroscience 7 (5):1-9.
    Introduction: This article discusses the brain hierarchical organization/evolution as a consequence of the information-induced brain development, from the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness. Analysis: In the frame of the Informational Model of Consciousness, a detailed info-neural analysis ispresented, concerning the specific properties/functions of the informational system of the human body composed by the Center of Acquisition and Storing of Information, Center of Decision and Command, Info-Emotional Center, Maintenance Informational System, Genetic Transmission System, Info Genetic Generator (...)
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  3. Innovationstheorie und die Evolution menschlicher Fähigkeiten: Beispiel Empathie.Alfred Gierer - 1998 - Nova Acta Leopoldina 77 (304):85-98.
    A summarizing English version on “Theory of Innovation and the Evolution of General Human Capabilities, such as Cognition-based Empathy” is included in the download. Den biologisch modernen Menschentyp charakterisieren sehr allgemeine Fähigkeiten, wie begriffliche Sprache, strategisches Denken und kognitionsgestützte Empathie. Neurobiologisch kann Empathiefähigkeit als eine Verbindung von Repräsentationen von Mitmenschen mit dem je eigenen Gefühlszentren im Gehirn angesehen werden. In Grundzügen ist sie vor vielleicht 100 000 Jahren als Folge von Mutationen der Erbsubstanz DNA entstanden. Für solche genetische Innovationen (...)
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  4. Evolution of Consciousness.Danko D. Georgiev - 2024 - Life 14 (1):48.
    The natural evolution of consciousness in different animal species mandates that conscious experiences are causally potent in order to confer any advantage in the struggle for survival. Any endeavor to construct a physical theory of consciousness based on emergence within the framework of classical physics, however, leads to causally impotent conscious experiences in direct contradiction to evolutionary theory since epiphenomenal consciousness cannot evolve through natural selection. Here, we review recent theoretical advances in describing sentience and free will as fundamental (...)
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  5. The evolution-creation wars: why teaching more science just is not enough.Massimo Pigliucci - 2007 - McGill Journal of Education 42 (2):285-306.
    The creation-evolution “controversy” has been with us for more than a century. Here I argue that merely teaching more science will probably not improve the situation; we need to understand the controversy as part of a broader problem with public acceptance of pseudoscience, and respond by teaching how science works as a method. Critical thinking is difficult to teach, but educators can rely on increasing evidence from neurobiology about how the brain learns, or fails to.
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  6. Kosmologie, Evolution und die Raetsel der Großen Zahlen.Alfred Gierer - manuscript
    Die Beziehung der Entwicklung des Lebens im Weltall - von den einfachsten Formen bis zu Leben mit Geist und Bewusstsein – zu der Physik, wie wir sie aus der unbelebten Natur kennen, ist Thema dieses Essays. Ist die Entstehung des Lebens Zufall, ist es Folge einer physikalischen Logik, die noch zu entdecken ist, oder ist „Lebensfreundlichkeit“ ein eigenes Prinzip des Naturgeschehens, das zum Beispiel offene Naturkonstanten der physikalischen Gesetze festlegt, zu denen die geheimnisvollen Grossen Zahlen der Kosmologie gehören – „The (...)
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  7. The Brain's Mind. The Mind's Brain.Ronny Verlet - manuscript
    The biological brain creates a mind, and the mental mind creates a brain. Learn how the brain creates consciousness and how it generates momentaneous time moments. Discover how at each moment in Time, our body runs the whole program of Evolution. Neuroscience and Philosophy.
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  8. Evolution of Human Intelligence toward an Optimum.K. L. Senarath Dayathilake - 1997 - Psyarxiv.Com.
    Here, I discuss how natural biological evolution might have selected human origin and the psychology of the better mind-brain. However, all humans are closely related; why do we make crimes, war, hate, and jealousy their primary reasons and overcoming methodologies? How can they gain their best happiness? What kind of philosophy apply to annalize this big question and convince humankind to evolve their mind? How we could achieve our optimum potential happiness by developing hidden intelligence to make the (...)
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  9. Networks of Gene Regulation, Neural Development and the Evolution of General Capabilities, Such as Human Empathy.Alfred Gierer - 1998 - Zeitschrift Für Naturforschung C - A Journal of Bioscience 53:716-722.
    A network of gene regulation organized in a hierarchical and combinatorial manner is crucially involved in the development of the neural network, and has to be considered one of the main substrates of genetic change in its evolution. Though qualitative features may emerge by way of the accumulation of rather unspecific quantitative changes, it is reasonable to assume that at least in some cases specific combinations of regulatory parts of the genome initiated new directions of evolution, leading to (...)
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  10. Evolution of Sentience, Consciousness and Language Viewed From a Darwinian and Purposive Perspective.Nicholas Maxwell - 2001 - In The Human World in the Physical Universe: Consciousness, Free Will, and Evolution. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 162-201.
    In this article I give a Darwinian account of how sentience, consciousness and language may have evolved. It is argued that sentience and consciousness emerge as brains control purposive actions in new ways. A key feature of this account is that Darwinian theory is interpreted so as to do justice to the purposive character of living things. According to this interpretation, as evolution proceeds, purposive actions play an increasingly important role in the mechanisms of evolution until, with (...) by cultural means, Darwinian evolution takes on a Lamarckian character. According to this view, as evolution proceeds, the mechanisms of Darwinian evolution themselves evolve. (shrink)
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  11. The evolution and development of consciousness: the subject-object emergence hypothesis.John E. Stewart - 2022 - Biosystems 217.
    A strategy for investigating consciousness that has proven very productive has focused on comparing brain processes that are accompanied by consciousness with processes that are not. But comparatively little attention has been given to a related strategy that promises to be even more fertile. This strategy exploits the fact that as individuals develop, new classes of brain processes can transition from operating ‘in the dark’ to becoming conscious. It has been suggested that these transitions occur when a new (...)
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  12. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System.Florin Gaiseanu - 2019 - Archives in Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology 1 (5):1-7.
    Introduction: the objective of the investigation is to analyse the informational operating-mode of the brain and to extract conclusions on the structure of the informational system of the human body and consciousness. Analysis: the mechanisms and processes of the transmission of information in the body both by electrical and non-electrical ways are analysed in order to unify the informational concepts and to identify the specific essential requirements supporting the life. It is shown that the electrical transmission can be described (...)
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  13. The evolution of knowledge during the Cambrian explosion.Walter Veit - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:e174.
    Phillips et al. make a compelling case for a reversal in the current paradigm in “other minds” research by considering the representation of other people's knowledge more basic than the attribution of belief. Unfortunately, they only discuss primates. In this commentary, I argue that the representation of others' knowledge is an evolutionary ancient trait, first appearing during the Cambrian explosion.
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  14. The evolution of skilled imitative learning: a social attention hypothesis.Antonella Tramacere & Richard Moore - 2020 - In Ellen Fridland & Carlotta Pavese (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 394-408.
    Humans are uncontroversially better than other species at learning from their peers. A key example of this is imitation, the ability to reproduce both the means and ends of others’ behaviours. Imitation is critical to the acquisition of a number of uniquely human cultural and cognitive traits. However, while authors largely agree on the importance of imitation, they disagree about the origins of imitation in humans. Some argue that imitation is an adaptation, connected to the ‘Mirror Neuron System’ that evolved (...)
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  15. Emergence, evolution, and the geometry of logic: Causal leaps and the myth of historical development. [REVIEW]Stephen Palmquist - 2007 - Foundations of Science 12 (1):9-37.
    After sketching the historical development of “emergence” and noting several recent problems relating to “emergent properties”, this essay proposes that properties may be either “emergent” or “mergent” and either “intrinsic” or “extrinsic”. These two distinctions define four basic types of change: stagnation, permanence, flux, and evolution. To illustrate how emergence can operate in a purely logical system, the Geometry of Logic is introduced. This new method of analyzing conceptual systems involves the mapping of logical relations onto geometrical figures, following (...)
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  16. Where the standard approach in comparative neuroscience fails and where it works: General intelligence and brain asymmetries.Davide Serpico & Elisa Frasnelli - 2018 - Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews 13:95-98.
    Although brain size and the concept of intelligence have been extensively used in comparative neuroscience to study cognition and its evolution, such coarse-grained traits may not be informative enough about important aspects of neurocognitive systems. By taking into account the different evolutionary trajectories and the selection pressures on neurophysiology across species, Logan and colleagues suggest that the cognitive abilities of an organism should be investigated by considering the fine-grained and species-specific phenotypic traits that characterize it. In such a (...)
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  17. Mind and Brain States.Inês Hipólito - 2015 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 44 (2):102-111.
    With neurons emergence, life alters itself in a remarkable way. This embodied neurons become carriers of signals, and processing devices: it begins an inexorable progression of functional complexity, from increasingly drawn behaviors to the mind and eventually to consciousness [Damasio, 2010]. In which moment has awareness arisen in the history of life? The emergence of human consciousness is associated with evolutionary developments in brain, behavior and mind, which ultimately lead to the creation of culture, a radical novelty in natural (...)
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  18. Was human evolution driven by Pleistocene climate change?Lucia C. Neco & Peter J. Richerson - 2014 - Ciência and Ambiente 1 (48):107-117.
    Modern humans are probably a product of social and anatomical preadaptations on the part of our Miocene australopithecine ancestors combined with the increasingly high amplitude, high frequency climate variation of the Pleistocene. The genus Homo first appeared in the early Pleistocene as ice age climates began to grip the earth. We hypothesize that this co-occurrence is causal. The human ability to adapt by cultural means is, in theory, an adaptation to highly variable environments because cultural evolution can better track (...)
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  19. the cultural evolution of institutional religions.Michael Vlerick - forthcoming - Religion, Brain and Behavior.
    In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have (...)
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  20. Cultural evolution and prosociality: widening the hypothesis space.Bryce Huebner & Hagop Sarkissian - 2016 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1 (39):e15.
    Norenzayan and colleagues suggest that Big Gods can be replaced by Big Governments. We examine forms of social and self-monitoring and ritual practice that emerged in Classical China, heterarchical societies like those that emerged in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and the contemporary Zapatista movement of Chiapas, and we recommend widening the hypothesis space to include these alternative forms of social organization.
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  21. Physical complexity and cognitive evolution.Peter Jedlicka - 2007 - In Carlos Gershenson, Diederik Aerts & Bruce Edmonds (eds.), Worldviews, Science and Us: Philosophy and Complexity. World Scientific. pp. 221--231.
    Our intuition tells us that there is a general trend in the evolution of nature, a trend towards greater complexity. However, there are several definitions of complexity and hence it is difficult to argue for or against the validity of this intuition. Christoph Adami has recently introduced a novel measure called physical complexity that assigns low complexity to both ordered and random systems and high complexity to those in between. Physical complexity measures the amount of information that an organism (...)
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  22. On Tools Making Minds: an Archaeological Perspective on Human Cognitive Evolution.Karenleigh A. Overmann & Thomas Wynn - 2019 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 19 (1-2):39-58.
    Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganization. We also offer three hypotheses for investigating co-influence and change in (...)
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  23. ‘The Action of the Brain’. Machine Models and Adaptive Functions in Turing and Ashby.Hajo Greif - 2017 - In Vincent C. Müller (ed.), Philosophy and theory of artificial intelligence 2017. Berlin: Springer. pp. 24-35.
    Given the personal acquaintance between Alan M. Turing and W. Ross Ashby and the partial proximity of their research fields, a comparative view of Turing’s and Ashby’s work on modelling “the action of the brain” (letter from Turing to Ashby, 1946) will help to shed light on the seemingly strict symbolic/embodied dichotomy: While it is clear that Turing was committed to formal, computational and Ashby to material, analogue methods of modelling, there is no straightforward mapping of these approaches onto (...)
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  24. the Mirror BRAIN - MIND.Ronny Verlet - 10/04/2021 - Koksijde:
    The biological Brain createst the mental Mind. Today our collective Mind becomes so fascinated by its source, the Brain, that all sciences incorporate neuro models in their concepts to increase global brainpower with technology. The most significant discovery is probably technology. We learn how the Brain creates consciousness and how the Brain generates momentaneous Time. Discover how at each moment in Time, our body runs the whole program of Evolution. What we know about the (...) is phantasy from the Mind. (shrink)
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  25. Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and the Origin of Life Resulting from General Relativity, with Neo-Darwinist Reference to Human Evolution and Mathematical Reference to Cosmology.Rodney Bartlett - manuscript
    When this article was first planned, writing was going to be exclusively about two things - the origin of life and human evolution. But it turned out to be out of the question for the author to restrict himself to these biological and anthropological topics. A proper understanding of them required answering questions like “What is the nature of the universe – the home of life – and how did it originate?”, “How can time travel be removed from fantasy (...)
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  26. Misbehaving Machines: The Emulated Brains of Transhumanist Dreams.Corry Shores - 2011 - Journal of Evolution and Technology 22 (1):10-22.
    Enhancement technologies may someday grant us capacities far beyond what we now consider humanly possible. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive the deaths of our physical bodies by living as computer emulations.­­ In 2008, they issued a report, or “roadmap,” from a conference where experts in all relevant fields collaborated to determine the path to “whole brain emulation.” Advancing this technology could also aid philosophical research. Their “roadmap” defends certain philosophical assumptions required for this technology’s (...)
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  27. The future evolution of consciousness.John E. Stewart - 2007 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (8):58-92.
    What is the potential for improvements in the functioning of consciousness? The paper addresses this issue using global workspace theory. According to this model, the prime function of consciousness is to develop novel adaptive responses. Consciousness does this by putting together new combinations of knowledge, skills and other disparate resources that are recruited from throughout the brain. The paper's search for potential improvements in consciousness is aided by studies of a developmental transition that enhances functioning in whichever domain it (...)
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  28. "Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror".Stephen Asma - 2014 - Social Research: An International Quarterly (N.4).
    The article discusses the evolutionary development of horror and fear in animals and humans, including in regard to cognition and physiological aspects of the brain. An overview of the social aspects of emotions, including the role that emotions play in interpersonal relations and the role that empathy plays in humans' ethics, is provided. An overview of the psychological aspects of monsters, including humans' simultaneous repulsion and interest in horror films that depict monsters, is also provided.
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  29. Philosophy and Science, the Darwinian-Evolved Computational Brain, a Non-Recursive Super-Turing Machine & Our Inner-World-Producing Organ.Hermann G. W. Burchard - 2016 - Open Journal of Philosophy 6 (1):13-28.
    Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. So far, (...)
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  30. Consciousness, the High Probability of Afterlife, and the Evolution of Intelligence in the Universe/s (14th edition).K. L. Senarath Dayathilake - 2023 - Cambridge.Org.
    This article explores the enduring mysteries of consciousness and the afterlife, two enigmatic topics that have fascinated humanity for ages. Despite extensive scientific efforts, the existence of an afterlife remains unproven, and understanding consciousness remains a significant challenge. The research introduces new hypotheses through simple experiments with empirical evidence and theoretical foundations. It delves into the complexities of consciousness, its relationship with the brain, and the need for interdisciplinary approaches. Boldly contemplating the probability of a continuous consciousness after death, (...)
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  31. Teilhard and Other Modern Thinkers on Evolution, Mind, and Matter.Peter B. Todd - 2013 - Teilhard Studies (66):1-22.
    In his The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin develops concepts of consciousness, the noosphere, and psychosocial evolution. This paper explores Teilhard’s evolutionary concepts as resonant with thinking in psychology and physics. It explores contributions from archetypal depth psychology, quantum physics, and neuroscience to elucidate relationships between mind and matter. Teilhard’s work can be seen as advancing this psychological lineage or psychogenesis. That is, the evolutionary emergence of matter in increasing complexity from sub-atomic particles to the human (...) and reflective consciousness leads to a noosphere evolving towards an Omega point. Teilhard’s central ideas provide intimations of a numinous principle implicit in cosmology and the discovery that in and through humanity evolution not only becomes conscious of itself but also directed and purposive. (shrink)
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  32. The Relevance of Mathematics to Brain Functioning.Brian D. Josephson - manuscript
    The slides of a talk given at the Cavendish Laboratory in 2001, relating brain function to concepts such as hyperstructure theory (Baas), Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann), and representational redescription (A Karmiloff-Smith).
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  33. From Analog to Digital Computing: Is Homo sapiens’ Brain on Its Way to Become a Turing Machine?Antoine Danchin & André A. Fenton - 2022 - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10:796413.
    The abstract basis of modern computation is the formal description of a finite state machine, the Universal Turing Machine, based on manipulation of integers and logic symbols. In this contribution to the discourse on the computer-brain analogy, we discuss the extent to which analog computing, as performed by the mammalian brain, is like and unlike the digital computing of Universal Turing Machines. We begin with ordinary reality being a permanent dialog between continuous and discontinuous worlds. So it is (...)
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  34. Mirrors of the soul and mirrors of the brain? The expression of emotions as the subject of art and science.Machiel Keestra - 2014 - In Gary Schwartz (ed.), Emotions. Pain and pleasure in Dutch painting of the Golden Age. nai010 publishers. pp. 81-92.
    Is it not surprising that we look with so much pleasure and emotion at works of art that were made thousands of years ago? Works depicting people we do not know, people whose backgrounds are usually a mystery to us, who lived in a very different society and time and who, moreover, have been ‘frozen’ by the artist in a very deliberate pose. It was the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle who observed in his Poetics that people could apparently be moved (...)
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  35. Recentering neuroscience on behavior: The interface between brain and environment is a privileged level of control of neural activity.Igor Branchi - 2022 - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 138.
    Despite the huge and constant progress in the molecular and cellular neuroscience fields, our capability to understand brain alterations and treat mental illness is still limited. Therefore, a paradigm shift able to overcome such limitation is warranted. Behavior and the associated mental states are the interface between the central nervous system and the living environment. Since, in any system, the interface is a key regulator of system organization, behavior is proposed here as a unique and privileged level of control (...)
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  36. What Does the Mind Do that the Brain Does Not?Jean E. Burns - 2010 - In Richard L. Amoroso (ed.), Complementarity of Mind and Body: Realizing the Dream of Descartes, Einstein and Eccles. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
    Two forms of independent action by consciousness have been proposed by various researchers – free will and holistic processing. (Holistic processing contributes to the formation of behavior through the holistic use of brain programs and encoding.) The well-known experiment of Libet et al. (1983) implies that if free will exists, its action must consist of making a selection among alternatives presented by the brain. As discussed herein, this result implies that any physical changes mind can produce in the (...)
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  37. Evolving artificial minds and brains.Alex Vereschagin, Mike Collins & Pete Mandik - 2007 - In Drew Khlentzos & Andrea Schalley (eds.), Mental States Volume 1: Evolution, function, nature. John Benjamins.
    We explicate representational content by addressing how representations that ex- plain intelligent behavior might be acquired through processes of Darwinian evo- lution. We present the results of computer simulations of evolved neural network controllers and discuss the similarity of the simulations to real-world examples of neural network control of animal behavior. We argue that focusing on the simplest cases of evolved intelligent behavior, in both simulated and real organisms, reveals that evolved representations must carry information about the creature’s environ- ments (...)
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  38. From Experiential-based to Relational-based Forms of Social Organization: A Major Transition in the Evolution of Homo sapiens.Dwight Read - 2010 - In Read Dwight (ed.), Social Brain, Distributed Mind. pp. 199-229.
    The evolutionary trajectory from non-human to human forms of social organization involves change from experiential- to relational-based systems of social interaction. Social organization derived from biologically and experientially grounded social interaction reached a hiatus with the great apes due to an expansion of individualization of behaviour. The hiatus ended with the introduction of relational-based social interaction, culminating in social organization based on cultural kinship. This evolutionary trajectory links biological origins to cultural outcomes and makes evident the centrality of distributed forms (...)
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  39. Review of Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Brains[REVIEW]Neil Van Leeuwen - 2011 - Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 16 (5):473-478.
    The book I review, _Sleights of Mind_, aims to illuminate properties of perceptual systems by discussing human susceptibility to magical illusions. I describe how the authors use psychological principles to explain two tricks, spoon bending and the Miser's Dream. I also argue that the book is congenial to the following view of illusions: susceptibility to illusion is the result of evolutionary trade-offs; perceptual systems must make assumptions in order to function at all, but susceptibility to illusion is the byproduct of (...)
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  40. Toward a better understanding of prosocial behavior: The role of evolution and directed attention.Stephen Kaplan & Raymond De Young - 2002 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):263-264.
    Rachlin's thought-provoking analysis could be strengthened by greater openness to evolutionary interpretation and the use of the directed attention concept as a component of self-control. His contribution to the understanding of prosocial behavior would also benefit from abandoning the traditional (and excessively restrictive) definition of altruism.
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  41. Review of Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic Species[REVIEW]Gregory M. Nixon - 1998 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (5/6):746-748.
    Terrence Deacon has constructed a tome in which he unleashes his considerable learning in quest of several answers to the question, "What are we?" He is uniquely qualified to take an approach which details the origin and development of, first, language, then the brain, and, lastly, their "co-evolution".
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  42. Artificial Consciousness: Misconception(s) of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.Dresp-Langley Birgitta - 2023 - Queios.
    The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has produced prophets and prophecies announcing that the age of artificial consciousness is near. Not only does the mere idea that any machine could ever possess the full potential of human consciousness suggest that AI could replace the role of God in the future, it also puts into question the fundamental human right to freedom and dignity. This position paper takes the stand that, in the light of all we currently know about brain (...)
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  43. Methodological problems of neuroscience.Nicholas Maxwell - 1985 - In David Rose & Vernon G. Dobson (eds.), Models of the Visual Cortex. New York: Wiley.
    In this paper I argue that neuroscience has been harmed by the widespread adoption of seriously inadequate methodologies or philosophies of science - most notably inductivism and falsificationism. I argue that neuroscience, in seeking to understand the human brain and mind, needs to follow in the footsteps of evolution.
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  44. Ludwig Edinger: The vertebrate series and comparative neuroanatomy.Paul E. Patton - 2014 - Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 24 (1):26-57.
    At the end of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Edinger completed the first comparative survey of the microscopic anatomy of vertebrate brains. He is regarded as the founder of the field of comparative neuroanatomy. Modern commentators have misunderstood him to have espoused an anti-Darwinian linear view of brain evolution, harkening to the metaphysics of the scala naturae. This understanding arises, in part, from an increasingly contested view of nineteenth-century morphology in Germany. Edinger did espouse a progressionist, though not strictly (...)
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  45. Causal potency of consciousness in the physical world.Danko D. Georgiev - 2024 - International Journal of Modern Physics B 38 (19):2450256.
    The evolution of the human mind through natural selection mandates that our conscious experiences are causally potent in order to leave a tangible impact upon the surrounding physical world. Any attempt to construct a functional theory of the conscious mind within the framework of classical physics, however, inevitably leads to causally impotent conscious experiences in direct contradiction to evolution theory. Here, we derive several rigorous theorems that identify the origin of the latter impasse in the mathematical properties of (...)
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  46. The Emotional Mind: the affective roots of culture and cognition.Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel - 2019 - Harvard University Press.
    Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the (...)
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  47. Review of Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species. [REVIEW]Greg Nixon - 1998 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (5-6):746-748.
    Terrence Deacon has constructed a tome in which he unleashes his considerable learning in quest of several answers to the question, ‘What are we?’ He is uniquely qualified to take an approach which details the origin and development of, first, language, then the brain, and, lastly, their ‘co-evolution.’ Described on the jacket as ‘a world-renowned researcher in neuroscience and evolutionary anthropology,’ all of his background is called upon at various times to pull together the mass of data and (...)
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  48. How Biology Became Social and What It Means for Social Theory.Maurizio Meloni - 2014 - The Sociological Review 62:593-614.
    In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated (...)
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  49. Sleep and dreaming in the predictive processing framework.Alessio Bucci & Matteo Grasso - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of (...)
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  50. Science, Religion and Basic Biological Issues That Are Open to Interpretation.Alfred Gierer - 2009 - English Translation Of: Preprint 388, Mpi for History of Science.
    This is an English translation of my essay: Alfred Gierer Wissenschaft, Religion und die deutungsoffenen Grundfragen der Biologie. Mpi for the History of Science, preprint 388, 1-21, also in philpapers. Range and limits of science are given by the universal validity of physical laws, and by intrinsic limitations, especially in self-referential contexts. In particular, neurobiology should not be expected to provide a full understanding of consciousness and the mind. Science cannot provide, by itself, an unambiguous interpretation of the natural order (...)
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