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In Kinds of Minds, Dennett asks the ultimate metaphysical questions: What is a mind and who else (besides the questioner) has one?
Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else's mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours?
Would they be capable of developing the uniquely human ability to theorize about the world they inhabit? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking?
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Dennett address these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, whose evolution was determined by Darwinian natural selection, Dennett shows how, step by step, animal life moved from a simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations.
He argues that a series of small but revolutionary steps moved us from there to the unique human capability to frame and execute specific long-range intentions. These changes included first the emergence of speech, then, because of situations in which the ability to keep secrets conferred an evolutionary advantage, a skill in conversing with ourselves, and finally, the creation of artifacts that permit us to expand our minds into the surrounding environment.
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Previews available in: English
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Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
2008, Basic Books
in English
0786723629 9780786723621
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Kinds of Minds (Science Masters)
July 5, 2007, Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Paperback
- Re-issue edition
0753800438 9780753800430
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Kinds of Minds ("Daily Telegraph" Talking Science)
December 4, 2000, Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
Audio Cassette
- Abridged Ed edition
0752839896 9780752839899
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Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Science Masters Series)
August 1997, Basic Books
in English
0465073514 9780465073511
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Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Science Masters S.)
1996, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Hardcover
0297815466 9780297815464
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Kinds of minds: toward an understanding of consciousness
1996, Basic Books
in English
- 1st ed.
0465073506 9780465073504
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Kinds of minds: toward an understanding of consciousness
1996, Basic Books
- 1st ed.
0465073506 9780465073504
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KINDS OF MINDS
1996, Basic Books, Inc., Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Paperback
0297818198 9780297818199
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-180) and index.
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- Created November 3, 2008
- 12 revisions
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