Conscious Mind (Record no. 47264)

MARC details
000 -LEADER
fixed length control field 02100 a2200169 4500
020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
International Standard Book Number 9780262527101
082 ## - DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION NUMBER
Classification number 153 TOR
100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME
Personal name Torey, Zoltan
245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT
Title Conscious Mind
260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT)
Name of publisher, distributor, etc The MIT Press
Place of publication, distribution, etc Cambridge, Massachusetts
Date of publication, distribution, etc 2014
300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Extent 191
520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC.
Summary, etc 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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.
650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
Topical term or geographic name as entry element Cognition.
650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
Topical term or geographic name as entry element Consciousness.
650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM
Topical term or geographic name as entry element Brain.
942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA)
Koha item type Book
Source of classification or shelving scheme Dewey Decimal Classification

No items available.