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| Document Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Zoltan Torey |
| ISBN: | 9780262512848 026251284X |
| OCLC Number: | 260231128 |
| Notes: | "A Bradford book"--P. [4] of cover. Originally published: Melbourne ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1999. With new foreword. |
| Description: | xvi, 247 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. |
| Contents: | Foreword / by Daniel C Dennett -- Preface -- Perspective. The problem ; The path to the solution ; Some technical aspects -- The emergence of the human brain. The upgrading of the prehuman brain ; Modifications that underlie language ; The internal representation of the outside world -- Adaptive changes for speech and thought. Dual excitation and the oscillation of attention ; The building blocks of language -- The evolution of language. The breakthrough to protolanguage ; Secondary language evolution ; Using the language instrument ; Language and the limits of abstraction -- More about language. The perceptual basis of language ; The acquisition of language by the child ; Ape talk : a tip without an iceberg -- Self-accessibility. Problems of self-detection ; Elements of self-detection -- Reflection: the key to human awareness. Double-stranded reentrance ; The mechanism of reflective awareness ; Self-awareness -- The mind-system. The new identity : brain to mind ; The alchemy of self-deception ; Problems with self-conceptualization ; The "freedom" of the system : fact and fiction about the mind -- The mind versus the computer. Formalism and the logic of misconstruction ; Model formation and the role of semantics ; Society and the shaping of the mind -- Evolution : the model of the loaded dice. The watershed of insights ; Prejudice and counterprejudice -- Between the quantum and the cosmos. A range of perspectives ; Light at the end of the tunnel. |
| Responsibility: | Zoltan Torey ; with a foreword by Daniel C. Dennett. |
Reviews
Publisher Synopsis
"The world view of the blind and that of the sighted is likely different, shaped by the distinct perceptual experience and the brain plasticity involved in adaptation to the loss of sight. Zoltan Torey is blind. I cannot but believe that this fact has endowed him with the needed vision to address the complex relation between brain and mind. Zoltan Torey writes with the needed eloquence, freshness, and originality that assures readers will be moved to think, and will understand not only what is being said, but also gain new insights about themselves and others."-Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, and Director, Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center "Torey's way of putting things sheds new light on just what is going on in the 'computational' brain, since he has to find alternative metaphors to stand in for the now somewhat overworked comparison with computers. Just as poets often find that the constraints of rhyme and meter force them to discover strikingly apt expressions of their thoughts, it turns out that couching a computational theory of the mind in resolutely noncomputational terms pays dividends. There is much to repay readers in this book: to the uninitiated, it is a graceful and wise introduction to many of the central problems and arguments; to the veterans, it is a quite bountiful source of arrestingly different slants on familiar topics."--Daniel C. Dennett, Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University and author of Sweet Dreams -- Daniel C. Dennet Read more...
