Neither Ghost Nor Machine: The Emergence And Nature Of Selves
by Jeremy Sherman /
2017 / English / EPUB
20 MB Download
If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do
living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current
science encourages us to reject the ghost-in-the-machine
explanation―that something called spirit, soul, mind, or will was
somehow breathed into matter―and instead accept that selves are
just matter, in aimless mechanistic motion like everything else.
But what about life’s many emergent qualities, the multifarious
purposes that shape actual physical behavior not just in human
lives, but in all of life? Even the simplest life forms have
adaptive functions, traits that accomplish goals or ends. How can
we explain the nature and origin of selves and aims without
resorting to supernatural forces or explaining them away as nothing
but cause-and-effect mechanisms?
If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do
living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current
science encourages us to reject the ghost-in-the-machine
explanation―that something called spirit, soul, mind, or will was
somehow breathed into matter―and instead accept that selves are
just matter, in aimless mechanistic motion like everything else.
But what about life’s many emergent qualities, the multifarious
purposes that shape actual physical behavior not just in human
lives, but in all of life? Even the simplest life forms have
adaptive functions, traits that accomplish goals or ends. How can
we explain the nature and origin of selves and aims without
resorting to supernatural forces or explaining them away as nothing
but cause-and-effect mechanisms?
In
InNeither Ghost nor Machine
Neither Ghost nor Machine, Jeremy Sherman explains the
emergence of selves and aims in an aimless universe. He distills
for a general audience the theory developed by renowned
neuroscientist Terrence Deacon, which extends the breakthrough
constraint-based insight that inspired evolutionary, information,
and self-organization theory. Emergent dynamics theory provides a
testable hypothesis for how mattering arose from matter, function
from physics, and means-to-ends behavior from cause-and-effect
dynamics. It offers a physics of purpose, demonstrating that there
is a strictly physical explanation for the emergence and nature of
selves and aims, one that shows our existence in an otherwise
inanimate universe is not absurd.
, Jeremy Sherman explains the
emergence of selves and aims in an aimless universe. He distills
for a general audience the theory developed by renowned
neuroscientist Terrence Deacon, which extends the breakthrough
constraint-based insight that inspired evolutionary, information,
and self-organization theory. Emergent dynamics theory provides a
testable hypothesis for how mattering arose from matter, function
from physics, and means-to-ends behavior from cause-and-effect
dynamics. It offers a physics of purpose, demonstrating that there
is a strictly physical explanation for the emergence and nature of
selves and aims, one that shows our existence in an otherwise
inanimate universe is not absurd.Neither Ghost nor Machine
Neither Ghost nor Machine
bridges the gap between the hard and soft sciences, suggesting
fresh and exciting solutions to philosophical mysteries that have
perplexed humanity for millennia, from free will to causality to
morality.
bridges the gap between the hard and soft sciences, suggesting
fresh and exciting solutions to philosophical mysteries that have
perplexed humanity for millennia, from free will to causality to
morality.