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Full Description
A collection of stimulating studies on the past, the present, and the future of consciousness, Consciousness Evolving contributes to understanding some of the most important conceptual problems of our time. The advent of the modern synthesis together with the human genome project affords a platform for considering what it is that makes humans distinctive. Beginning with an essay that accents the nature of the problem within a behavioristic framework and concluding with reflections on the prospects for a form of immortality through serial cloning, the chapters are divided into three sections, which concern how and why consciousness may have evolved, special capacities involving language, creativity, and mentality as candidates for evolved adaptations, and the prospects for artificial evolution though the design of robots with specific forms of consciousness and mind. This volume should appeal to every reader who wants to better understand the human species, including its distinctive properties and its place in nature. (Series A)
Contents
1. Contributors; 2. Introduction; 3. Prologue; 4. Turing indistinguishability and the blind watchmaker (by Harnad, Stevan); 5. Part I: Natural consciousness; 6. Consciousness, adaptation and epiphenomenalism (by Polger, Thomas W.); 7. The functions of consciousness (by Cole, David); 8. Sensations and grain processes (by Graham, George); 9. Part II: Special adaptations; 10. Evolution, consciousness, and the language of thought (by Garson, James W.); 11. Why did evolution engineer consciousness? (by Bringsjord, Selmer); 12. Nothing without mind (by Clark, Stephen); 13. Part III: Artificial consciousness; 14. The emergence of grounded representations: The power and limits of sensory-motor coordination (by Nolfi, Stefano); 15. Ago Ergo Sum (by Floreano, Dario); 16. Evolving robot consciousness: The easy problems and the rest (by Harvey, Inman); 17. Epilogue; 18. The future with cloning: On the possibility of serial immortality (by Tennant, Neil); 19. Subject index; 20. Name index
