Download or read book On Thinking the Human written by Jenson and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2003-07-02 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers will gain new insights into the work of great theologians like Luther, Hegel, Edwards, and of course, Jenson himself. Anyone who reads this book carefully will never again be able to think about death, consciousness, freedom, reality, wickedness, or love in the same way.
Download or read book A Natural History of Human Thinking written by Michael Tomasello and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Tomasello maintains that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together and coordinate thoughts. A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition.
Download or read book Human Thinking written by S. Ian Robertson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Thinking: The Basics provides an essential introduction into how we develop thoughts, the types of reasoning we engage in, and how our thinking can be tailored by subconscious processing. Beginning with the fundamentals, the book examines the mental processes that shape our thoughts, the trajectory of how thought evolved within the animal kingdom and the stages of development of thinking throughout childhood. Robertson insightfully explains the effectiveness of political slogans and advertisements in engaging shallow information processing and the effortful, analytical processing required in critical thinking. Delving into fascinating topics such as magical thinking in the form of religion and superstition, fake news, and motivated ignorance, the book explains the discrepancy between reality and our internal mental representations, the influence of semantics on deductive reasoning and the error-prone, yet adaptive nature of biases. Containing student-friendly features including end of chapter summaries, demonstrative puzzles, simple figures, and further reading lists, this book will be essential reading for all students of thinking and reasoning.
Download or read book Artificial Intelligence written by Melanie Mitchell and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melanie Mitchell separates science fact from science fiction in this sweeping examination of the current state of AI and how it is remaking our world No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scientist, now reveals AI’s turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it. In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent—really—are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant models of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought underpinning recent achievements. She meets with fellow experts such as Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the modern classic Gödel, Escher, Bach, who explains why he is “terrified” about the future of AI. She explores the profound disconnect between the hype and the actual achievements in AI, providing a clear sense of what the field has accomplished and how much further it has to go. Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell’s humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI, its quest for “human-level” intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.
Download or read book Discognition written by Steven Shaviro and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is consciousness? What is it like to feel pain, or to see the color red? Do robots and computers really think? For that matter, do plants and amoebas think? If we ever meet intelligent aliens, will we be able to understand what they say to us? Philosophers and scientists are still unable to answer questions like these. Perhaps science fiction can help. In Discognition, Steven Shaviro looks at science fiction novels and stories that explore the extreme possibilities of human and alien sentience.
Download or read book Kryon Don t Think Like a Human written by Lee Carroll and published by . This book was released on 1984-02-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book So You Think You re Human written by Felipe Fernández-Armesto and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enlightening journey through the history of humankind, revealing the challenges to our most fundamental belief, that we are, and always have been, human. Also discusses AI and genetics.
Download or read book The Science of Being Human written by Marty Jopson and published by Michael O'Mara Books. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a unique insight into human behaviour, this book explains why we behave the way we do and what happens when humans interact with the world and each other. Starting with evolutionary biology and what it physically means to be a human being, this book moves on to include a wide range of topics such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and how we are evolving as we interact with new technology. There will be sections on how we perceive the world, such as why our brains - rather than our senses - can tell us about the world around us; crowd behaviour and more everyday things we can relate to, such as why your queue is mathematically proven to always be slower. The Science of Being Human explains all these human phenomena and how science, maths, psychology and other disciplines play their part.
Download or read book Critical Thinking in Human Resource Development written by Carole Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a reflexive critique of the assumptions of orthodox HRD research and practice and questions the conception of humans as resources, as well as the conventional performative focus of HRD. Examining the broader social, political and economic contexts, the book offers alternative perspectives for considering both the needs of individuals and the sustainable development of organizations in post-industrial economies.
Download or read book Illusions of Human Thinking written by Gabriel Vacariu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book illustrates that the traditional philosophical concept of the "Universe”, the "World” has led to anomalies and paradoxes in the realm of knowledge. The author replaces this notion by the EDWs perspective, i.e. a new axiomatic hyperontological framework of Epistemologically Different Worlds” (EDWs). Thus it becomes possible to find a more appropriate approach to different branches of science, such as cognitive neuroscience, physics, biology and the philosophy of mind. The consequences are a better understanding of the mind-body problem, quantum physics non-locality or entanglement, the measurement problem, Einstein’s theory of relativity and the binding problem in cognitive neuroscience.
Download or read book Human and Machine Thinking written by Philip N. Johnson-Laird and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to reach an understanding of how the mind carries out three sorts of thinking -- deduction, induction, and creation -- to consider what goes right and what goes wrong, and to explore computational models of these sorts of thinking. Written for students of the mind -- psychologists, computer scientists, philosophers, linguists, and other cognitive scientists -- it also provides general readers with a self-contained account of human and machine thinking. The author presents his point of view, rather than a review, as simply as possible so that no technical background is required. Like the field of research itself, it calls for hard thinking about thinking.
Download or read book The Laws of Human Nature written by Robert Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.
Download or read book Thinking Big How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind written by Robin Dunbar and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A closer look at genealogy, incorporating how biological, anthropological, and technical factors can influence human lives We are at a pivotal moment in understanding our remote ancestry and its implications for how we live today. The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties. The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book.
Download or read book Bergson written by Keith Ansell Pearson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking contribution to the renaissance of interest in Bergson, this study brings him to a new generation of readers. Ansell-Pearson contends that there is a Bergsonian revolution, an upheaval in philosophy comparable in significance to those that we are more familiar with, from Kant to Nietzsche and Heidegger, that make up our intellectual modernity. The focus of the text is on Bergson's conception of philosophy as the discipline that seeks to 'think beyond the human condition'. Not that we are caught up in an existential predicament when the appeal is made to think beyond the human condition; rather that restricting philosophy to the human condition fails to appreciate the extent to which we are not simply creatures of habit and automatism, but also organisms involved in a creative evolution of becoming. Ansell-Pearson introduces the work of Bergson and core aspects of his innovative modes of thinking; examines his interest in Epicureanism; explores his interest in the self and in time and memory; presents Bergson on ethics and on religion, and illuminates Bergson on the art of life.
Download or read book Glad to Be Human written by Irene O'Garden and published by Mango Media Inc.. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring collection of reflections on the daily beauties and bounties of human life that show us how we may see the joy in anything. In a world so often filled with distressing news and bewildering violence, being “human” often gets a bad rap. Rejoice in everyday reasons to smile, think positively, and enjoy the gift of life . . . In Glad To Be Human: Adventures in Optimism, award-winning writer Irene O’Garden reminds us of the radiance of human existence. From kitchens to gardens to busy city streets, all around, in your everyday life, you can find plenty of reasons to feel gratitude and hope, peace and joy. With this collection of essays, O’Garden explores a wide range of practical reasons to celebrate life?just look closely around you. In one essay, she describes the simple pleasure that comes from clearing clutter off a desk?in another, the thrill of visiting the Statue of Liberty. The book’s grand finale is the Pushcart Prize-winning essay, “Glad To Be Human.” Through contemplation, meditation and with literary style, Glad To Be Human invites readers to view life through a positive lens. From small, daily activities to journeys overseas, O’Garden has a knack for finding beauty and meaning in all life’s adventures?even in our deepest pain and suffering?helping all of us feel glad to be human. Perfect for readers of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Anne Lamott, or books like Risking the Rapids, The Book of Joy, The Book of Delights, and The Gratitude Diaries. Praise for Glad to Be Human “For many years now, the poet, playwright, and memoirist Irene O’Garden has been a hero to me. I think of her as a walking, writing, beam of light. It is my hope that with the release of ‘Glad to be Human’ numberless others will come to know her gifts and, most of all, her captivating talent for wonder and marvel.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of City of Girls and Big Magic “A field guide to embracing the creativity and spontaneity that bring joy to the business of being human. With an artist’s eye and a poet’s soul, Irene O’Garden shines her light on the bliss that surrounds us. Each of her essays turns the eye toward love and possibility. I am changed by these now dog-eared pages, and I will return to them again and again for inspiration.” —Annabel Monaghan, author of The Digit Series, columnist for The Week and The Huffington Post
Download or read book The Psychology of Proof written by Lance J. Rips and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life. In this provocative book, Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life. Rips argues that certain inference principles are so central to our notion of intelligence and rationality that they deserve serious psychological investigation to determine their role in individuals' beliefs and conjectures. Asserting that cognitive scientists should consider deductive reasoning as a basis for thinking, Rips develops a theory of natural reasoning abilities and shows how it predicts mental successes and failures in a range of cognitive tasks. In parts I and II of the book, Rips builds insights from cognitive psychology, logic, and artificial intelligence into a unified theoretical structure. He defends the idea that deduction depends on the ability to construct mental proofs—actual memory units that link given information to conclusions it warrants. From this base Rips develops a computational model of deduction based on two cognitive skills: the ability to make suppositions or assumptions and the ability to posit sub-goals for conclusions. A wide variety of original experiments support this model, including studies of human subjects evaluating logical arguments as well as following and remembering proofs. Unlike previous theories of mental proof, this one handles names and variables in a general way. This capability enables deduction to play a crucial role in other thought processes, such as classifying and problem solving. In part III, Rips compares the theory to earlier approaches in psychology which confined the study of deduction to a small group of tasks, and examines whether the theory is too rational or too irrational in its mode of thought.
Download or read book How Forests Think written by Eduardo Kohn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-08-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.
