On The Origin Of The Human Mind Second Edition

The origin of the human mind remains one of the greatest mysteries of all times. The last 150 years since Charles Darwin proposed that species evolve under the influence of natural selection have been marked by great discoveries. However, the discussion of the evolution of the human intellect and specific forces that shaped the underlying brain evolution is as vigorous today as it was in Darwin's times. Using his background in neuroscience, the author offers an elegant, parsimonious theory of the evolution of the human mind and suggests experiments that could be done to test, refute, or validate the hypothesis. The basis of the theory is a simple, yet fundamental question: what happens neurologically when two objects, never before seen together (say, an apple on top of a whale), are imagined together for the first time. The scientific consensus is that a familiar object, such as an apple or a whale, is represented in the brain by thousands of neurons dispersed throughout the posterior cortex. When one sees or recalls such an object, the neurons of that object’s neuronal ensemble tend to activate into synchronous resonant activity. The neuronal ensemble binding mechanism, based on the Hebbian principle “neurons that fire together, wire together,” came to be known as the binding-by-synchrony hypothesis. However, while the Hebbian principle explains how we perceive a familiar object, it does not explain the infinite number of novel objects that humans can voluntarily imagine. The neuronal ensembles encoding those objects cannot jump into spontaneous synchronized activity on their own since the parts forming those novel images have never been seen together. The author argues that to account for imagination, the binding-by-synchrony hypothesis would need to be extended to include the phenomenon of mental synthesis whereby the brain actively and intentionally synchronizes independent neuronal ensembles into one morphed image. Thus, the apple neuronal ensemble is synchronized with the whale neuronal ensemble, and the two disparate objects are perceived together. The synchronization mechanism of mental synthesis is likely responsible for many imaginative and creative traits that scientists have recognized as being uniquely human, despite not having a precise neurological understanding of the process. How did humans acquire mental synthesis? As of 100,000 years ago, hominins had already evolved both a greater control of perception by the prefrontal cortex and a nearly modern speech-production apparatus. However the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cortex remained asynchronous; the prefrontal cortex was unable to synchronize independent neuronal ensembles, speech remained finite and non-syntactic: one word was only able to communicate one image. At that time, a single mutation delayed the ontogenetic development of the prefrontal cortex and permitted the newly invented syntactic speech to train the synchronous connections between the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cortex. This allowed the acquisition of mental synthesis and propelled humans to behavioral modernity. These behaviorally modern humans excelled at performing mental simulations, which resulted in the dramatic acceleration of technological progress; the human population exploded and humans quickly settled most habitable areas of the planet. Armed with the ability to mentally simulate any plan and then to communicate it to their companions, humans rapidly became the dominant species.

Some of the most time-honored questions in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience center on the uniqueness of the human mind. How do we think? What makes us so different from all the other animals on planet Earth? What was the process that created the human mind? Is this process unique or can it be repeated on other planets? The book On the Origin of the Human Mind attempts to provide an answer to these questions. It is organized into three chapters: Chapter I Uniqueness of the Human Mind introduces the reader to recent research into animal behavior, communication, culture and learning, as well as controlled animal intelligence experiments and offers a new hypothesis of what makes the human mind unique. Chapter II Evolution of the Human Mind combines latest genetics research and archeological discoveries to help readers understand hominid evolution. The author discusses the forces that influenced the development of the hominid intelligence and offers a step-by-step theory that links improvement in visual information processing to speech development and to the types of stone tools manufactured by the hominids.Chapter III The Neurological Basis of Conscious Experience takes the reader on an exciting journey into the neurobiology of the human mind. The author introduces the reader to the structure and function of the brain and then presents recent insights into brain organization derived from cognitive psychology, brain imaging, animal experiments, and the studies of patients with diseases of the brain. The book concludes with a unifying theory of the mind and a discussion of the evolution of the human brain and the uniqueness of the human mind from the neurological perspective. Audience: The book speaks best to readers who want to approach the mind from a scientific perspective. The book is written in easy-to-read engaging style. No previous knowledge in psychology, paleoanthropology, or neuroscience is necessary

An enormous amount of scientific research compels two fundamental conclusions about the human mind: The mind is the product of evolution; and the mind is shaped by culture. These two perspectives on the human mind are not incompatible, but, until recently, their compatibility has resisted rigorous scholarly inquiry. Evolutionary psychology documents many ways in which genetic adaptations govern the operations of the human mind. But evolutionary inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. By contrast, cultural psychology documents many ways in which thought and behavior are shaped by different cultural experiences. But cultural inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. Even after decades of intensive research, these two perspectives on human psychology have remained largely divorced from each other. But that is now changing - and that is what this book is about. Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind is the first scholarly book to integrate evolutionary and cultural perspectives on human psychology. The contributors include world-renowned evolutionary, cultural, social, and cognitive psychologists. These chapters reveal many novel insights linking human evolution to both human cognition and human culture – including the evolutionary origins of cross-cultural differences. The result is a stimulating introduction to an emerging integrative perspective on human nature.

Cognitive Evolution provides an in-depth exploration of the natural history of cognition, from the beginning of life on Earth to present-day humans. Drawing together evolutionary, comparative, and neuroscience research, the book brings a unique cognitive perspective to evolutionary psychology. The second edition features the latest research and illustrations on emerging topics, making it a true update of the field. After introducing evolution, Boles adopts an information processing perspective – from inputs to outputs, with all the mental processes in between to provide a systematic overview of the evolution of cognition, including its sensory, motoric, perceptual, and cognitive components. The combination of evolutionary, comparative, and neuroscience perspectives provides an insight on topics like vision, handedness, tools and planning, spatial perception, pattern recognition, memory, language, and consciousness. Cognitive Evolution is a comprehensive, essential read for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of cognitive and evolutionary psychology. Researchers will find it a useful and insightful synthesis of the field, yet even the curious public will find in it much that is surprising and enlightening.

Consciousness emerges as the key topic in this second edition of Owen Flanagan's popular introduction to cognitive science and the philosophy of psychology. in a new chapter Flanagan develops a neurophilosophical theory of subjective mental life. He brings recent developments in the theory of neuronal group selection and connectionism to bear on the problems of the evolution of consciousness, qualia, the unique first-personal aspects of consciousness, the causal role of consciousness, and the function and development of the sense of personal identity. He has also substantially revised the chapter on cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence to incorporate recent discussions of connectionism and parallel distributed processing.

The origin of the human mind remains one of the greatest mysteries of all times. The last 150 years since Charles Darwin proposed that species evolve under the influence of natural selection have been marked by great discoveries. However, the discussion of the evolution of the human intellect and specific forces that shaped the underlying brain evolution is as vigorous today as it was in Darwin's times. Using his background in neuroscience, the author offers an elegant, parsimonious theory of the evolution of the human mind and suggests experiments that could be done to test, refute, or validate the hypothesis.

A groundbreaking theory of what makes the human mind unique The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel"—the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, anthropology, and archaeology, Corballis demonstrates how these recursive structures led to the emergence of language and speech, which ultimately enabled us to share our thoughts, plan with others, and reshape our environment to better reflect our creative imaginations. He shows how the recursive mind was critical to survival in the harsh conditions of the Pleistocene epoch, and how it evolved to foster social cohesion. He traces how language itself adapted to recursive thinking, first through manual gestures, then later, with the emergence of Homo sapiens, vocally. Toolmaking and manufacture arose, and the application of recursive principles to these activities in turn led to the complexities of human civilization, the extinction of fellow large-brained hominins like the Neandertals, and our species' supremacy over the physical world.