Consciousness Evolving

Editor

James H. Fetzer | University of Minnesota

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027251541 (Eur) | EUR 70.00

ISBN 9781588111081 (USA) | USD 105.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027297907 | EUR 70.00 | USD 105.00

Netlibrary e-Book – Not for resale

ISBN 9780585461243

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)

[Advances in Consciousness Research, 34] 2002. xx, 253 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.34

Table of Contents

Contributors | p. ix

Introduction | p. xiii

Prologue

Turing indistinguishability and the blind watchmaker

Stevan Harnad | pp. 3–18

Part I: Natural consciousness

Consciousness, adaptation and epiphenomenalism

Thomas W. Polger and Owen Flanagan | pp. 21–41

The functions of consciousness

David Cole | pp. 43–62

Sensations and grain processes

George Graham and Terry Horgan | pp. 63–86

Part II: Special adaptations

Evolution, consciousness, and the language of thought

James W. Garson | pp. 89–110

Why did evolution engineer consciousness?

Selmer Bringsjord, Ron Noel and David Ferrucci | pp. 111–138

Nothing without mind

Stephen Clark | pp. 139–160

Part III: Artificial consciousness

The emergence of grounded representations: The power and limits of sensory-motor coordination

Stefano Nolfi and Oraxio Miglino | pp. 163–180

Ago Ergo Sum

Dario Floreano | pp. 181–204

Evolving robot consciousness: The easy problems and the rest

Inman Harvey | pp. 205–219

Epilogue

The future with cloning: On the possibility of serial immortality

Neil Tennant | pp. 223–237

Subject index | pp. 239–245

Name index | pp. 247–251

Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Fetzer, James H.

2013. Evolving Consciousness: The Very Idea!. In Origins of Mind [Biosemiotics, 8], ► pp. 225 ff.

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