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10 reviews for:
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos
Sai Gaddam, Sai Gaddam, Ogi Ogas, Ogi Ogas
4.0 AVERAGE
10 reviews for:
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos
Sai Gaddam, Sai Gaddam, Ogi Ogas, Ogi Ogas
4.0 AVERAGE
Journey Of The Mind gives readers the story of how we came to our current state of consciousness, from the simplest minds to our current super-minds. The book interweaves the stories of human societies and cellular beings to show the evolution that they describe. While the beginning of the book is a bit slow, the ending is delightfully edgy.
“An interesting book that doesn't quite achieve what it promises (the humble task of resolving the age-old question of what consciousnes is and how it emerges from unconscious matter). The authors seem convinced that it does, and maybe something is lost in the translation from math-heavy research papers to accessible prose, but I don't think I'm any closer to grasping it.
The key chapter on self makes a distinction between consciousness and self-awareness that I'm having a particularly hard time with, essentially saying that many creatures have qualia experiences of the world, but only humans are aware of themselves having them (unless they're actively engaged in something like the mirror test, at which point a self-aware self emerges only to disappear once the mirror is removed). And I just can't grok the concept of consciousness without awareness.
The idea of consciousness as a process, like a basketball game or hurricane, seems accurate but not exactly groundbreaking, and also an oversimplification. After all, a game is only a game because of the conscious actors playing it, and a hurricane is a dramatic example but that comparison relies on the drama of the image; a waterfall is a similarly context-dependent arrangement of water, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that saying ""consciousness is like a waterfall"" would tell me anything useful. Game, hurricane, and waterfall are all categories that emerge out of conscious beings assigning names and categories to physical processes; it's hard to see how they can be used to explain the emergence of consciousness itself.
I did find it was wonderfully written, and its descriptions of mental processes were clear and informative. I don't feel much closer to understanding the mystery of the self, but there's plenty to chew on regardless.”
The key chapter on self makes a distinction between consciousness and self-awareness that I'm having a particularly hard time with, essentially saying that many creatures have qualia experiences of the world, but only humans are aware of themselves having them (unless they're actively engaged in something like the mirror test, at which point a self-aware self emerges only to disappear once the mirror is removed). And I just can't grok the concept of consciousness without awareness.
The idea of consciousness as a process, like a basketball game or hurricane, seems accurate but not exactly groundbreaking, and also an oversimplification. After all, a game is only a game because of the conscious actors playing it, and a hurricane is a dramatic example but that comparison relies on the drama of the image; a waterfall is a similarly context-dependent arrangement of water, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that saying ""consciousness is like a waterfall"" would tell me anything useful. Game, hurricane, and waterfall are all categories that emerge out of conscious beings assigning names and categories to physical processes; it's hard to see how they can be used to explain the emergence of consciousness itself.
I did find it was wonderfully written, and its descriptions of mental processes were clear and informative. I don't feel much closer to understanding the mystery of the self, but there's plenty to chew on regardless.”
This book started out interesting, and the writing style is very easy to read. I liked the conversation about how relatively simple mechanisms can demonstrate some emergent behavior in simple organisms. However, the last maybe third of the book starts to go off the deep end by extending the metaphor of collective culture as just another stage along the evolution of mind. There may be some interesting or even useful analogies to be drawn between the way different parts of a human brain work together and the way different human brains interact/collaborate. However, I think this book is so enthusiastic about the parallels that it gets carried away into believing that it is more than just an analogy and that a society as a whole is literally a form of consciousness with self-awareness, and I just don't believe that leap is justified.
Ambitious does not begin to describe the evolutionary scope of “Journey of the Mind”. Our authors attempt to build a theory of consciousness, language and self. It’s almost a theory of everything. Using exampes across the animal kingdom, we understand the “doer” and “sensory” neurons for the large swath of animals. These would be the lower-level animals that exist without an organizing unit. From bacteria, hydras, roundworms, tortoises, frogs, and yes eventually human, Gaddam and Ogas explore top down processing in a bottom up world. Sharing the arrival of human consciousnss they state “aimless cycling of mud on a dark and barren Earth until the morning a mind woke and up and declared to an indifferent universe. I am aware of me” (p.2). Adding poetry and social commentary, they explore the self/consciousness and meaning from outside an experiencing self.
With anticipatory excitement, we build up from simple evolutionary adaptations such as a flagella in bacteria. And we move to the advanced reflective and memory processing of a human brain. The first third of the book is so exciting, as it points to an underlying sense of evolutionary order across life. As we build to more complex organisms, there is centralization, the beginning of a self, that is responding to a challenging and uncertain environment.
As a reader, I began to lose the thread of hierarchical changes across species , to the horizontal modules of the human mind. These ideas are largely built on the ideas of cognitive scientist Stephen Grossberg. Human action (“what”, “when”, “why”) is modularized to an underlying mental processes. Unlike an information theory schema, the modules of mental processing are “intimately intertwined with one another, continuously influencing each other’s ongoing internal operations in real time.” (p.136).
For all my admiration of the synthesis of these ideas, I found myself lost with some of the narrative intros to these chapters. Some of the narratives used to illuminate the mental processing were so creative and mythic that they took me out of the book. For example in the supermind chapter (p.281), we get an analogy about a relationship that is a metaphor about the Civil War. The metaphor is to understand dynamics in a system. Our authors dance adroitly between concepts across fields. At times the metaphors are gorgeous, particularly one regarding amoeba structures and the ancient Turkish city of Catalhoyuk. At times human processing is explored in a whirlwind of social and biological dynamics, and this may be true at the experiential self. However, I think, at times, they sacrifice clarity for wonder.
Like other animals, we seek survival, and our processing here is understood in these evolutionary terms (targeting, sensing, matching). None of this reduces the human experience, rather Ogas and Gaddam move toward a expansive perspective of mind conquering the chaotic chaos of our physical and social world. Through language, integration and building awareness, we have the opportunity to build a better superorganism as well.
All and all, quite a fascinating book. I think the first third is much more clear, than the compilation of language/self/consciousness explored with human processing. Admittedly, I had a hard time with the later chapters, and felt the tendency was to saturate with scientific concepts rather than to have clarity. It may be a limitation of this reader, I imagine many others would enjoy the exploration of fundamental questions through this riveting narrative.
With anticipatory excitement, we build up from simple evolutionary adaptations such as a flagella in bacteria. And we move to the advanced reflective and memory processing of a human brain. The first third of the book is so exciting, as it points to an underlying sense of evolutionary order across life. As we build to more complex organisms, there is centralization, the beginning of a self, that is responding to a challenging and uncertain environment.
As a reader, I began to lose the thread of hierarchical changes across species , to the horizontal modules of the human mind. These ideas are largely built on the ideas of cognitive scientist Stephen Grossberg. Human action (“what”, “when”, “why”) is modularized to an underlying mental processes. Unlike an information theory schema, the modules of mental processing are “intimately intertwined with one another, continuously influencing each other’s ongoing internal operations in real time.” (p.136).
For all my admiration of the synthesis of these ideas, I found myself lost with some of the narrative intros to these chapters. Some of the narratives used to illuminate the mental processing were so creative and mythic that they took me out of the book. For example in the supermind chapter (p.281), we get an analogy about a relationship that is a metaphor about the Civil War. The metaphor is to understand dynamics in a system. Our authors dance adroitly between concepts across fields. At times the metaphors are gorgeous, particularly one regarding amoeba structures and the ancient Turkish city of Catalhoyuk. At times human processing is explored in a whirlwind of social and biological dynamics, and this may be true at the experiential self. However, I think, at times, they sacrifice clarity for wonder.
Like other animals, we seek survival, and our processing here is understood in these evolutionary terms (targeting, sensing, matching). None of this reduces the human experience, rather Ogas and Gaddam move toward a expansive perspective of mind conquering the chaotic chaos of our physical and social world. Through language, integration and building awareness, we have the opportunity to build a better superorganism as well.
All and all, quite a fascinating book. I think the first third is much more clear, than the compilation of language/self/consciousness explored with human processing. Admittedly, I had a hard time with the later chapters, and felt the tendency was to saturate with scientific concepts rather than to have clarity. It may be a limitation of this reader, I imagine many others would enjoy the exploration of fundamental questions through this riveting narrative.
fast-paced
كل عقل له جسد. ومع ذلك ، بغض النظر عن مدى تعقيد التنفس والتغذية والإخراج ، فإن الجسد وحده ليس عقلًا. قامت أجيال لا حصر لها من الكائنات المغلفة بالغشاء برعاية عملية التمثيل الغذائي الكيميائي الحيوي النابض بالحياة وكانت على قيد الحياة تمامًا ولكنها ظلت بلا عقل تمامًا. ذلك لأن هذه الأنواع الرائدة تفتقر إلى شيء آخر لا غنى عنه لتكوين الفكر :
كانوا بحاجة إلى شيء للتفكير بواسطته .
العقل هو نظام فيزيائي يحول الأحاسيس إلى أفعال. يأخذ العقل مجموعة من المدخلات من بيئته ويحولها إلى مجموعة من النواتج التي تؤثر على البيئة والتي تؤثر بشكل حاسم على جسده. إن عملية تغيير المدخلات إلى مخرجات - تغيير الإحساس إلى سلوك مفيد - هي التفكير ، النشاط المميِّز للعقل.
.
Ogi Ogas
Journey Of The Mind
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
كانوا بحاجة إلى شيء للتفكير بواسطته .
العقل هو نظام فيزيائي يحول الأحاسيس إلى أفعال. يأخذ العقل مجموعة من المدخلات من بيئته ويحولها إلى مجموعة من النواتج التي تؤثر على البيئة والتي تؤثر بشكل حاسم على جسده. إن عملية تغيير المدخلات إلى مخرجات - تغيير الإحساس إلى سلوك مفيد - هي التفكير ، النشاط المميِّز للعقل.
.
Ogi Ogas
Journey Of The Mind
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
oversimplified and too definite but interesting concepts.
informative
slow-paced
It's not easy to review this book because it's complex and full of food for thought. it's more complex than the average informative science book and I was fascinated by what I read.
Great style of writing, well researched.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Great style of writing, well researched.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
medium-paced