Showing titles in Philosophy

In Understanding Artificial Intelligence: Of Minds and Machines, philosopher Patrick Grim traces the story of AI from ancient legends to the neural networks behind today’s breakthroughs. You see how modern systems became so powerful so quickly. You also explore the very meaning of “intelligence,” discovering how modern AI succeeds by drawing on three resources: vast datasets that let systems learn from examples; deep-learning architectures loosely modeled on the brain’s layers; and feedback loops that help models refine their behavior.

What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.

The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.

The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While...

Drawing intriguing parallels between the present era of quantum physics and past episodes of scientific confusion, Beyond the Quantum tells the story of how pilot-wave theory was discovered and abandoned, revived and reconstructed, and how today it can pave the way to a new and radical physics beyond the quantum.

Taking up Lenin's challenge to radically reconsider materialism in the wake of each big scientific discovery, and rejecting the recent vogue for giving a vague spiritualist spin to wave mechanics, Žižek embraces the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics with characteristic erudition and verve. Drawing on the central themes of the holographic universe, non-commutativity and the collapse of superpositions, Žižek evolves a quantum-inspired ontology which reinvents the historical materialism of Hegel and Heidegger...

Brought to you by Penguin. What can we really know about the world around us? With clarity and lightness, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli guides us through the speculative depths of modern physics, unafraid to test their limits, not least because, as he suggests, there may be no final ground...

By calling everything into doubt, Descartes laid the foundations of modern philosophy. With the celebrated words "I think therefore I am," his compelling argument swept aside ancient and medieval traditions. He deduced that human beings consist of minds and bodies; that these are totally distinct "substances"; that God exists and that He ensures we can trust the evidence of our senses.

New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know.

Every day, most of us will read or watch something in the news that is based on statistics in some way. Sometimes it'll be obvious—'X people develop cancer every year'—and sometimes less obvious—'How smartphones destroyed a generation'. Statistics are an immensely powerful tool for understanding the world, but in the wrong hands they can be dangerous. Introducing you to the common mistakes that journalists make and the tricks they sometimes deploy, How to Read Numbers is a vital guide that will help you understand when and how to trust the numbers in the news.

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.

Taking us on an incredible journey across centuries and galaxies, accompanied by his characteristic wit, Professor Luke O’Neill explains how it all began, how it will all end and everything in between. Listeners will benefit from Luke’s insatiable curiosity for life when they dive into this ultimate journey through life and death. Among other fascinating facts, you’ll discover the science behind how we got to be so smart, why sex with a caveman was a good idea, the science of finding love, why we follow religions and how robots will become part of everyday life.

*A book of the year in the New York Times* 'I wish this book had been published five hundred years ago and been compulsory reading ever since' Jay Griffiths, author of How Animals Heal Us 'A crucial and transformative read' Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast 'Timely, intelligent and...

Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over 30 years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition.

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience," typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements—both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides—there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation.

Beneath the Night is a history of humanity, told through our relationship with the night sky. From prehistoric cave art and Ancient Egyptian zodiacs to the modern era of satellites and space exploration, Stuart Clark explores a fascination shared across the world and throughout millennia. It is one that has shaped our scientific understanding; helped us navigate the terrestrial world; provided inspiration for our poets, artists and philosophers; and it has given us a place to project our hopes and fears. In the stars, we can see our past - and ultimately, our fate.

When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.

As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.

This is an audiobook about AI and AI risk. But it's also more importantly about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about intelligence, and the places that these thoughts are taking them, and what insight they can and can't give us about the future of the human race over the next few years. It explains why these people are worried, why they might be right and why they might be wrong.

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.