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Bacteria to Bach and Back: Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett Thinks A Lot About Things Thinking About Themselves Thinking

W.W. Norton and Co
First Edition, 2017
ISBN: 978-0393242072

Daniel Dennett, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, is one of the most prominent modern philosophers and thinkers in the areas of cognition, the evolution of consciousness, and the development of the human mind, whatever that may be. A prolific author, he has published books discussing evolution (Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life), the roots of religious belief (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon), cognitive strategies (Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking), and many other, related areas. Over his nearly 50 years of activity in this area he has returned time and again to fundamental questions such as "what is a mind" and "how did humans develop consciousness". In Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds he presents a broad ranging, carefully considered summary of his argument that minds, consciousness and all the paraphernalia of our internal lives has developed in a logical, step-wise fashion depending only on natural selection, Darwinian evolution, and the eventual development of a persistent symbolic culture. 

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