Frederik Stjernfelt Theresa S. S. Schilhab Terrence Deacon
This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007).
In 1997 the American anthropologist Terrence Deacon published The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. The book is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. However, Deacons book was the first step - further steps have had to be taken. The proposed anthology is such an important associate.
The contributions are written by a wide variety of scholars each with a unique view on evolutionary...
This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007).
Theresa Schilhab Frederik Stjernfelt Terrence Deacon
This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007).
In 1997 the American anthropologist Terrence Deacon published The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. The book is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. However, Deacons book was the first step - further steps have had to be taken. The proposed anthology is such an important associate.
The contributions are written by a wide variety of scholars each with a unique view on evolutionary...
This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007).
What is information? A fitting question given the importance of information and the central role it plays in the economic and cultural life at the beginning of the 21st Century. It is said that we live in the Information Age, a claim that is hard to dispute given the ubiquity of the vast array of information technology (IT) at our disposal to generate, communicate, interpret and exploit information. We are surrounded by information thanks to computing and the digital "new media" such as the Internet, the Web, blogs, email, instant messaging, text messaging, cell phones, VOIP, Web cams, iPods,...
What is information? A fitting question given the importance of information and the central role it plays in the economic and cultural life at the beg...
If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current science encourages us to reject the ghost-in-the-machine explanation--that something called spirit, soul, mind, or will was somehow breathed into matter--and instead accept that selves are just matter, in aimless mechanistic motion like everything else. But what about life's many emergent qualities, the multifarious purposes that shape actual physical behavior not just in human lives, but in all of life? Even the simplest life forms have adaptive functions, traits...
If the universe is aimless, how do selves and aims emerge? Why do living beings have aims when inanimate things do not? Current science encourages us ...
