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The Strange Order of Things
- Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
- Narrated by: Steve West, Antonio Damasio
- Length: 9 hrs
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Publisher's summary
From one of our preeminent neuroscientists: a landmark reflection that spans the biological and social sciences, offering a new way of understanding the origins of life, feeling, and culture.
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and cultures are linked by an invisible thread to the ways and means of ancient unicellular life and other primitive life-forms; and that inherent in our very chemistry is a powerful force, a striving toward life maintenance that governs life in all its guises, including the development of genes that help regulate and transmit life. In The Strange Order of Things, Damasio gives us a new way of comprehending the world and our place in it.
Critic reviews
"Almost a quarter century after Descartes' Error, Antonio Damasio has done it again - created a grand exploration of the inextricable relationship between mind, body, and the source of human feelings.... Thought-provoking and highly original, this book can change the way you look at yourself, and your species." (Leonard Mlodinow, author of Subliminal)
"The Strange Order of Things is a foundational book. It provides the concepts, the language, and the knowledge to explain in an integrated framework the interplay between Nature and Culture at the heart of the human condition.... This is the beginning of a new scientific revolution."(Manuel Castells, emeritus professor of sociology, University of California, Berkeley)
"These pages make enthralling reading....It is indispensable for any psychoanalyst - and not only for psychoanalysts, of course. Damasio is the closest thing we have in the post-truth era to a great public intellectual." (Mark Solms, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association)
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- By Amazon Customer on 01-28-19
By: Eric R. Kandel
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Perfect You
- A Blueprint for Identity
- By: Dr. Caroline Leaf, Avery Jackson, Peter Amua-Quarshi, and others
- Narrated by: Margaret Winston
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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There are a lot of personality tests out there designed to label you and put you in a particular box. But Dr. Caroline Leaf says there's much more to you than a personality profile can capture. In fact, you cannot be categorized! In this fascinating book, she takes listeners through seven steps to rediscover and unlock their unique "you quotient".
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Hands down, the most helpful book I've listened to
- By Rose O'Connor on 07-31-17
By: Dr. Caroline Leaf, and others
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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The Spiritual Brain
- A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul
- By: Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'Leary
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Does religious experience come from God, or is it just the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on brain research on Carmelite nuns that has attracted major media attention and provocative new research in near-death experiences, The Spiritual Brain proves that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. The authors make a convincing case for what many in science are loathe to consider: that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.
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interesting topic, but frustrating listen
- By Barry T on 08-27-08
By: Mario Beauregard, and others
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What Is Life?
- How Chemistry Becomes Biology
- By: Addy Pross
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrdinger posed a simple, yet profound, question: What is life?. How could the very existence of such extraordinary chemical systems be understood? This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists both before, and ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology?
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Profound & Life Changing...
- By Daegan Smith on 04-06-15
By: Addy Pross
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Mind and Cosmos
- Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
- By: Thomas Nagel
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Intellectual honesty at its finest
- By Alice Walker on 02-15-18
By: Thomas Nagel
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How Language Began
- The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention
- By: Daniel L. Everett
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.
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Hard to endure
- By Michael D. Busch on 09-09-18
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Autopilot
- The Art & Science of Doing Nothing
- By: Andrew Smart
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Smart wants you to sit and do nothing much more often - and he has the science to explain why. At every turn we’re pushed to do more, faster, and more efficiently: That drumbeat resounds throughout our wage-slave society. Multitasking is not only a virtue, it’s a necessity. But Andrew Smart argues that slackers may have the last laugh. The latest neuroscience shows that the “culture of effectiveness” is not only ineffective, it can be harmful to your well-being.
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Not worth it.
- By B Lee on 04-30-14
By: Andrew Smart
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The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
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Primates and Philosophers
- How Morality Evolved
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes.
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Having Just Read...
- By Douglas on 12-14-13
By: Frans de Waal
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In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.
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You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of them could be made without the essential component of emotion. It has long been held that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as is rational thinking.
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Widely misleading
- By Kevin Richardson on 01-30-22
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
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- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
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Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
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Oversold
- By Michael on 03-04-20
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Life's Edge
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Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
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What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
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Probable Impossibilities
- Musings on Beginnings and Endings
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- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
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Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores these questions and more - from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.
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What a beautiful, insightful, learned yet poetic book
- By Steve Yastrow on 07-15-22
By: Alan Lightman
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Feeling & Knowing
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In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.
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That's it??
- By aaron on 11-13-21
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Self Comes to Mind
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Self Comes to Mind is a nuanced and original chronicle of the evolution of the human brain. It reveals how the brain's development of a self becomes a challenge to nature's indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution.
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Audio nightmare
- By Jess on 12-15-10
By: Antonio Damasio
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Emotional
- How Feelings Shape Our Thinking
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of them could be made without the essential component of emotion. It has long been held that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as is rational thinking.
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Widely misleading
- By Kevin Richardson on 01-30-22
By: Leonard Mlodinow
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The Deep History of Ourselves
- The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
- By: Joseph LeDoux
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
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Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This pause-resisting survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms.
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Oversold
- By Michael on 03-04-20
By: Joseph LeDoux
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Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
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Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
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What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
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Probable Impossibilities
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- By: Alan Lightman
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
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Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores these questions and more - from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang.
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What a beautiful, insightful, learned yet poetic book
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The Consciousness Instinct
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How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
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Not recommended
- By PMonaco on 01-19-19
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Galileo's Error
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Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra", beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved.
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Good but basic
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The Knowledge Illusion
- Why We Never Think Alone
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Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us.
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Welcome insight into what we do and don't know
- By S. Yates on 11-01-17
By: Steven Sloman, and others
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Sentience
- The Invention of Consciousness
- By: Nicholas Humphrey
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
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- Unabridged
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We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.
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Rambling and unscientific
- By Liflock on 10-12-23
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Helgoland
- Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
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- Unabridged
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One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution.
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The cat is not sleeping
- By Anonymous on 05-30-21
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
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The Ego Tunnel
- The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
- By: Thomas Metzinger
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?
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non-specialist literature at its best
- By Esmeralda on 03-17-10
By: Thomas Metzinger
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Sentir y saber
- El camino de la consciencia
- By: Antonio Damasio, Joandomènec Ros - traductor
- Narrated by: Roger Vidal
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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La consciencia es la capacidad de la mente que ha permitido a la especie humana desarrollar una inteligencia única basada en el razonamiento y la creatividad, ayudándonos a entender el mundo que nos rodea. Pero esta maravilla de la evolución sigue siendo un misterio para científicos y filósofos y un reto mayúsculo para la investigación científica.
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Un deleite intelectual
- By Giovanni on 07-19-23
By: Antonio Damasio, and others
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The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions
- By: Robert C. Solomon, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Robert C. Solomon
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
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Conventional wisdom suggests there is a sharp distinction between emotion and reason. Emotions are seen as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. These 24 remarkable lectures suggest otherwise-that emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world.
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Feel good and be good
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By: Robert C. Solomon, and others
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The Elements of Choice
- Why the Way We Decide Matters
- By: Eric J. Johnson
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Plenty of books dwell on the faults in our decision-making or offer advice on how to make better choices. The Elements of Choice goes one step further and explains how we can design better end-to-end decision-making processes. Going well beyond the familiar concepts of nudges and defaults, Eric J. Johnson offers a comprehensive, systematic guide to creating effective choice architectures, the environments in which decisions are made.
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Outstanding introduction to Choice Architecture
- By Susan C. Hasty on 04-01-22
By: Eric J. Johnson
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The Tell-Tale Brain
- A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
- By: V. S. Ramachandran
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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V. S. Ramachandran is at the forefront of his field - so much so that Richard Dawkins dubbed him the "Marco Polo of neuroscience". Now, in a major new work, Ramachandran sets his sights on the mystery of human uniqueness. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved.
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Great if you like understanding how brains work
- By Michael on 12-25-11
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The Heart of Man
- Its Genius for Good and Evil
- By: Erich Fromm
- Narrated by: Sam Bogart
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Fromm's follow-up to Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving is a keen study of violence on a small scale leading to the specter of mass destruction.
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Audible, please screen your voice actors
- By Anonymous User on 11-16-18
By: Erich Fromm
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The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
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Very Enjoyable and Readable
- By Dennis on 08-18-18
By: David Quammen
What listeners say about The Strange Order of Things
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gary
- 03-22-18
Homeostasis and Metabolism give self awareness
This book provides an incredibly good way to think about order, origins of life and life. Anytime one can look at a problem coherently from a different perspective one can develop a deeper insight and understand the nature of reality just a little bit better than they did before. For example, I love ‘information theory’ and how it can be used to explain the universe as a paradigm for fundamental understanding of the quantum nature of the universe even to the degree that one of the most famous physicist in recent times, John Archibald Wheeler, would say that ‘it from bit’ explains our universe, that ‘existence comes from information’ (this is not germane to my point, but someday when you have time look up Rule 110 on wiki you’ll be able to understand how a universal computing machine that is Turing complete can come from an incredibly simple algorithm thus leading to a complex universe as ours appears to be) , and that Claude Shannon would show that the second law of thermodynamics (Entropy) can be restated inversely in terms of information theory. (Shannon actually seemed to be a hero of the author of this book).
This book deals with biology more than physics but the author has an alternative way of thinking about biological life arising from chemical processes leading to humans rather than appealing to the standard paradigmatic archetype most of us are already familiar with. He’s going to show how order arises from chaos through homeostasis and metabolism (stealing useful energy from outside of oneself) explains the origin of life and intelligent life.
Spinoza will say and the author will paraphrase him as such ‘everything (both mental and physical) strives (Latin: conatus) to preserve in its being’. In order to do that, the thing in question must steal useful energy (or order) from somewhere outside of itself and it must preserve its nature or it will lose its nature. This is the paradigm the author describes, the homeostasis, the striving (the clinging, the endeavor, the will (that’s what Schopenhauer speaks about, by all means read his Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’, the ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche takes Spinoza’s conatus and Schopenhauer’s’ ‘will’ to come up with this same idea that the author gives except they can’t use those words because they haven’t been codified in their time period)) and the stealing of useful energy from outside of itself thus leading to an increase of entropy in the system as a whole but a decrease in entropy in the thing (the entity).
I’m easily irritated with willfully ignorant people. One of my pet peeves is someone who says that since we weren’t there we can’t possibly know what happened therefore ‘god did it’ (Rush Limbaugh did exactly that the day after Stephen Hawking died and dismissed the ‘big bang’ in his ravings). This book gives a beautiful retort to such stupidity in abiogenesis. Before there were bacteria there were chemical processes. The processes that stayed around and evolved are the ones that reached a steady state with a modicum of homeostasis and metabolic systems at play (and it probably happened in undersea vents. One of the few places on Earth where the energy doesn’t come from the sun. It comes from the radiation left over from the accretion of the earth during its formation).
The author in the first two thirds of the book never just states things. He builds his argument across time and across space. The body develops before the central nervous system in its evolutionary development. Our emotive, temperament and mood happened before our feelings. Our feelings come before our reason both evolutionary and developmentally. A really smart biologist can prove evolution by analyzing the taxonomy of the current living organisms of the now. The fossil record is not necessary for them to prove evolution and its development over time, but the biologist also has the fossil record to make their story even more complete. A neuroscientist, as the author is, also has brain development and processes to add to the equation. This author uses every fact at his disposal in his telling for the development of the self awareness that humans possess.
Logic only preserves truth. It cannot create truth. The feelings we have from our emotive, temperament and mood give us the narrative and the intuition that we need in giving us our self awareness (consciousness) and the story that we end up telling ourselves. Our subjective selves come from our feelings not from our logic based rational selves. (I think all of this is in his book in one way another). He believes our mental states come from our experiences. He even ended one chapter by saying something along the lines that ‘Proust explains it in ‘Swann’s Way’’). It’s too bad he ended that chapter like that because I think Proust had it better than this book does, and also I think ‘How Emotions are Made’ by Lisa Barrett follows Proust more closely and they both wisely stay away from absolute mental states.
I thought the last third of this book never should have been written. He was really out of his depth. He speaks about AI, trans-humanism, camp fires, religion, Adorno, Pinker, Freud and his death wish as expressed in ‘Civilizations and its Discontents’ and many other topics. Matter of fact, I’m currently reading ‘Feminine Law’ and the name and idea dropping between the that book and the last third of this book surprised me in their overlap, but for ‘Feminine Law’ she’s a specialist in the field of psychoanalysis and this author does not seem to be. I can say two nice things about the end of the book, he’s trying to connect his thesis with reality, and secondly he actually predicts the ‘Cambridge Analytics’ and Facebook scandal with incredible prescience.
In spite of the train wreck of the last third of the book, the first two thirds make this book a special find and I would definitely recommend it.
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- Breki Tomasson
- 07-01-18
What a sad, sad, man
While this book begins with an often very technical analysis of the biology of feelings and emotions - and the most frequent use of the word "homeostasis" I've ever seen in one book - it quickly devolves into what I can only see as an exercise in modern Luddite thought.
The author frequently misrepresents technological advancement, confusing terms and falling back on a near-religious circular reasoning. Humans are better than artificial intelligence because to be human is good and humans are the most human things around.
I also find the logic behind several parts of the book poorly structured - such as the entire reasoning that one needs a physical body in order to come up with morals and ethics and that this is why artificial intelligence will never have morals and ethics beyond what we hard code into them. It's an argument that breaks apart under even gentle probing but, like much of the book, is just taken as fact and never challenged.
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- Pollyessster
- 05-08-18
Nope.
I’m interested in the topic, I liked the ideas presented, but this book was not enjoyable and not enough ideas were presented for the time spent. I listened while doing some boring manual labor which usually makes anything seem pretty good, but I was so bored. Very very dry. The author seemed to be a somewhat defensive about the ideas he presented and parts felt very repetitive. Circumlocution. I just wanted him to get on with it. I only made it halfway before giving up. This author definitely isn’t for me. For a similar topic that is, in my opinion, better presented, try Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith. I was so into that I listened to the whole thing in one day during a long drive.
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- serine
- 11-15-18
THIS IS A MUST READ!
This is a hugely important book and one worth reading. Why? Because Damasio has joined the ranks of scientists such as Nick Lane (mentioned in the book) and Jeremy England (not mentioned) who are giving the "modern" synthesis of evolution a much needed update. This update replaces the gene centered theory with a theory centered on thermodynamics. As Damasio outlined in this book, there are 2 approaches scientists are taking when trying to understand the origins of life:
1. Genes first, championed by Dawkins and the like, which suggests genes came first and replicated.
2. Metabolism first, which suggests metabolism predated genes and in fact gave rise to genes. This dethrones the selfish gene (finally!) and paints a more accurate picture of the evolution of every species as yet another way for an organism to capture and circulate energy. Unlike genes first, metabolism first can account for the energy needed to create the molecules of life. Deep hydrothermal vents, which of course do not have genes, provide an acidic environment in which all that H+ acted like a battery, allowing bonds to be broken and made, thus making the molecules of life. RNA world and other gene centered theories simply cannot account for the energy needed to put these molecules and cells together so that evolution of living organisms can get a foothold. Damasio thanks Martin and Lane (and Russell) for their work on this front, as do I because it was paradigm shifting.
Damasio makes his arguments for metabolism first by focusing on the evolution of emotions. I cannot say I was a fan of the second half of the book, which offered a lot of philosophical musings I had heard many, many times before. But the first half of the book was truly exceptional. Damasio argued that feelings have shaped our culture and those feelings have arisen from homeostatic processes that can be traced back to single cells. If anyone can make this argument, it's Damasio's, whose research dominated my neuroscience textbooks. I cannot recall one professor at Penn who was not in awe of his excellent work over the many decades he has been studying the brain. Damasio argued that emotions themselves were a product of the very first hoeostatic processes at work *while* assembling genes at the hydrothermal vents, pre-dating genes. Thus, the evolution of emotions arises from those processes and not from genes. Genes themselves arise from homeostatic processes and not the other way around because homeostatic processes developed before the creation of genes. Homeostatic processes have been passed down through every generation. Genes were merely a way to help these processes occur inside organisms. At the end of the day, homeostatic processes arise because of the second law of thermodynamics. They are a thermodynamic process. Genes were created to aid this process. This process was not created to aid the passing down of genes. The passing down of genes certainly continues to help this process occur in each species, but the gene is a helper, not the star of the show.
As organisms continued to gain complexity, their homeostatic processes in turn became more complex as well. For example, when organisms evolved nerves, their homeostatic processes were regulated via these nerves. As the nerves (brains) became more and more complex, so too did the homeostatic processes that govern those nerve networks. As a result, we all have internal drives. (I cannot think of another scientists who has done more to study internal drives. See Damasio's work on impulse, galvanic skin response, etc to learn more about internal drives and associated brain regions). The internal drives common to population of humans served as the drivers for the very development of civilization. Consider bacteria and criminal justice. Bacteria do not even have nerves; and yet, they engage in punishing non cooperators. It's easy to imagine how this developed into a criminal justice system (flawed or not) in organisms with more complex bodies (namely brains). Other examples are provided about the evolution of punishment, creation, and other aspects of human existence that have helped build all of the civilizations from the beginning of recorded history.
Damasio suggested we take the "static" part out of homeostatic processes because they are anything but static. Rather, they are homeodynamic because these internal states are always active, striving to help the organism maintain the optimal state. Being in that state requires constant internal work that requires a lot of cooperation between cells, organs, hormones, etc -- a very dynamic process. His discussion on this type of cooperation inside organisms was very pointed at the Dawkins minded scientists who still subscribe to the conflict only, selfish gene paradigm. In the end, it is homeostasis and not genes that drive organisms to survive, thrive, and live on throughout the generations. It is this drive that has led to the cultural practices that appear to help global progress that has resulted in longer lives, on average, and will continue to focus on better sustaining the life process.
Damasio could not refrain from talking about the transhumanists who believe they can make an AI that preserves the brains of humans. He suggested they forgot about the fact that the brain had to work with the many microbes (and their homeostatic processes) and other cells inside the body. He, imo, is short sighted in this regard. I can imagine that eventually transhumanists will simply come to understand what role microbes and other cells, and their homeostatic processes, play in governing the brain and body and they will simply incorporate that into their AI. Seems shortsighted to be so confident in ruling that out. Instead, it would have been better to simply list the challenges to current models of AI. For example, being clear that they will need to take the role of microbes into account. That is something missing from Kurzweil's arguments. So it adds to the discussion. Ruling out the possibility that they can incorporate microbes seems far less helpful.
If for no other reason, you should read this book to understand, in great and fantastic detail, the evolution of our senses. Just brilliant.
One last note: Damasio mentioned the work of John Torday, whose work I love. He called him a kindred spirit but barely gave the reader an idea of what Torday's work entails. I highly recommend reading his academic articles on evolution and homeostasis.
#tagsgiving #sweepstakes #evolution
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- Jeremy Lavine
- 04-22-18
Rambling speculation & pontification
This book pretends to be a work of science, but its only concrete scientific content is a few notes on the human nervous system. The vast majority of the book consists of vague claims about homeostasis comparing human cultures with insect and bacterial communities (with no detailed description of underlying mechanisms) and flights of baseless speculation, opinion, and moralizing on all manner of loosely connected topics including religion, news media, international institutions, the daily routines and cares of ancient hunter gatherers, and transhumanism. Basically, the book doesn't deliver what it promises, and teaches little of substance.
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- Michael
- 12-08-19
Vague
This is a very odd book. The author meanders dryly as he describes his theory. It was not precisely clear what his theory is. It seems to me there is little to no disagreement that "feelings" are an important driver of survival, social interactions, culture, science, art, and invention. Likewise there is no disagreement with "feelings" being ancient; appearing early in evolution. So what is his point? I guess the core is "Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social conditions of our lives." This seems to me to inappropriately limiting the purpose of "Feelings". Certainly feelings are involved in homeostasis, particularly in lower organisms, yet sometimes feelings are also involved in breaking homeostasis which is a key component of intelligent life.
The end of the book becomes even less clearly focused.
The narration is quite dry.
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- Trial and Error
- 07-30-19
I can't figure out the point of this book.
I'm 6 hours into this book and I feel like I'm still reading the introduction. Where's the meat? I expected a lay book about the state of research into how cultures evolved, or how the evolution of the brain produced culture, or maybe how the observable mechanics of the brain produce the unobservable experience of feelings, or something like that. But no, there is little science in this book. Lots of science-y words, but no mention of any specific findings, researchers, schools of thought, watershed moments... Maybe this is a philosophy book? It is certainly an exploration of a hypothesis, told in detail and retold chapter after chapter. Basically, as best I can determine, the hypothesis is this: The brain evolves in the complex environments in which it interacts, and therefore the brain is complex. Or maybe this book is simply meant as poetry, free verse formed of polysyllabic words flavored with the vocabulary of academia. In any case, it's a pretty good remedy for insomnia, given the narrator's calm and mellifluous voice. Maybe that explains my problem -- perhaps I slept through the meaty parts? There must be something in this book to justify all the glowing reviews it has received, but whatever it is has escaped my notice so far.
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- Mauro Locarnini
- 02-04-19
Great read with unexpected turns
I chose the book because I’m interested in neuroscience and had read Damasio before. I did not expect to read a book on the future of human society which is in fact my major interest. It was a nice surprise. Well informed with some adventurous speculations but opens up the dialogue into the future we’re building. I highly recommend it. These days it’s easy to fall pray of the folly of “we have the knowledge and resources to tweak everything to build an abundant digital future”, this book brings us back to earth and continuous to inquire into what are the best steps to take to evolve. It does not necessarily acknowledge that we are in fact the architects of our own evolution and yet stretches the need to create the large social architecture needed. In conclusion just read it!
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- Douglas
- 11-25-18
Thought provoking book...
The idea that consciousness and emotions arose from a seeking after homeostasis is, of course, a very basic theory of Freud. He explores this idea in the ID section of his book entitled The Superego the Ego and the ID. This book takes that idea and makes a lot of speculation which would be hard to prove but it's interesting speculation if you take it with a grain of salt. I think the basic idea, again Freud's idea, is the most solid piece of the book, but it's still an interesting read and you can take what you will leave what you will.
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- Kirtland Peterson
- 12-18-21
The... point?
Damasio is a world-renowned neurologist, so I leapt at the chance to read this.
And...
And I'm struggling to see the point of the book. Lots of jargon and lists and... nothing terribly earth-shattering, let alone eyebrow raising. I can't for the life of me figure out why AD wrote the book, or for whom.
I'm almost done and my summary would be:
1. Things are more complicated in the brain that you might think. There's not module for X, but information streams in from many origins. (And... ???)
2. Homeostasis is key! (And... ???)
3. Feelings are an indication the homeostatic system is off kilter a bit, and this builds cells, animals, consciousness, culture... (So does oxygen, delicious food, exercise and a good night's sleep)
Nothing passes the "So what? Test."
Lots of neuro-babble supports 1-3, bolstered by long lists of famous scientists, aspects of persons or cultures, etc. And when the list ends you wonder... so??? So what?
In sum, the book seems so have no thesis worthy of book-length consideration, let alone more than a quick addendum to other work in human evolution and neuroscience.
If there is an important thesis in the book, AD fails to communicate it in a compelling way.
As is, it's either a frustrating read (trying to figure out if anything of any import has been said) or a total snoozefest (when you give up trying to make sense of the commonplace statements glittered with neuro-babble).
I think I got this on sale for $5 and... I wish instead I'd got a fancy coffee at Starbucks and listened to a classic.
I'm 7 hours in... 2 to go... life is short... not sure I can keep going.
My guess is "homeostasis! feelings!" will be "unrecognized! so important!" and I'll keep asking... "Your point? So what?"
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