《从细菌到巴赫再回来》内容简介

　　美国最重要的哲学家之一为意识的起源提出了一个重要的新解释。

　　我们是如何获得心智的？

　　几个世纪以来，这个问题一直吸引着心理学家、物理学家、诗人和哲学家，他们想知道人类心智是如何发展出无与伦比的创造、想象和解释能力的。达尔文的信徒长期以来一直渴望解释意识、语言和文化是如何通过自然选择出现的，为心智起源的解释开辟了充满希望的道路，但往往以混乱和争议告终。尽管我们对蛋白质、神经元和DNA内部工作机制的理解比以往任何时候都更加深入，但我们的心智是如何形成的这个问题在很大程度上仍然是一个谜。

　　在《从细菌到巴赫再回来》一书中，丹尼特对进化思想进行了迄今为止最全面的探索。他以计算机科学和生物学的思想为基础，展示了具有理解能力的心智实际上是如何从无意识的自然选择过程中产生的。这部里程碑式的作品一半是哲学侦探小说，一半是大胆的科学猜想，丹尼特传奇的学术生涯一直处于哲学的前沿，而本书丰富了他在哲学前沿的探索主题。

　　丹尼特以其独特的风格——充满智慧和引人注目的思想实验——解释说，当人类发展出分享模因的能力，或者不基于遗传本能的做事方式时，一个重大转变就发生了。语言本身由模因组成，它加速了这种相互作用：模因之间的竞争（自然选择的一种形式）产生了精心设计的思维工具，这种思维工具又使我们有能力设计自己的模因。结果，一种不仅能够感知和控制，而且能够创造和理解的心智，在很大程度上是由文化进化过程塑造的。

　　《从细菌到巴赫再回来》是一本为新一代哲学家、科学家和思想家制定研究议程的书，它将让任何渴望了解心智的产生机制和工作方式的读者受益。

　　作者简介

　　丹尼尔·丹尼特

　　世界知名哲学家、认知科学家，美国艺术与科学院院士，塔夫茨大学讲席教授。2001年，荣获被誉为“心智哲学诺贝尔奖”的让·尼科奖。

　　美国教育网站TheBestSchools评选丹尼尔·丹尼特为全球50位蕞具影响力的在世哲学家之一。“人工智能之父”马文·明斯基称赞他为“下一个伯特兰·罗素”。

　　2010年当选圣塔菲研究所首届蕞受尊崇的访问学者席位—米勒学者，跨学科开展认知科学和进化生物学研究。

　　与理查德·道金斯、萨姆·哈里斯、克里斯托弗·希钦斯并称“新无神论四大骑士”。

From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again

One of America's foremost philosophers has proposed a major new explanation for the origin of consciousness.

How do we get our minds?

For centuries, this question has fascinated psychologists, physicists, poets, and philosophers, who have wondered how the human mind developed its unparalleled ability to create, imagine, and explain. Darwinians have long longed to explain how consciousness, language, and culture emerged through natural selection, opening promising avenues for explanations of the origins of the mind but often ending in confusion and controversy. Although our understanding of the inner workings of proteins, neurons and DNA is deeper than ever before, the question of how our minds came to be remains largely a mystery.

In From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again, Dennett offers the most comprehensive exploration of evolutionary thought to date. Building on ideas from computer science and biology, he shows how an understanding mind actually emerges from an unconscious process of natural selection. Part philosophical detective novel, part daring scientific conjecture, this landmark book enriches Dennett's explorations on the frontiers of a storied academic career that has kept him at the forefront of philosophy.

Dennett, in his inimitable style - full of intelligent and compelling thought experiments - explains that a major shift occurred when humans developed the ability to share memes, or ways of doing things that weren't based on genetic instincts. Language itself consists of memes, which accelerate this interaction: competition among memes (a form of natural selection) produces elaborate tools of thought, which in turn give us the ability to design our own memes. As a result, a mind that can not only perceive and control, but also create and understand, is largely shaped by the process of cultural evolution.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again is a book that sets the research agenda for a new generation of philosophers, scientists and thinkers, and will benefit any reader who desires to understand how the mind is produced and how it works.

About the author

Daniel Dennett

World-renowned philosopher, cognitive scientist, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, Tufts University Chair professor. In 2001, he was awarded the Jean Nico Prize, known as the "Nobel Prize for Philosophy of mind".

Daniel Dennett has been named one of the world's 50 most influential living philosophers by TheBestSchools. Marvin Minsky, the "father of artificial intelligence," called him "the next Bertrand Russell."

In 2010, he was elected as the first honored Visiting Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, a Miller Scholar, for interdisciplinary research in cognitive science and evolutionary biology.

Along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, he is known as the "Four Horseman of the New Atheism".