A new book offers a tour of the evolution of minds
Credit: Martin Willis/Nature Picture LibraryW. W. Norton & Company
Ogas and Gaddam’s tour of the evolution of minds starts with the first cells on Earth and continues from flatworms to insects, reptiles and mammals. Along the way, biological brains amass sophisticated functions and capabilities, from navigation to memory, pattern recognition and sociality. The story doesn’t end with humans: the authors argue that civilizations represent a kind of collective super-mind, augmented with wholly artificial AI minds.
Ogas and Gaddam take a very broad view of mind as “a physical system that converts sensations into action”. At face value, this grants a mind to thermostats and robots as much as to living entities. “A mind responds. A mind transforms. A mind acts,” they write. But the same is true of many machines. What, then, distinguishes a mind? If it’s sentience or awareness, the authors give a confusing picture.
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