More than 2000 years ago Greek philosophers were pondering the dichotomy between our physical bodies and our seemingly non-physical minds. Yet, even today, it remains puzzling how our mind controls our body, and vice versa, how our body shapes our mind.
How is it that we can think highly abstract thoughts, seemingly fully detached from the actual, physical reality?
A new release from Oxford University Press, How the Mind Comes into Being, offers an interdisciplinary introduction to embodied cognitive science, addressing the question of how the mind comes into being while actively interacting with and learning from the environment by means of the own body.
Authors Martin V. Butz and Esther F. Kutter set out the fundamental mechanisms and developing structures that bring the mind about, bringing in insights from biology, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, as well as from computer science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The brain controls the body … the body controls the brain
The book provides introductions to the most important challenges and available computational approaches on how the mind comes into being. The book includes exercises, helping the reader to grasp the material and understand it in a broader context. References to further studies, methodological details, and current developments support more advanced studies beyond the covered material.
Readers with a basic scientific background and a strong interest in how the mind works will find How the Mind Comes into Being intriguing and revealing.
