"There's a difference between feeling angry and acting on the anger," he says. "Even animals have experience, it's just having what we humans would consider to bea ta life,. A life of ideas, a life of introspection, that requires language." The book is published by Simon & Schuster at £16.99.
Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind―to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now.
Michael Shermer speaks with computational neuroscientist, Ogi Ogas, about his unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos, and how leading cities and nation-states are developing “superminds,” and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness.