The Dissenter #119 Terrence Deacon: Incomplete Nature, from Physics to Mind
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Dr. Terrence Deacon is currently Professor of Anthropology and member of the Cognitive Science faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. His theoretical interests include the study of evolution-like processes at multiple levels, including their role in embryonic development, neural signal processing, language change, social processes, and focusing especially on how these different processes interact and depend on each other. Professor Deacon's research has combined human evolutionary biology and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. He’s the author of The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain, and his most recent book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, explores the relationship between thermodynamic, self-organizing, evolutionary and semiotic processes and provides a new technical conception of information that explains both its representational and normative properties.
In this episode, we cover some of the major topics of Incomplete Nature, including: the second law of thermodynamics; absence and constraints; homeodynamics, morphodynamics, and teleodynamics; information; emergence; how we get from Physics to mental phenomena. We also talk about language and semiotics, including the biological bases of language, and how to study its evolution.
Time Links:
01:17 What is theory of mind, and how did it evolve?
09:38 The concept of absence and constraints
17:02 Homeodynamics, morphodynamics, and teleodynamics
26:22 Information from a Physics perspective
37:04 Emergence and how to get to mental phenomena
49:13 Consciousness, and unconscious mental processes
56:05 Semiotics, and studying how we deal with symbols
1:06:04 The biological bases of language
1:17:43 Cultural sources to understand the evolution of language
1:29:52 Follow Dr. Deacon’s work!
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Follow Dr. Deacon’s work:
Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/y83a3cov
The Symbolic Species: https://tinyurl.com/yc3tv5du
Incomplete Nature: https://tinyurl.com/y9mkubr4
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