"The Nature of Consciousness"

The Structure of Life and the Meaning of Matter"

excerpts and variations on the book originally published in 2006

by Piero Scaruffi

A comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Cognitive Science, Neurobiology, Linguistics, Philosophy of Mind, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Thermodynamics, Evolutionism, theories of dreams, theories of emotions and theories of consciousness.

"Intelligence is not about knowing the answers but about asking the questions"

  1. Preface
  2. Mind and Matter
  3. Machine Intelligence
  4. Cognition: A General Property of Matter
  5. Common Sense: Engineering the Mind
  6. Connectionism and Neural Machines
  7. Inside the Brain
  8. Memory: The Mind's Growth
  9. Dreams
  10. Emotions
  11. Ecological Realism: The Embodied Mind
  12. The Evolution of Life: Of Designers and Design
  13. The Physics Of Life
  14. Altruism: From Endosymbiosis to Sociobiology
  15. Language: Minds Speak
  16. The History of Language: Why We Speak
  17. Metaphor: How We Speak
  18. Pragmatics: What We Speak
  19. Meaning: Journey to the Center of the Mind
  20. Self-organization and the Science of Emergence
  21. The New Physics: The Ubiquitous Asymmetry
  22. A History of Consciousness
  23. Consciousness: the Factory of Illusions
  24. A Physics Of Consciousness
  25. The Self and Free Will: Do We Think or Are We Thought
  26. Finale

Click here to find out how to purchase the book.

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I continuously update the chapters as new scientific data and theories come available. You are welcome to download and distribute what is available now on this website, but please do not assume it will never change. It does change almost weekly.
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