my mind on books

Scientist postulates 4 aspects of ‘humaniqueness’ differentiating human and animal cognition from PhysOrg.com
Shedding new light on the great cognitive rift between humans and animals, a Harvard University scientist has synthesized four key differences in human and animal cognition into a hypothesis on what exactly differentiates human and animal thought.
[…]

Hauser presents four distinguishing ingredients of human cognition, and shows how these capacities make human thought unique. These four novel components of human thought are the ability to combine and recombine different types of information and knowledge in order to gain new understanding; to apply the same “rule” or solution to one problem to a different and new situation; to create and easily understand symbolic representations of computation and sensory input; and to detach modes of thought from raw sensory and perceptual input.

Marc Hauser’s books include Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think.

Marc Hauser at edge.org

Also this week’s NOVA (PBS) was on a related topic – “Ape Genius”.

Nature Of Consciousness: How Activity Of Single Neurons In Human Brain Reflect Conscious Perception
ScienceDaily (2008-02-19) — Scientists have made a significant step into the understanding of conscious perception, by showing how single neurons in the human brain reacted to certain images. This line of research could lay the foundation for developing a neural prostheses which could read commands directly from the brain and transmit them to bionic devices such as a robotic arm that a patient with limited mobility could control directly from the brain. … > read full article

An essay at PLOS Biology — “Are Animals Autistic Savants” — discusses Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin. Grandin’s response to the essay is also up at PLOS.

Maybe it’s a little off-topic but I couldn’t pass by without mentioning Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, a verse novel about werewolves(!), the subject of the review of the day at Powell’s.

Website for the book.

Meanwhile at Metapsychology Online Reviews, From Knowledge to Wisdom gets an enthusiastic endorsement.

Self-Expression by Mitchell Green (Oxford University Press, 2008).

(“Look Inside” available at Amazon.com)

Book description:

Mitchell S. Green presents a systematic philosophical study of self-expression – a pervasive phenomenon of the everyday life of humans and other species, which has received scant attention in its own right. He explores the ways in which self-expression reveals our states of thought, feeling, and experience, and he defends striking new theses concerning a wide range of fascinating topics: our ability to perceive emotion in others, artistic expression, empathy, expressive language, meaning, facial expression, and speech acts. He draws on insights from evolutionary game theory, ethology, the philosophy of language, social psychology, pragmatics, aesthetics, and neuroscience to present a stimulating and accessible interdisciplinary work.