What is form? What is content? You cannot understand what life and mind are unless you can answer these two fundamental questions of ontology. The secrets of existence are located in the related pairings of form and content, form and matter, mind and life, mind and matter, signifier and signified, quantity and quality, subject and object, interior and exterior, information carrier and information carried. This book provides the explanation of the fundamental constitution of existence. It's all in the math!

How is life related to the mind? The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan Thompson explores in Mind in Life. Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela). Endlessly interesting and accessible, Mind in Life is a groundbreaking addition to the fields of the theory of the mind, life science, and phenomenology.

A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.

( the timeless teachings of ancient and contemporary masters ) Re-encounter your Self with eternal clarity; all you have missed in society's customary identification with the false and relative. Simple timeless Wisdom is your ultimate longing. It is yours, for you, because you-are. Education, life experiences, and book knowledge may help to earn a living, but relationships cannot teach you how to live. Solely relative living is an utter denial of Wisdom - living in Love, Beauty, and Happiness, your innate gifts from beyond. Answer certainly the weighty questions of living - what are you, who are you, why is birth and death and existence, what is the purpose and meaning of life, how did you come to exist in fear and sorrow when you certainly long to live happily in love, peace, freedom, and wisdom? Whatever it is that you-know-you-are changelessly, that you-ever-are, beyond any doubt! Endless re-discoveries, expressed from your one Self in correct living, are full of vitality and secure in wise Love.

An extended argument that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Building on their earlier book Radicalizing Enactivism, which proposes that there can be forms of cognition without content, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin demonstrate the unique explanatory advantages of recognizing that only some forms of cognition have content while others—the most elementary ones—do not. They offer an account of the mind in duplex terms, proposing a complex vision of mentality in which these basic contentless forms of cognition interact with content-involving ones. Hutto and Myin argue that the most basic forms of cognition do not, contrary to a currently popular account of cognition, involve picking up and processing information that is then used, reused, stored, and represented in the brain. Rather, basic cognition is contentless—fundamentally interactive, dynamic, and relational. In advancing the case for a radically enactive account of cognition, Hutto and Myin propose crucial adjustments to our concept of cognition and offer theoretical support for their revolutionary rethinking, emphasizing its capacity to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. They demonstrate the explanatory power of the duplex vision of cognition, showing how it offers powerful means for understanding quintessential cognitive phenomena without introducing scientifically intractable mysteries into the mix.

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.