Journey of the Mind

How Thinking Emerged from Chaos

By: Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam

Narrated by: Cary Hite

Two neuroscientists trace a sweeping new vision of consciousness across 18 increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind and beyond.

Why do minds exist? How did mud and stone develop into beings that can experience longing, regret, love, and compassion - beings that are aware of their own experience? Until recently, science offered few answers to these existential questions. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, the Self, and civilization emerged incrementally out of chaos.

The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the simplest possible mind, a nanoscopic archeon, then ascends through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and AI, examining successively smarter ways of thinking. The authors explain the mathematical principles generating conscious experience and show, through vivid illustrations and accessible prose, how these principles led cities and democratic nations to develop new forms of consciousness - the self-aware “superminds”. Journey of the Mind concludes by contemplating a higher stage of consciousness already emerging - and the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.

Includes a downloadable PDF of illustrations from the book

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam (P)2022 Random House Audio

thought-provoking and eye-opening.

this was one of the most insightful books I have ever read. it provided words and data to support what I had already believed about consciousness but had never heard it expressed before. I cannot speak to the quality of the data or to their ultimate findings, but I look forward to reading more about their work both critically and in support.

Amazing book. One that deserves a re-listen to fully appreciate.

This book offers an incredible take on the evolution of thought. It is written in a way that makes the topic understandable, although I will likely listen to it again to try to fully understand these complex ideas. Definitely worth a listen for anyone interested in the nature of thought, philosophy, or neuro topics.

Swashbuclers Keystone writing

Language as Mind is compeling, I can't see opposing positions any science writers could support.
Every audio-info science source in multiple disciplines has been heading here. Ogi showed us where we were headed.
Language by Christianson...goes hand in glove with this.
Kudos Congrats and
THANK YOU !!

A brilliant work

I can’t recommend this book more highly. Enlightening, and challenging, definitely worth the addition to your library

MUST read for studying intelligence, AI, or psychology

This book is phenomenal! What a great layout of Mind architecture, with so many rich examples and imagery. Thank you to the authors!

Consciousness: objectively physical yet subjective

CONSCIOUSNESS: An activity, not a thing.
A collective phenomenon.
A process, not a substance.
Networked Activity, not a localized control center.
The emergence and evolution of mind in Earth life.
How consciousness emerged in stages.
How we unraveled the mysteries of this process using the mathematics of dynamic processes.
The so-called hard problem of consciousness is not real.
The illusion of the "soul", explained.
Free Will explained.
Become aware of how to comprehend the mystery of consciousness.

Thoughtful and intriguing super mind concept

An extra dimension to the story of evolution that redefined some categories in my mind. I found the super mind chapters especially intriguing, and the idea of religion as a barrier between superminds, like a cell membrane would be.

Just another book focused on the mind!

Why is it we treat our thoughts being more important than our consciousness? The radio is less important than the signal!

Unlistenable

Author goes into excruciating detail about primitive life forms. Not clear whether these existed or not.

Babble

I find it almost unlistenable. I don’t know if the narrator or the writing is worse. The cadence and pauses are distracting. Word choice is weird. So much unnecessary, meandering narrative. Usually I can ip the speed to overcome boring readers but the potentially valuable content in this book is buried in a mountain of blah, blah, blah…. How does the shape of Pluto’s moon define the theory of mind? What? How many 5 syllable words did you just string together in a comma delimited list? Is that a flex? Are we talking about Newton again? Greek mythology? Grossberg? Fish? Darwin? Ice cream? Yawn.