Psyche and Symbolic Learning (The Evolution of Meaning)

$19.99
by Brendan Graham Dempsey

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Having established in Volume 1 that meaning is a kind of adaptive knowledge complexifying across emergent information processing regimes (structural, genetic, neuronal, and symbolic), Volume 2 of The Evolution of Meaning zooms in on the last of these levels to examine in detail how the socialized human mind acquires increasingly adaptive knowledge through symbolic learning. Summarizing the findings of 150 years of research from developmental psychologists into how the mind learns via evolutionary dynamics, Dempsey shows not only how our notions of morality, self, value, and God evolve as the psyche complexifies but also how these changes can be precisely measured. Using hierarchical complexity as a universal metric, he argues, we can identify distinct systems of meaning-making and justification that emerge across the developmental spectrum. Charting this empirically grounded map of worldviews will be essential for orienting efforts in future volumes to track the evolution of meaning and the sacred across human cultural history.

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