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Sentience
- The Invention of Consciousness
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
The story of a quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness from one of the world's leading theoretical psychologists.
We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.
The goal is to solve the hard problem: to explain the wondrous, eerie fact of "phenomenal consciousness"—the redness of a poppy, the sweetness of honey, the pain of a bee sting. What does this magical dimension of experience amount to? What is it for? And why has it evolved? Humphrey presents here his new solution. He proposes that phenomenal consciousness, far from being primitive, is a relatively late and sophisticated evolutionary development. The implications for the existence of sentience in nonhuman animals are startling and provocative.
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- Narrated by: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating audiobook, Tyson and coauthor James Trefil, a renowned physicist and science popularizer, take on the big questions that humanity has been posing for millennia - How did life begin? What is our place in the universe? Are we alone? - and provide answers based on the most current data, observations, and theories.
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Not worth it
- By Daniel Earl on 03-15-21
By: James Trefil, and others
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Naked Statistics
- Stripping the Dread from the Data
- By: Charles Wheelan
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you'll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.
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Starts well then becomes non-Audible
- By Michael on 09-07-13
By: Charles Wheelan
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Inspired
- How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, Second Edition
- By: Marty Cagan
- Narrated by: Marty Cagan
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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How do today's most successful tech companies - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla - design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently from the vast majority of tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love.
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Great book, terrible audio wanted to ask a refund
- By Srikanth Ramanujam on 11-15-18
By: Marty Cagan
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Storytelling with Data
- A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
- By: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- Narrated by: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory but made accessible through numerous real-world examples - ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation.
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Very insightful and actionable
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-18
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Abridged - no Appendix!
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Flawed fundamental assumptions, good function rvw
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The Worlds I See
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Excellent
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What listeners say about Sentience
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TeeBee
- 10-24-23
Beautiful and thought provoking
Humphries gives the reader an overview of his position on how evolution led to sentience and in doing so leads the reader through beautiful and entertaining anecdotes and thoughtful science.
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- Williamb
- 11-18-23
What it's like to be sentient
Humphrey has taken pain to make the case for what constitutes sentience, why and to some extent, how it exists. Having read many books on this and related topics, I judge that he has aligned the nail squarely with the hammer and struck. Citing several current and recent philosophers and scientists, Humphrey has raised the solid points of their work and exposed the weaker ones. In very readable /listenable style, he explains the case for what sentience is, why it likely evolved, how it might be detected, where in the evolutionary tree it seems to be present. Do read /listen to this book. You will see this topic more clearly because you did.
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- Liflock
- 10-12-23
Rambling and unscientific
The author raises a very interesting question at the outset: Assuming that consciousness and sentience serve an evolutionary advantage, there must be some external manifestations of sentience that natural selection can act on. What are those manifestations and can they be detected in animals?
I hoped that the book would unpack and make sense of this question empirically. But unfortunately, the book falls into a rambling, circuitous narrative and does not manage to get to the point. The author uses old-fashioned armchair reasoning to address complex neuroscientific questions and too readily deflects alternative hypotheses and criticisms.
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- H
- 03-13-24
Audible, please re-record this!
This is a fascinating and accessible book, if not without flaws. But the audiobook is really hard work to get through because of the inappropriate narration style for the material. It’s read as if it was a children’s story, with wildly exaggerated phrasing, feigned shock and excitement, theatrical pauses and the like. He actually does a stage whisper every time something is in parentheses! I’d love a new recording with a better narrator.
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1 person found this helpful