Dreams, Jokes, and Songs

Dreams, Jokes, and Songs explores the nature and mechanisms of consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience and philosophy. Thagard proposes the NBC (Neural representation, Binding, Coherence, and Competition) theory as a comprehensive explanation for human consciousness. He addresses external perceptions such as smell, internal sensations such as hunger, emotions such as loneliness, and abstract thoughts such as the self. The book explains how complex conscious experiences emerge from the interactions of neural mechanisms. It highlights the integration of neural and cultural factors, showing how consciousness results from both biological processes and social influences. It uses ideas about neural representation and coherence to produce powerful new theories of dreaming, humor, and musical experience. Other applications include religion, morality, sports, romantic chemistry, and drugs. Consciousness has many psychological functions, especially action focus, combining senses with emotions, and increasing social understanding. Chapters also explore awareness of time, consciousness in non-human animals, the feasibility of machine consciousness, and how NBC compares to alternative theories. NBC justifies attributing some kinds of consciousness to advanced animals such as mammals and birds, and maybe even to fish, crabs, and bees; but not to plants, bacteria, or rocks. Thagard's work bridges the gap between scientific mechanisms and the qualitative nature of experience, offering a new materialist solution to the mind-body problem.

Paul Thagard is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. His books include Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty (2019), Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? (2021), and Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop it (2024).