How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination (Maps of the Mind) - Softcover

Aleksander, Igor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231120133 ISBN 13: 9780231120135

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Igor Aleksander heads a major British team that has applied engineering principles to the understanding of the human brain and has built several pioneering machines, culminating in MAGNUS, which he calls a machine with imagination. When he asks it (in words) to produce an image of a banana that is blue with red spots, the image appears on the screen in seconds.

The idea of such an apparently imaginative, even conscious machine seems heretical and its advocates are often accused of sensationalism, arrogance, or philosophical ignorance. Part of the problem, according to Aleksander, is that consciousness remains ill-defined.

Interweaving anecdotes from his own life and research with imagined dialogues between historical figures―including Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Francis Crick, and Steven Pinker―Aleksander leads readers toward an understanding of consciousness. He shows not only how the latest work with artificial neural systems suggests that an artificial form of consciousness is possible but also that its design would clarify many of the puzzles surrounding the murky concept of consciousness itself. The book also looks at the presentation of "self" in robots, the learning of language, and the nature of emotion, will, instinct, and feelings.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"One of the pioneers of neural computers that borrow heavily on the brain's design" (NEW SCIENTIST) unravels the debate on replicating human consciousness

About the Author

Igor Aleksander is professor of neural engineering systems at the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London. He has studied artificial intelligence for more than thirty years and has published over 200 papers and ten books on the subject, including Reinventing Man, Impossible Minds: My Neurons, My Consciousness and Neurons and Symbols: The Stuff That Mind Is Made Of.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0231120133
• ISBN 13: 9780231120135
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192