How to build a mind - Hardcover

ALEKSANDER, Igor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 029784296X ISBN 13: 9780297842965

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000

Synopsis

181p orange hardback with gilt lettering to spine, illustrated jacket well preserved, pages clean and unmarked

About this title

From the Inside Flap

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. How to Build a Mind also examines the presentation of "self" in robots, the learning of language, and the nature of emotion, will, instinct, and feelings.

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 029784296X
• ISBN 13: 9780297842965
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 196