Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern

Book Description

A bestselling collection of brilliant and quirky essays, on subjects ranging from biology to grammar to artificial intelligence, that are unified by one primary concern: the way people perceive and think.

Customer Reviews:

"This sentence is false." So what?!?.......2007-08-02

Before I begin, I want to first point that I gave Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach which won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, five stars.

His observation that the mathematics of Kurt Godel, the art of Maurits Cornelius Escher and the music of Johann Sabastian Bach which are all "shadows cast by the same source" managed to bring Platonic forms to life in a real and engaging way that, quite frankly, Plato himself failed to do.

Hofstadter discussed the liars paradox, perhaps most simply rendered in the expression "This sentence is false." Obviously, the statement can neither be true nor false in that -- if you accept it's falsehood -- it's an accurate statement about itself and alternatively -- if accept it's truthfulness in self description -- the statement belies its self representation. Either way, you're forced to create a third category by which you describe the statement. For mathematician Kurt Godel, that third category was refered to as undecideable.

And in 1931, Godel set the math world on its head with his paper "On formally undecideable propositions 1" ("1" because Godel thought at the time perhaps another paper may be necessary to make his point). The reason why his paper set the math world on its head was because it found that any sufficiently complex Godelian mathematical system would encounter propositions that it could neither prove true or false. Later research showed that Godelian mathematical systems could not even recognize which propositions they would be stymied by.

Because Godel's mathematical point of departure in proving his theorem was a mathematical version of the liars paradox, Hofstadter saw and wrote of similarities to this paradox in the art of M.C. Escher -- which featured such things as two hands drawing each other -- and the music of J.S. Bach -- which, e.g. the Crab Canon, could be played backwards or forwards.

In Godel Escher Bach, Hofstadter's main emphasis was on the way in which human consciousness resembled these self referential systems and in so doing shared their systematic limitations.

For this reason, I was kind of excited to pick up and read this book because I thought that Hofstadter -- having surveyed self referential systems in relation to consciousness -- would have perhaps been inclined to do so in relation to the natural world as well.

In that way, I remembered my John Wheeler. The physicist Wheeler, professor to Richard Feynman, was one of the great lights of 20th century physics. And in 1965 he said perhaps one of his most thought provoking ideas when he described what he referred to as the self aware universe. To understand his idea, we briefly revisit our Plato. As you may recall, Plato believed that the physical world we inhabit was but a manifestation of what he referred to ideal or perfect forms. Like prisoners chained to wall unable to directly observe each other, Plato said that all we really saw of each were our reflected shadows. In a similar way, Wheeler suggested that laws of nature gave rise to the physical world which -- in the case of certain individuals like us -- gave rise to a sentient world in which the laws of nature were themselves observed. From your quantum mechanics, you may recall that it the act of observation itself which causes probabilistic subatomic wave functions to collapse and thereby -- in a critical way -- "create" reality.

For those interested in an excellent statement of the foregoing, please read section 34 of Roger Penrose's Road to Reality.

In any event, the idea of a self aware universe, litterally creating itself from its own operations, seemed to me to be an excellent example of Hofstadter's self referential activity.

And admittedly, I was hoping somewhere -- anywhere -- in this book (originally a series of columns for Scientific American) -- he would note and discuss the natural connections.

But alas!

The book was merely more examples of ground he elegantly but thoroughly already covered in Godel Escher Bach.

In my own way, but like Hofstadter to be sure, I believe that recursiveness and self referential activity run to the heart of key aspects of how reality and consciousness work, but sadly books such as these only pound into irrelevance topics which legitimately (and maybe better than anything) give us a glimpse into the wonder and enigma of creation.

Brilliant and Thought Provoking.......2004-04-20

This collection of Hofstadter's columns from Scientific American provides wonderful reading.

One of the gems is his simple, but brilliant analysis of the Prisoner's Dilemma. The usual analysis notes that the Nash equilibrium is for both players to defect. Hofstadter notes (correctly) that if both players are rational, then because the game is symmetrical, both players will choose the same strategy. So, the only choices are for both to cooperate or both defect. Since both cooperating has a higher payoff than both defecting, the rational strategy is to cooperate. The Nash equilibrium isn't relevant because it considers pairs of strategies which are impossible if both players are rational, i.e., the pairs where one player defects and the other cooperates.

Hofstadter notes that many people when presented with the above argument still say that they would defect. His descriptions of his attempts to reason with his friends and the results of the lottery he conducted (he told readers of his column they could send in entries for the lottery, but the more that entered, the smaller the prize would be) are, as he says, amusing, disturbing, and disappointing.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.......2003-07-14

This collection of essays previously published as a column in Scientific American is very uneven. There are some true gems like he discussion of the game Nomic in which rule changes are part of ordinary play or the sections on self referential sentences. Basically everything is readable, but not all chapters make much sense.

Some parts are really bad. In chapter 5 he wonders why one can judge the intellectual content of magazines by their cover, not seeing the obvious solution that these magazines try to attract different audiences. He spends some time discussing the prisoners dilemma and he get's it completely wrong. He argues that a rational person would know that other rational persons would think along the same lines and therefore act the same way. So a rational person can use this knowledge to influence another person. This is complete bogus of course. People are rational when they act rational, if I cooperate in the prisoners dilemma, I am not changing the definition of rationality, I'm simply irrational. Hofstadter also discusses Axelrod's famous computer tournaments. A more realistic view on the topic is provided by a review of Axelrod's book by Ken Binmore. That review can be found on the web.

The book is still valuable for the good parts, but one should read the book with a sceptical eye. Hofstadter is a layman on many things he discusses, and sometimes this shines through. Another problem is that some issues like the cold war anren't really interesting anymore. People who like Hofstadter will surely like it and find enough pearls to make the buy worth it though.

Essence of Mind and Pattern.......2003-05-20

At any level of scientific comprehension, this book provides an intelligent subscription to pattern. Includes essays and 'conversations' on Alan Turing, and clear and relevant description of common and interesting science. The most valuable information is hofstaedter's creative description of thought.

Warning to Present-Day Readers.......2002-12-12

I liked GEB, and found it to have been a great influence in my decision to pursue computer science as a career. Much of this later book is similarly good. However, the political commentary that is interwoven throughout the book, and there is much of it, has not aged well. Dr. Hofstadter was a proponent of the popular (at the time) "Nuclear Freeze" Movement. Dr. Hofstadter pauses the narrative of the text often to expound on his beliefs in nuclear disarmament, nuclear war, and his support for activists like Dr. Helen Caldicott. Not only is this (arguably) off-topic and distracting to the narrative, but it seems somewhat aged (and naive) in the context of later lessons of history. These diversions would hardly be more distracting, and anachronistic, if he stopped every few paragraphs to laud how wonderful a President that Jimmy Carter was (or Walter Mondale will be), and why we should all vote for him in the next election, or even what a great invention brown polyester Sans-a-Belt (TM) slacks are, and why we should all wear them.

For example, we now know that this "Freeze" movement was influenced by the KGB, both via funding (cash, in U.S. Dollars, for full-page advertisements in the New York Times was air-lifted from Moscow in diplomatic pouches), and with personnel (lots of so-called "grass roots" local freeze groups were unknowingly populated by "agent provocateurs" who were members of the KGB. By way of analogy, imagine an "Inflation Freeze" movement heavily (and secretly) funded by corporations to influence labor unions by propagandizing such a movement as a grass-roots labor agenda. Consider the outrage among organized labor in response to a movement that used fear-mongering over inflation, economic recession, and potential job loss to pressure labor into rolling over and unilaterally accepting wage freezes and other labor concessions. Such freezes and concessions would be expected by management to be accepted without discussion or negotiation, including trying to correct present injustices, looking at the company's books, or verifying the future financial condition of the company. Look up the name "Lemuel Boulware" and the company "General Electric" for an example of how to negotiate in bad faith (and yes, I'm aware of the ironic connection to Ronald Reagan, see below).

If a nuclear freeze was adopted without question or consideration, or without even a workable verification system, it would have frozen into place a very tenuous situation with Soviet SS-20's poised over Western Europe and with nothing to counter them (or if countered, a hair-trigger nuclear standoff). What happened was that Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a workable, verifiable, and stabilizing disarmament treaty that pulled back the SS-20's (and the U.S. missiles in Western Europe) and established a framework for realistic future treaty verification (leading to the establishment of a joint flyover program known as "Open Skies"). It was ironic that a individual recruited by Lemuel Boulware as a spokesman for GE would find GE Boulwarism and bad-faith "take it or leave it" negotiating tactics used against the United States by the Soviet Union. President Reagan's response, to approach from a position of mutual strength and dignity, and assure mutually-agreeable and verifiable terms, was almost pure anti-Boulwarism.

Book Description

Our minds are working all the time, but we rarely stop to think about how they work. The human mind has many different ways to think, says Marvin Minsky, the leading figure in artificial intelligence and computer science. We use these different ways of thinking in different circumstances, and some of them we don't even associate with thinking. For example, emotions, intuitions, and feelings are just other forms of thinking, according to Minsky. In his groundbreaking new work, The Emotion Machine, Minsky shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change in the future.

The Emotion Machine explains how our minds work, how they progress from simple kinds of thought to more complex forms that enable us to reflect on ourselves -- what most people refer to as consciousness, or self-awareness. Unlike other broad theories of the mind, this book proceeds in a step-by-step fashion that draws on detailed and specific examples. It shows that thinking -- even higher-level thinking -- can be broken down into a series of specific actions. From emotional states to goals and attachments and on to consciousness and awareness of self, we can understand the process of thinking in all its intricacy. And once we understand thinking, we can build machines -- artificial intelligences -- that can assist with our thinking, machines that can follow the same thinking patterns that we follow and that can think as we do. These humanlike thinking machines would also be emotion machines -- just as we are.

This is a brilliant book that challenges many ideas about thinking and the mind. It is as insightful and provocative as it is original, the fruit of a lifetime spent thinking about thinking.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book on thinking machines - but misleading title.......2007-06-10

I agree with the reviewer who noted how odd it was that a book titled "The Emotion Machine" does not discuss Joseph LeDoux, even if only to refute him. But I think that the problem is with the title, not the book. I found many of Minsky's insights very helpful - it is a very good book about how machines think. And if you are not a dualist, then those insights apply to people too. The book is very well organized and clearly written, and helps you think about thinking. I especially enjoyed his discussion of qualia (although he does not use the term), and why he thinks it is not quite the problem that so many philosophers want to make it.

Minsky's main take on emotions is that emotional states are not fundamentally different from other types of thinking, and that the entire dicotomy of rationality v. emotion is misleading. He prefers to view them all as different ways of thinking - of utilizing various mental resources at one's disposal, some conscious and some not. He organizes his discussion of difficult material very well, but I wish there was more grounding in the underlying neural anatomy of human emotion.

The common, but wrong approach........2007-05-25

What is so special about emotions?
Emotions is just one kind of bechavior, among many, demonstrated by reasonable systems. It is didn't matter what kind of system it is.
Machine and human, and bacteria, or dog, all reasonable systems are subjective simply because they are isolated from direct interactions with environment and capable to demonstrate the emotional behavior.
Contrary to common opinion all live creature, not human only, are emotional.
Best regards Michael Zeldich

AI: About Intuition.......2007-04-24

My brother is a computer programmer with a computer game company and he discovered something fascinating while trying to create a simulation for the movement of a crowd.

By inputing three variables: 1) be like a common member of the group but 2) stay a certain discrete distance from your neighbor while 3) moving away when everyone gets too close, he captured the seemingly naturalist choatic looking behavior of a crowd.

The point here is that the operation of a simple set of rules can create the appearance of the phenomenon of seemingly complicated and choatic behavior.

And I don't think the point is mistaken here where Minsky and his likes consider the delicate calculus of human behavior.

While his book ends by discussing the subject of self, perhaps self is perhaps the starting point for all proper discussions of consciousness and identity. This is because -- like all animate behavior -- the existence of self is uniquely keyed to the fact of animate autonomy.

In other words, the greatest of behvaioral conundrums is perhaps the simplest. In order to to decided what to eat, do or where to go, self provides that unique user perspective to allow the necessary illumination of what inbuilt needs remain unmet and which are in the most immediate need of meeting.

An effective engineer, Mother Nature has put into excellent service the process of emotion which allows the quick, effecient recording of the relevant information.

In his classic work The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick said that self was nothing more than the current state of our neurons and ganglia. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly shown that those neurons and ganglia recieve their current structure through the explanable process of natural selection. And Minsky has done well to show that as a result of that process our brains our like programs that have been worked over many times creating occassional inconsistencies.

Indeed it is perhaps these inconsistencies themselves that lay at the very heart of intuition.

Frustrating and disappointing.......2007-04-21

I recall appreciating The Society of Mind. But in this new book, his best answer to the Mystery of Experience is, "experiencing something like a color seems simple but is actually complicated". His main answer to the mega-Mystery of the Experience of Self-Awareness is, "consciousness is a suitcase term that we use to refer to many different things". It is almost like he is pretending to not experience these mysteries himself, so that he does not have to seriously engage the question of how/why our brain/minds do these things, and under what conditions other machines might. So frustrating that it makes the book hard to read -- it might have been better to skip over these matters more, if he can't deal with them more usefully.

thinking : critic - selector model.......2007-04-01

1. We don't recognize a problem as hard until we've spent some time on it without making any significant progress. For if you can diagnose the particular type of problem you face, then you can use that knowledge to switch to a more appropriate way to think.
2. Critic-selector model of thinking: Each critic object can recognize a certain species of problem type. When a critic sees enough evidence, the critic will activate a "selector", which tries to start up a set of resources that it has learned is likely too act as a way to think that may help in this situation.
3. If a problem seems familiar, use reasoning by analogy. If it seems unfamiliar, change the way you're describing it. If it seems too difficult, divide it into several parts. If it still seems difficult, replace it by a simpler problem. If none of these work, ask someone for help.
4. If too many critics are aroused, then describe the problem in more detail. If too few critics are aroused, then make the description more abstract. If important resources conflict then you should try to discover a cause. If there has been a series of failures, then switch to a different set of critics.
5. Emotional reactions: cautious vs. reckless, unfriendly vs. amicable, visionary vs. practical, inattentive vs. vigilant, reclusive vs. sociable, and courageous vs. cowardly; each such emotional way to think can lead to different ways to deal with things-either by making you see things from new points of view or by increasing your courage or doggedness. If too many critics are active then your emotions would keep changing too quickly. And if those critics stopped working at all, then you'd get stuck in just one of states.
6. The best way to solve a problem is to already know a way to solve it. Searching extensively. When one has no better alternative, one could try to search through all possible chains of actions. But that method is not often practical because such searches grow exponentially.
7. Reasoning by analogy: when a problem reminds you of one that you solved in the past, you may be able to adapt that case to the present case situation.
8. Divide and conquer: if you can't solve a problem all at once, then break it down into smaller parts.
9. Reformulation: find a different representation that highlights more relevant information. Understand in a different way.
10. Planning: consider the set of subgoals and examine how they affect each other.
11. Techniques for problem solving: simplifying, elevating, and changing the subject.
12. More reflective ways to think: wishful thinking, self-reflection, impersonation.
13. Other modes of thinking: 1) logical contradiction: try to prove that your problem cannot be solved, and then look for a flaw in that argument. 2) Logical reasoning. We often try to make chains of deduction. 3) External representation. Drawing suitable diagrams 4) Imagination. What would happen if by simulating possible actions inside the mental models that one has built.
14. Creating higher level selectors and critics help to reduce the sizes of the searches we make.
15. Modes of thought: preparation, incubation, revelation, and evaluation.
16. Creative ideas must be combined with the knowledge and skills already possess-so it must not be too different from ideas with which we're already familiar.
17. If too may critics are active then you notice flaws to correct and spend much time repairing them and never get at the important things and people perceive us as depressed. If too many critics are turned off then you ignore alarms and concerns that would help you concentrate allowing errors and flaws. The fewer the critics active, then the fewer goals pursued, making one intellectually dull.

Average customer rating:

15 years on, still relavant. We have a long way to go....
Another piece of the puzzle
A serious read for AI wonks
Too distant from my usual routes ...
Wonderful but quite dry in parts

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
Douglas Hofstadter
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Cognitive | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Cognitive Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0465024750

Amazon.com

Douglas Hofstadter, best known for his masterpiece Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, tackles the subject of artificial intelligence and machine learning in his thought-provoking work Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, written in conjunction with the Fluid Analogies Research Group at the University of Michigan. Driven to discover whether computers can be made to "think" like humans, Hofstadter and his colleagues created a variety of computer programs that extrapolate sequences, apply pattern-matching strategies, make analogies, and even act "creative." As always, Hofstadter's work requires devotion on the part of the reader, but rewards him with fascinating insights into the nature of both human and machine intelligence.

Book Description

"Will change your idea of what it is to be creative and even what it is to be human."--(William Poundstone, New York Times Book Review)

Customer Reviews:

15 years on, still relavant. We have a long way to go...........2007-05-14

Hofstadter provides effectively a series of articles published elsewhere, edited in his engaging, verbose style.
Basically the question of the book hwo would a computer solve the following:
"X:x as Y:?"
You can get much more complex, but basically his group spents the 80's and early 90s researching this questions and trying to figure out, "know when to break the rules" applied.

His overall appraisl of AI is that even within confined realms, it still produces inconsistent results, and there is a long way to go.

Processing power is ~1000x greater than when he wrote this book, but as he observed with Deep Blue, "Brute force methods tell us nothing about Human thought".

I realized this was a small sampling of the issues facing the whole approach. Enjoy.

Another piece of the puzzle.......2007-04-09

When I first starting reading "Fluid Concepts" I found myself puzzled; what, exactly, was Hofstader up to? He and his team of grad studenst seemed to be spending a tremendous amount of time on something that at first struck me as very trivial- solving puzzles of the "what number comes next" variety. I didn't see the connection to cognition. I put the book down for a while.

When I returned to it, after having done some refresher reading in cognitive psychology, Hofstaders' intent was much clearer. To understand his program, you have to start by discarding GOFAI ideas about the stored representation being primary, and look at the problem as a psychologist would: Before you can even ask how representations are stored, you have to ask how they got there in the first place, and that's what Hofsatder is looking at here.

Perception consists in large part of taking a mass of sensory data, and looking for patterns- in it. That's a critical part of cognition. It's both how we extract words from marks on paper or sounds uttered by another, and why we see a face when we look at a full moon, or a stain on a curtain, or a piece of burned toast. Hofstader and his team are looking for those fundamental processes that allow to both match raw perceptual data to representation, and to generate those representations in the first place.

Since the publication of this book he's moved on to another research program, and having been away from the field for over a decade, I'm not sure how influential it has been. But as far as I can tell, no one else has done as in-depth an analysis of this sort of primitive pattern matching, and for that reason alone, I think it's a program that every cognitive scientist should familiarize themselves with to some degree.

A serious read for AI wonks.......2005-05-24

I read this book when it first came out. At the time I had a deep interest in all things AI. The book presents Dr. Hofstadter's experiences (along with those of his graduate students) of implementing creativity modeling systems (and others) at the Fluid Analogies Research Group (FARG). The book is not an easy read. The reader will need to be diligent and not get deterred. The book also is a bit dry in areas, but those who are truly interested in the subject matter will not mind, much.

Too distant from my usual routes ..........2004-04-22

Many books by D. Hofstadter are at the top standings of my personal parade, but in reading this book I found myself very likely too distant from my usual interests and preferred styles. The initial part is very interesting, but when the author carries on detailed descriptions about programs' features in conversational shape, I have been quickly bored, and I have given up attentive reading turning to an eagle eye approach. I would have been by far more comfortable with a more formal explanation, because, once I make the effort to follow the thourough description of what and how a program does, it is more convenient to study its algorithms.
So, the book is surely very pleasing for people professionally involved in semantics, but I am not confident in its general interest.

Wonderful but quite dry in parts.......2004-04-18

This book is, as others have commented, different from DH's other more entertaining books.

It is a serious attempt to discuss the real issues and difficulties with AI research. There is a lot of quite dry material and in places it is repetitive.

It provides terrific insight into the problem of imitating human thinking at a deep level, and I found it very rewarding. It was also very interesting to follow the threads of how he went about doing research, and what he thought of other AI research.

His views of various flavours of AI research were very instructive and inightful I thought.

In summary a good book, but this is not (high quality) brain candy like Godel Escher Bach etc.

Average customer rating:

Visionary

Good but a little too far out

Buy it for the prologue alone!

A definitive Work for the strong AI perspective

Fast, fun book by a knowledgable author

Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
Hans Moravec
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Artificial Intelligence | Computer Science | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
Computer Mathematics | Artificial Intelligence | Computer Science | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Robotics | Mechanical | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Science | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies

Society of Mind

Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over the Edge

ASIN: 0674576187

Customer Reviews:

Visionary.......2005-03-22

This book does a great job of exploring the future of robots, artificial intelligence, the human mind, and human identity. A few parts of it seem dated, but most of what the book describes seems likely to happen this century and to surprise the large fraction of the population which still hasn't given any thought to the possibilities this book describes.

Good but a little too far out.......2000-04-01

Moravec writes a good book but I think his ideas are a tad to far out there. He doesn't take into account the possiblility of people not wanting to have their minds transfered to machines. He appears to assume that it is inevitable. I personally agree with his goals but I suspect that the majority of the population would be strongly opposed.

Buy it for the prologue alone!.......1999-11-29

I picked up this book, expecting to learn a little bit about where we're headed with our computers, and the consequences therein. I learned all that--but I got even more than I bargained for. I have to say, the prologue in and of itself blew me away. I had never quite thought of humans as the first step in a bigger evolution. I read this book six months ago, and I haven't been able to get the implications of it out of my head since. If you're looking for the big answers--like "Why are we here?" and "What's the point?"--you may be like me and find more in here than in more traditional spiritual texts.

A definitive Work for the strong AI perspective.......1998-05-08

This is a hard Hitting Strong AI book. It's the the land mark book the drew the line in the sand. If you wont to know what the strong AI position is this is the only book you have to read.

You wont feel special after reading this book... So much for being on the top of the evolutionary ladder

Fast, fun book by a knowledgable author.......1997-01-29

This book is very pleasant and easy to read. Yes, the subject is in itself fascinating, but Moravec does manage to make that clear. Whether one is interested in artificial intelligence, bioengineering, or just looking for some thoughts on fun-filled research, this book is a sound place to start. In fact, this book is a great bait for caching curious high school and undergraduate students! I know. I've attracted at least a couple to my research just by letting them borrow my own copy! (Francisco Sepulveda, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering Dept. FEEC-UNICAMP, Brazil)

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science)

Average customer rating:

A great, great book.
A mess
Do yourself a favor and read this book!
Walking past one another...
Will you answer "no" to this question ?

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Popular Science)
Roger Penrose
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Cognitive | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0192861980

Amazon.com

Some love it, some hate it, but The Emperor's New Mind, physicist Roger Penrose's 1989 treatise attacking the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, is crucial for anyone interested in the history of thinking about AI and consciousness. Part survey of modern physics, part exploration of the philosophy of mind, the book is not for casual readers--though it's not overly technical, it rarely pauses to let the reader catch a breath. The overview of relativity and quantum theory, written by a master, is priceless and uncontroversial. The exploration of consciousness and AI, though, is generally considered as resting on shakier ground.

Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, and ultimately derives his anti-AI stance from his proposition that some, if not all, of our thinking is non-algorithmic. Of course, these days we believe that there are other avenues to AI than traditional algorithmic programming; while he has been accused of setting up straw robots to knock down, this accusation is unfair. Little was then known about the power of neural networks and behavior-based robotics to simulate (and, some would say, produce) intelligent problem-solving behavior. Whether these tools will lead to strong AI is ultimately a question of belief, not proof, and The Emperor's New Mind offers powerful arguments useful to believer and nonbeliever alike. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

For many decades, the proponents of `artificial intelligence' have maintained that computers will soon be able to do everything that a human can do. In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

Customer Reviews:

A great, great book........2007-09-12

I was compelled to write as I came by on the way to buying Dr. Penrose's more recent book ("Road to Reality") and was appalled that Amazon features 2 out of 3 negative views on the first page, including one which dismisses the "Emperor's new mind" as "rubbish". Surely the book is controversial in certain quarters, but the vehemence of much of the criticism can only make me wonder why some people are so defensive about it.

I have to admit I have not reread this book since my original reading around 1990, so take my remarks at some discount on that basis. But I will tell you that this book remains influential in my choice of what I read and how I evaluate things even to this day. It has indeed changed my life.

Dr. Penrose's premise is that a computer simulation of a brain will not achieve the equivalent of human consciousness. I don't wish to enter the fray of arguing points. Dr. Penrose is a mathematical and scientific genius, a deep thinker on the nature of reality, and he can do his own counterpoint. Read this book with an open mind, and even if you disagree with some of his arguments, you will take much away with you.

Here's my take. "Consciousness" is pretty central to the whole enterprise of scientific endeavor, as well as how each of us understands our place in the world. Consciousness, as modeled by psychological and AI researchers, has a lot to say about the biological/physical systems that underpin what is happening in our heads, but one has to wonder about claims that consciousness is now completely understood. To this end, Dr. Penrose takes us on a fascinating journey to the frontiers of scientific knowledge, at scales both large and small. This is entirely relevant to the central theme. Science can only talk about what we can measure, and there are limits to what we can now measure. Our current picture of reality is not as complete as some people would have us believe.

So read Penrose. Read Stephen Jay Gould. Read Raymond Smullyan. Read about the Banach-Tarski theorem. Read about Fermat's last theorem. Read great literature. Keep an open mind. Peace!

A mess.......2007-09-07

This book is a real mess, and although I am giving it five stars, I don't really recommend anyone read anything like all of it. In fact, most of it isn't about the problems with strong AI at all. Mostly, it's a general, populist book about modern physics and mathematics. That can be an interesting read too, but probably Penrose isn't the person to be writing such a thing. He uses way too many exclamation points and I suspect he also tends to think he knows more than he really does. For example, it is clear by his one use of the word "ergodic" that he thinks it means something like "single orbits of a measurable set spread out and fill the whole space". That's mixing, not ergodicity. Lots of ergodic transformations do nothing of the kind, like for example irrational rotations of the circle. I only know this because I'm an ergodic theorist; I do tend to wonder how many other things I would catch Penrose speaking as if he knew more about them than he does, if only I knew more about them than I do.

So why does this book get five stars? Mostly because it has no good competitors. Daniel Dennett, for example, wrote a book called "Consciousness Explained." In it, he didn't even try to explain consciousness. Which is not to say he didn't write a terrific book. He did. It's wonderful. But when it comes to consciousness, Dennett just punts and doesn't seem to realize this is what he is doing (hence the ludicrously inappropriate title). This is why Searle thinks cognitive scientists come out, on analysis, "too stupid for words" (Dennett's phrase, speculating on what Searle thinks--if you haven't read these two guys' reviews of each others books, you really are missing some top-flight entertainment). As scientists, that's not really fair, but as philosophers of consciousness, it's probably pretty apt. Unfortunately Searle, marvelously adept at diagnosing the deficiencies of others, is ill-equipped to give a positive account. Penrose on the other hand at least gives us an inkling of what a positive account might look like. He does this mostly in the last chapter of the book, which is all I think anybody really needs to read (read the chapter on quantum theory too, if you don't know any).

Is Penrose right? I think, in broad outline, probably so. I do think consciousness has some power to choose at quantum branching points. I think this because I believe in the causal closure of the physical, I believe in the efficacy of consciousness, I don't believe that consciousness is physical, and I don't believe in overdetermination. You can only rectify these beliefs (as far as I can tell), by booting causal closure upstairs into the many-worlds arena and letting consciousness slide around in this ultra-high-dimensional plane with some measure of latitude. It's also the only way I can imagine that consciousness could have evolved in the first place (given that the strong AI premise that consciousness is automatically, miraculously generated by the execution of an algorithm really is too stupid for words).

I'm sure I'm one of hundreds of people who took quantum mechanics as an undergraduate and immediately formed these opinions; I am happy to defer to Penrose as to the details of how it might work. Are these details worked out in full, or even correctable in principle? Probably not. But almost surely it's not for being too crazy; the truth of the matter about consciousness is probably much, much crazier than even Penrose can imagine. Indeed, probably too crazy to be of any practical use to congnitive science now (maybe ever). So you're still going to have good reason to read your Daniel Dennett.

Oh, right. Penrose thinks the quagmire of consciousness has a lot to do with computability, tilings, entropy and Godel incompleteness. It doesn't. Those are just things Penrose knows a lot about, and paranoids think that all the things they know about are related.

Do yourself a favor and read this book!.......2007-03-19

Jeez, twelve bucks and one hell of a good read! Stick your neck out and find out for YOURSELF if the book is any good. I'm suspicious that Penrose is being persecuted for theist tendencies.

Walking past one another..........2006-11-21

I skimmed over the equations, and still found the exposition clear enough, with one significant exception. At one point, Penrose describes how an event in the Andromeda galaxy would already have occurred for a person on Earth walking toward the galaxy and not for another at the same spot walking away. the implication is that information would arrive at the same place at significantly different times for people walking in different directions. Penrose is assuming simultaneity of the events on our planet and in the Andromeda galaxy -- after several pages of discussion of how relativity excludes it!

Penrose soon returns to form though, stating that neither person would perceive the event until information about it arrived at the speed of light, millions of years later. Even if people could live that long, they would have to keep walking away from one another to perceive the event at very different times. That would be not be possible on our little round planet.

This is the one place where Penrose's discussion of modern physics lost me for a little while. Otherwise, I found it compelling. In particular, his explanation that Newtonian physics is deterministic stuck with me.

The discussion of mind at the end of the book is inconclusive and speculative, as it must yet be. The mechanical structure of living beings reflects Newtonian physics -- for example, the leg must be strong enough to support the body. Digestion can be explained in terms of chemistry, the nervous system uses electrical conduction, the reception of light by the eye is a quantum phenomenon. But then, there is the mind. Though the uncertainty in quantum physics allows of free will, it does not explain that, or consciousness. Evolution takes advantage of physical phenomena not yet understood -- after all, none were understood until very recently. The question of consciousness and that of the structure of the universe converge. Thought-provoking, indeed!

Will you answer "no" to this question ?.......2006-04-19

For those people who didn't make it through the book, here is a (perhaps oversimplified) summary.

Assumption 1 : Machines function algorithmically. The human brain functions at least partly non-algorithmically

Assumption 2 : There are some mathematical problems that can not be solved by algorithms f.i. proving the correctness of a self-referring statement.

Conclusion from 1 and 2 : Humans are able to solve problems that machines will never be able to solve.

Assumption 3 : Intelligence means being able to solve every possible problem.

Conclusion : Humans are intelligent, machines will never be intelligent.

My thoughts on this :

assumption 1 : Non-algorithmically ? There is not a shred of evidence of non-algorithmic thinking in humans. There are on the other hand plenty of mechanisms taking place in the brain that are clearly algorithmic (like vision, pattern recognition etc.)

assumption 2 : Apparently Penrose believes that humans are able to solve these problems. I am not so sure. I challenge you to answer the next question correctly : Will you answer "no" to this question ? It cannot be answered correctly. It is in the nature of the problem itself. The problems Penrose mentions are of the same nature.

assumption 3 : We don't know the nature of consciousness. We have no understanding of what intelligence implies. Penrose believes it implies that an intelligent creature is able to solve EVERY problem. Therefore, if there is one problem a machine can not solve, the machine is not intelligent.
So the only thing Penrose has to do to prove his point is ask a question that has no correct answers : ask the machine to overcome the incompleteness theorem of G?del, or to answer the above question correctly. (and ignore the fact that people cannot answer it correctly either).

I have enjoyed the book in a way ... while seeking arguments to demolish Penrose's theory.

The Turing Test: The Elusive Standard of Artificial Intelligence (STUDIES IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS)

Average customer rating:

Can machines mimic human intelligence?

The Turing Test: The Elusive Standard of Artificial Intelligence (STUDIES IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS)
James H., Ed. Moor
Manufacturer: Kluwer Academic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Software | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1402012047

Book Description

The Turing Test gives the most comprehensive, in depth and contemporary assessment of this classic topic in artificial intelligence. This is the first book to elaborate in such detail the numerous conflicting points of view on many aspects of this multifaceted, controversial subject. It offers new insights into Turing's own interpretation and traces the history of the debate about the merits of the Turing test in more detail than anywhere else. Turing's famous predictions (1950) are assessed fifty years after they were made. The book also gives competing views about how the Turing test should be interpreted, and novel contemporary criticisms of the test. Justifications for the test and its future applications are suggested and alternatives to the Turing test are examined in detail. Recent results of the Loebner competition are analyzed.

This highly readable volume is essential reading for research on the Turing test and for teaching undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, computer science, and cognitive science.

Customer Reviews:

Can machines mimic human intelligence?.......2004-12-10

Can a computer program running on a computer demonstrate aspects of human intelligence? If so, what tests could be performed to demonstrate this?

Well, it is easy to think of some tests. Here are seven simple ones. 1) Look up a word in a dictionary. 2) Add a very long column of numbers. 3) Play Chess really well. 4) Play Go really well. 5) Solve a really difficult research problem in theoretical physics. 6) Write a really good novel. 7) Compose a really good classical symphony.

Today, computers have passed tests 1), 2), and 3). But they play chess well by using a very poor program indeed, relying instead on a computer that is extremely fast and has plenty of memory. We're seeing really good computers. But the programs we're seeing are awful.

Maybe better tests would be to see if a team of a human plus a computer could do much better than two humans with no computer at each of those seven tasks. And here, I'm sure the answer is yes to many of these seven tasks, and could easily be yes to all of them.

Still, those who work in the field of artificial intelligence have wanted to come up with programs that exhibit some intelligent features. And one test they have tried is one proposed by Turing in 1950: if a human or computer may be in the next room and you exchange messages with her, him, or it, (maybe at a rate of one message every 15 seconds), can you tell with better than 70% accuracy after 5 minutes if the entity in the other room is human or computer?

The book discusses whether or not such a test has much to do with intelligence or artificial intelligence. And it describes the failure of programs to pass that test so far.

In 2000, several programs were entered into a contest to try to mimic a human in this manner. No judge thought a program was in fact a human. And worse than that, the book tells us that all nine of the following questions were answered correctly by all the humans, while no computer got any of the nine questions right:

1) What is the color of a blue truck?
2) Where is Sue's nose when Sue is in her house?
3) What happens to an ice cube in a hot drink?
4) Altogether how many feet do four cats have?
5) How is the father of Andy's mother related to Andy?
6) What does the letter 'M' look like when turned upside down?
7) What comes next after A1, B2, C3?
8) Reverse the digits in 41.
9) PLEASE IMITATE MY TYPING STYLE.

That shows how utterly the programs failed Turing's test.

In short, programs today are horrible at understanding, reasoning, learning, judgment, and creativity.

I liked this book. It showed that no matter what one thinks of machine intelligence, AI people have made shockingly little progress in the past fifty years.

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

Average customer rating:

Extremely accessible introduction
a necessary prerequisite...
Quite horrible...
Pretty good introduction to a vexing problem
The philpsophy is pretty interesting but..

Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind
Paul M. Churchland
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Cognitive Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0262530740

Book Description

In Matter and Consciousness, Paul Churchland clearly presents the advantages and disadvantages of such difficult issues in philosophy of mind as behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This new edition incorporates the striking developments that have taken place in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence and notes their expanding relevance to philosophical issues.

Churchland organizes and clarifies the new theoretical and experimental results of the natural sciences for a wider philosophical audience, observing that this research bears directly on questions concerning the basic elements of cognitive activity and their implementation in real physical systems. (How is it, he asks, that living creatures perform some cognitive tasks so swiftly and easily, where computers do them only badly or not at all?) Most significant for philosophy, Churchland asserts, is the support these results tend to give to the reductive and the eliminative versions of materialism.

Paul M. Churchland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. A Bradford Book.

Customer Reviews:

Extremely accessible introduction.......2007-01-27

"Matter and Consciousness" is a very accessible introduction to basic issues in the philosophy of mind. Paul Churchland divides the book into several sections, with each one serving to give a broad overview of the relevant issues, the main positions and controversies, as well as the major lines of research inquiry that have been developed in the past few decades as ways of approaching the study of brain/mind.

The first problem that Churchland addresses in the book is the ontological one - that is, what is the real nature of mental phenomena and in what relation do they stand to the physical world? He surveys the different types of dualism, including substance dualism, property dualism (a category which subsumes epiphenomenalism, interactionist property dualism and elemental property dualism). He also gives a flavor for the many different species of materialism such as reductive materialism/identity theory, functionalism (which currently serves as the main philosophical position for those involved in the fields of cognitive science and artificial intelligence) and eliminative materialism. Some really important questions are addressed in this first section, such as the feasibility of reducing mental states to neurobiological states. The history of science offers plenty of examples of successful intertheoretic reductions - for example, the theory of optics being reduced to the theory of electromagnetism. However, different arguments have been made (not just by dualists, but also by materialists) as to why mental states will not be capable of reduction to neurobiological states. For the functionalists this is because there are no universal correspondences between physical and mental states (there are many potential physical states that can instantiate mental states) and for the eliminative materialists, this is because our current folk psychological framework is radically wrong. Instead of intertheoretic reduction, the eliminative position holds that there will instead be a full-scale elimination, with our folk psychological concepts going the way of phlogiston in the physical sciences.

Churchland also focuses on the semantic problem -- where do our mental terms derive their meaning from? He suggests that this problem can be resolved by the network theory of meaning in which the meaning of a term derives from the term's embedded status in a larger theoretical framework. He addresses the epistemological problem (the problem of other minds and the problem of self-consciousness) and the methodological problem. What should be the structure of a science of mind? Churchland reviews several traditional approaches - idealism/phenomenology, methodological behaviorism, the cognitive/computational approach and the methodological materialist approach.

In the next two chapters Churchland offers a cursory overview of the fields of artificial intelligence and neurophysiology. These sections are meant to give the reader a flavor of some of the research projects that have been initiated in these fields and the manner in which they bear on the problems discussed in earlier portions of the book. For example, can intelligence be represented computationally? How can we develop programs that simulate aspects of intelligence? Churchland reviews fundamental concepts such as universal Turing machines in a very readable manner. However, it should be noted that Churchland sometimes seems to conflate consciousness and intelligence -- intelligence need not imply consciousness, though he sometimes seems to use these two terms almost interchangeably.

The last chapter of the book is devoted to some thoughts on the possible distribution of intelligence in the universe at large. Overall this book should serve as a highly readable introduction to some very difficult problems. Given the amount of the material covered, it is to be expected that many issues will be dealt with in a cursory manner. Some of the author's biases are reflected in the work. However, Churchland does a decent job in trying to present the main arguments and he also provides suggested reading lists at the end of the chapters for those who would want more in-depth coverage.

a necessary prerequisite..........2006-04-01

Richard C. Vitzthum discusses this book in his "Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition." He explains the animosity certain kinds of philosophers express towards anyone who insists on physical causation of mental processes. Thus, the negative reviews below are understandable and should be ignored.

Now that I understand the nature of the incessant bickering that occurs among philosophers of various biases, I am ready to take this book up seriously. If an individual, trying desperately to understand the nature of the situation here in the world, must choose eventually between physical causation of thought and non-physical causation of thought, then it seems reasonable to me to choose physical causation.

Throughout history, physical causation has ended up explaining away non-physical, i.e., wishful, fantasies.

Quite horrible..........2006-01-16

As much as I respect Paul Churchland as a philosopher, I can't say this book is very good (he's written much better!)

His coverage of the main positions in the philosophy of mind leaves much to be desired. For one thing, the arguments he uses in favor of dualisms and the objections he brings against it are quite bad. Most dualists would probably cringe at the idea (John Foster, William Vacllicella, W. D. Hart, Richard Swinburne, C. J. Ducasse, David Chalmers, William Hasker) that their position can be so sloppily defended (and refuted). Of course there are a number of differences between these dualists, but that is not the point. It is also true that Churchland's book is intended as an introduction. All the more reason for a bit more balance. Frankly, as a dualist I was no impressed--not to mention unmoved.

Churchland goes from there to arguing later in the same chapter (ch. 2) for eliminative materialism. He uses a very bad argument. He argues that an objection against eliminative materialism which appeals to introspection begs the question. After all, this is the very thing which Churchland is calling into question. So far of course, this is only an assertion, as much in need of justification as he claims the non-eliminative materialist advocate requires. He then claims that introspection is as 'theory-laden' as empirical judgments (I suppose a la Kuhn). But this claim is very weak. For the claim itself rests on a sort of introspection, and requires that Churchland's critics accept the a number of controversial claims (the empirical judgements are theory laden, and that introspection is somehow analogous to empirical judgments). It would also seem that his view of introspection is a bit simplistic (straw man).

But at the very least, the argument is unconvincing.

Pretty good introduction to a vexing problem.......2002-11-03

The mind-body problem, as it is called in Western philosophy, still has the attention of philosophers, despite centuries of debate. It will no doubt occupy more of philosophers time in the upcoming decades due to the resurging interest (and advances) in artificial intelligence. But the goal of most research in A.I. is now geared towards computational algorithms that are able to learn and can discover new knowledge or data patterns. The "hard A.I." problem, that of creating conscious machines, is not top priority it seems.

But philosophers will continue with the analysis of the nature of conscious intelligence, and the author is one of these. Interestingly though, and correctly, he asserts that progress in this analysis has been made, and he notes that philosophy has joined hands with psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory in making this progress. And this will no doubt continue as advances in these fields are made, and the 21st century will see the advent of the "industrial philosopher". Once thought to be a purely academic profession, the ethical considerations behind genetic engineering and the legal rights of thinking machines will require the presence of philosophers in the rank and file of engineers, technicians, and managers. And because of this, these philosophers, and their coworkers will themselves have considerable knowledge outside their own field.

Again, the refreshing feature of this book is that the author believes that philosophy has made considerable process on the nature of mind. This was done, he says, by understanding the mind's self-knowledge, by providing a much clearer idea of the nature of the different theories of mind, and by clarifying the sorts of evidence that must be acquired in order to distinguish between these different theories. Empirical evidence, he states, has enabled the making of these distinctions much more rational and scientific. But he is careful to note that the evidence is still ambigious, and much work still needs to be done before the these ideas can be differentiated with more clarity. He discusses in detail the different theories of dualism and materialism. An entire chapter is devoted to discussing substance dualism, property dualism, philosophical behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. The author asks readers to start anew and throw away their convictions while analyzing these conceptions of mind and matter.

For the author, the mind-body problem cannot be solved without considering three problems: 1. Semantical: The meaning of ordinary common-sense terms for mental states. 2. Epistemological: The problem of other minds and the capacity for introspection. 3. Methodological: The proper methodology to use in constructing a theory of mind. Entire chapters are devoted to these, and after reading them the reader entering the debate on the mind-body problem for the first time will have an over-abundance of food for thought.

An entire chapter is spent on the topic of artificial intelligence. If this book were updated, this chapter would probably have to be considerably expanded, in that many advances have been made in A.I. since this book was first published. Research in A.I. has been rocky, and many promises that were unfullfilled were made in the past about it. But now it seems a more rational and realistic attitude is taken about the claims of A.I. Most everyone involved in it understands that it is an enormously complex problem, and have concentrated their efforts on building intelligent machines from a piece-meal, microscopic approach, i.e. from solving the simplest problems first before tackling the more difficult ones.

A chapter is also devoted to neuroscience. Thanks to imaging technologies and other approaches to mapping the brain, this field has mushroomed in recent years. The author only gives a cursory overview of the brain and the nervous system in this chapter, due no doubt to lack of space. The reverse engineering of the human brain has been pointed to by some researchers in artificial intelligence as being the best hope for building intelligent machines. The dramatic increases in chip technology and bus design have made this belief certainly more feasible. It remains to be seen, via actual empirical research, whether the reverse engineering of the human brain, and then its subsequent implementation in electronic devices, will indeed result in the rise of intelligent machines.

Whatever the future of artificial intelligence and neuroscience, the mind-body problem will no doubt be of interest to philosophers for decades to come. It will be fascinating to see what kinds of conceptual frameworks and methodologies will be employed in attempts to solve this problem. Without doubt some new ideas would be welcome in this regard, as proposals for solutions to the mind-body problem seem to be stuck in a local minimum. But, as the author argues well for, the solution will bring in many areas and possibly some radical ideas, all supported by painstaking experimentation.

The philpsophy is pretty interesting but.........2002-08-31

This book is dated when it comes to AI coverage. Among other things, it talkes briefly about the backpropagation algorithm , invented some 15++ years ago. While this book is about philosophy, it would be nice to have an updated version of this book giving a short overview of how the AI field is borrowing more and more ideas from natural evolution and real neural networks. Backpropagation is a specific (and really usefull ) algorithm, and sparked a new wave of excitement about artificial neural networks in the mid 80s. Still, one problem is that the algorithm, as far as I know, is not biology plausible. More recent criticism agains the algorithm would be really really usefull. A short overview of _recent_ AI progress in language understanding/image understanding among other things, would also improve this book.

Also, the book contains a chapter on neuroscience. I found it pretty hard to follow all the details here, because of the technical term used. But remember,- its not the easiest subject around, and carefull reading through the chapter will help.

Book Description

A New York Times bestseller when it appeared in 1989, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind was universally hailed as a marvelous survey of modern physics as well as a brilliant reflection on the human mind, offering a new perspective on the scientific landscape and a visionary glimpse of the possible future of science. Now, in Shadows of the Mind, Penrose offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts an even more powerful attack on artificial intelligence. But perhaps more important, in this volume he points the way to a new science, one that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind. Penrose contends that some aspects of the human mind lie beyond computation. This is not a religious argument (that the mind is something other than physical) nor is it based on the brain's vast complexity (the weather is immensely complex, says Penrose, but it is still a computable thing, at least in theory). Instead, he provides powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is something in the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation--and will find no explanation in terms of present-day science. To illuminate what he believes this "something" might be, and to suggest where a new physics must proceed so that we may understand it, Penrose cuts a wide swathe through modern science, providing penetrating looks at everything from Turing machines (computers programmed from artificial intelligence) to the implications of Godel's theorem maintaining that conscious thinking must indeed involve ingredients that cannot adequately be stimulated by mere computation. Of particular interest is Penrose's extensive examination of quantum mechanics, which introduces some new ideas that differ markedly from those advanced in The Emperor's New Mind, especially concerning the mysterious interface where classical and quantum physics meet. But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Shadows of the Mind is Penrose's excursion into microbiology, where he examines cytoskeletons and microtubules, minute substructures lying deep within the brain's neurons. (He argues that microtubules--not neurons--may indeed be the basic units of the brain, which, if nothing else, would dramatically increase the brain's computational power.) Furthermore, he contends that in consciousness some kind of global quantum state must take place across large areas of the brain, and that it within microtubules that these collective quantum effects are most likely to reside. For physics to accommodate something that is as foreign to our current physical picture as is the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change--one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality. Shadows of the Mind provides an illuminating look at where these profound changes may take place and what our future understanding of the world may be.

Customer Reviews:

Mind's Shadows illuminated.......2007-10-03

Another stunning book by Sir Roger Penrose. It's really a five star book discounted here by one star because those lacking physics and mathematics will find some passages hard work, even though the author is being as kind as possible in a book of this calibre.
The book is a neat sequel to his "The Emperor's New Mind", extending the central theme that our little-understood human consciousness allows us to think way beyond the computational and mindless world of artificial intelligence.
In doing so, we have a marvellous survey of classical and modern physics, including the mysteries of the quantum world.
Sir Roger raises the question 'Will we ever be able to truly understand our own Nature-provided brain and its processes in terms of our own science?', and argues that, somewhere out there beyond our present reach, there is a unifying Platonic view of the Universe.
This book is a tour de force on several planes. Highly recommended.

Penrose has an agenda.......2007-09-27

Roger Penrose is confident that consciousness can't be explained without some kind of "new physics". He's not very explicit here, as to what this "new physic" should be.

Penrose spends a lot of effort describing paradoxes of quantum physics, so we should assume that "new physics" would have something to do with those paradoxes. He also spends a lot of effort trying to prove that consciousness can't be produced by any kind of Turing machine. He presses this point very hard, giving examples of non-computable problems, but I do not find him to be really persuasive.

Here's a good example of his style, on pg. 290: "I am going to suppose that detector itself can also be assigned a quantum state... This is the usual practice in quantum theory. It is not altogether clear to me that it really makes sense to assign a quantum-mechanical description to a classical-level object, but this is not normally questioned in the discussions of this kind."

What's this "not normally questioned"? I don't think he can persuade anybody with this kind of non-logic. Another problem with his book - Roger Penrose is really fighting windmills. He has invented some stupid AI person who says "ok, here's our wonderful Big Iron and our wonderful team of hackers - they would feed their Beautiful Macaroni Code into this Big Iron - and voilà! you got a real smart strong AI robot to chat with about everything you like. No Turing test needed"

Whereas everybody in AI, strong or not, understands that just as life itself is a process - so is an intellect, and consciousness and awareness. It has to grow, and develop, and learn. May be it can grow and develop fast, but still - it needs to grow, and learn. And yes - make mistakes, like Turing said.

The book is very vague (except chapters on Goedel theorem, where Penrose at least stays within his area of expertise). Also it reads more like a religious tract where the author has a preconception and would try anything and everything to confirm it.

An illuminated exposition on the nature of consciousness and how it emerges from certain properties of the nervous system.......2006-12-01

This book explains how personal consciousness develops from processes of the nervous system. There are structures along nerves and brain cells that have superconductive properties which can process information consistent with how the mind works. The magician will gain an understanding of what the aura is and how magical phenomena follow from the nature of these properties of the nervous sytem.

Too complex!.......2006-01-12

I'm sorry, but this book went way over my head. Was this the plan, or am I just not up to all this?

Fascinating and rewarding, but not entirely satisfying.......2005-08-04

I read this book as part of a personal effort, stretching back over a decade, to find answers to some of the deeper mysteries surrounding that gray area of minds, brains, computers, and souls. An explanation for consciousness is central to such an undertaking. This book, like so many others on this subject, served to raise a lot of fascinating questions, illuminate a little around the edges, but ultimately leave the big mysteries undisturbed.

In some ways a sequel to "The Emperor's New Mind", the present volume is much more focused and ambitious. It can be read as a stand-alone, though a familiarity with mathematics, physics, and philosophy of the mind are most helpful. A lot of the material is deeply technical, by the very nature of the author's task. The material is broadly divided into two parts, the first being a logical proof that whatever it is human minds do, it cannot (even in principle) be entirely replicated by a computer. The proof itself is as fascinating as it is demanding, sort of a Cantor's diagonal argument on steroids. The main point is to establish with strict mathematical rigor that there is something profoundly special about human mental processes (i.e., it is "non-algorithmic", to use the jargon), that could be a clue in our search for the soul.

If you are convinced by (or are willing to accept) Part 1, then second part of the book tries to explore the physical (or material) basis for non-algorithmic processes in the brain. The author starts out with a straight summary of the relevant aspects of modern physics and the anatomy of the brain. He then concludes that existing science cannot furnish the mechanism he is looking for, and sets out to speculate about what kind of new science might fill in the gap. The argument is compelling and makes a strong case. However, if we step back a little, the conclusions and speculations don't quite add up to a satisfying picture: "an edifice built on sand," wrote another reviewer.

Still, this was a fascinating and worthwhile read. It was a very rewarding exercise to work through the proof in Part 1, and Part 2 served to clarify much of what lies on the current frontier of knowledge in the science of the mind. Penrose, a direct successor to Isaac Newton in a chaired professorship at Cambridge, is a brilliant and accomplished scientist. As I noted above, however, books on the subject of minds, brains, and related philosophical issues don't provide answers to the ultimate questions. Rather, they tell us about what is already known (relatively little), raise interesting questions, challenge the reader with clever arguments, and speculate about what might be discovered someday. Readers derive more from the journey than the destination. Maybe that is all we can hope for in this genre.

Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer

Average customer rating:

Mind Over Machine by Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss

Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer
Hubert L. Dreyfus
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0743205510

Customer Reviews:

Mind Over Machine by Dreyfuss and Dreyfuss.......2004-01-25

The authors discuss the difficulties inherent in programming
intuitive skills into an expert system. Examples of programming
patterns of light and dark regions on x-rays are illustrated.
X-rays can be stored into memory and compared to known
diagnostic attributes. With enough experience, you can profile
the optimal decision for many groups of related situations.
This is a good reference work for explaining practical
problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction

Average customer rating:

Consider the edited volumes
A model philosophy textbook

Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction
Jack Copeland
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 063118385X

Book Description

Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding.There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle's attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer.

Customer Reviews:

Consider the edited volumes.......2004-05-07

I had high hopes for this book as part of my Artificial Intelligence course. I've been unhappy with the edited volumes where I would find a small subset of papers that I wanted to use in a course. Copeland's treatment of the intersection between Philosophy of Mind and Artificial Intelligence seemed to be exactly what I was looking for in a text. Unfortunately, the AI content is extremely dated, making it nearly useless to my computer science majors. (If I were teaching in a Philosophy department that wouldn't matter as much.) The first half of the book is great as a historical perspective, but I'll be going back to the edited volumes next time I teach AI and want to cover the Philosophy of Mind questions.

A model philosophy textbook.......2002-04-23

This is a fascinating and lively book, which is almost incredible give that it is an introductory philosophy textbook. Copeland manages to write with both personality and balance. The combination of his style (which is clear and witty without being facetious)and the intrinsic interest of the subject of artificial intelligence had me hooked. I read it like a novel, never wanting to put it down. Copeland assumes no prior knowledge of computer science, psychology, or philosophy, so the book should be accesible to any intelligent reader, although a few parts can be hard going. Beginners are likely to struggle with the sections on the CYC project (in chapter 5) and the Church-Turing thesis (in chapter 10), but slow and careful reading should do the trick. Copeland does explain eveything you need to know in order to understand what he's saying, but some of his explanations are gentler than others.

Otherwise my only complaint is that Copeland raises some interesting questions without exploring them very far. His view on the prospect for artificial intelligence is that, given the purposes for which we use such concepts as thinking, it is quite possible that there will come a day when the only reasonable course is to say that machines can think. In other words, he thinks that computers cannot now think, but that one day they (or their descendents) might become sophisticated enough that we ought to change our use of the word 'think' so that it applies to machines as well as humans. But he says very little about the purposes of concepts like thinking. In particular, he ignores the idea that rationality (surely a related concept) has great moral significance of a kind that might well make some people highly reluctant to say of any machine that it really thinks. Since this is an introductory book I don't hold this against Copeland, but it would be nice if he would say something about this in the next edition, which I believe is due out soon.

I'm looking forward to it.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books