How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines With Imagination

by Aleksander, Igor

• ISBN13: 9780231120128
• ISBN10: 0231120125
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-08-01
• Publisher: COLUMBIA UNIV PRESS

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Igor Aleksander is professor of neural-systems engineering and head of intelligent and interactive systems at the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Imagination and Consciousness	1	(14)
Miletus: Where the Dreaming Begins	15	(14)
Nineteen Fifty-eight: A Voyage Toward Interdisciplinarity	29	(14)
The Ghost of Aristotle: An Influence Across Two Millennia	43	(14)
Early Artificial Neurons and the Beginnings of Artificial Intelligence	57	(14)
Liberating Philosophy: The Empiricists	71	(16)
Canterbury: The First Machines	87	(18)
Wittgenstein: A Brief Interlude	105	(8)
The WISARD Years: Machines with No Mind	113	(14)
Starting the Week with Consciousness	127	(14)
Magnus in South Kensington and Pasadena	141	(20)
On Being Conscious: The Ego in the Machine	161	(22)
Epilogue	183	(6)
Further Reading	189	(2)
Notes	191	(6)
Index	197