Embodiment and the inner life Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds

by Shanahan, Murray

• ISBN13: 9780199226559
• ISBN10: 0199226555
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

To understand the mind and its place in Nature is one of the great intellectual challenges of our time, a challenge that is both scientific and philosophical. How does cognition influence an animal's behaviour? What are its neural underpinnings? How is th

Author Biography

Murray Shanahan graduated in Computer Science from Imperial College London in 1984. He gained his PhD in 1988, for research in Artificial Intelligence, from Cambridge University (King's College), where he also devoted a great deal of time to philosophy. He carried out postdoctoral work, first at Imperial College then Queen Mary College London, before rejoining Imperial College as a lecturer in 1998. He was awarded the title of Professor of Cognitive Robotics in 2006. His peer-reviewed publications cover a variety of disciplines, including computer science, neural networks, psychology, mathematics, and philosophy.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The post-reflective inner view	p. 7
The supposed dualism of inner and outer	p. 7
Introducing the private language remarks	p. 10
How philosophers talk	p. 13
Doing battle with the interlocutor	p. 16
Philosophical zombies	p. 20
The subjectivity of exotic life forms	p. 24
Thought experiments with peculiar scientists	p. 26
The subject adrift in time	p. 30
The proper silence of first philosophy	p. 34
Cognition and embodiment	p. 41
On having no body	p. 41
The biological roots of cognition	p. 43
The sensorimotor loop	p. 48
Behaviour selection	p. 51
The human edge	p. 54
Founding concepts	p. 58
Counting and infinity	p. 60
The space of possible minds	p. 64
Probing the internal	p. 67
The conscious/unconscious distinction	p. 67
Being on autopilot	p. 69
Introspective report	p. 71
Catching ourselves unawares	p. 77
The omnipotent psychologist	p. 80
Novelty and flexibility	p. 85
Accounting for the conscious condition	p. 89
Broadcast and the network	p. 95
The elements of global workspace theory	p. 95
Parallel specialist brain processes	p. 98
Neural computation	p. 102
Coalitions of coupled processes	p. 106
Integration and the conscious condition	p. 112
Influence and information	p. 115
The right connections	p. 118
The anatomy of a global workspace	p. 122
Neurodynamics	p. 131
From connectivity to behaviour	p. 131
Dynamics in focus	p. 137
Wandering among the attractors	p. 141
Dynamical complexity	p. 144
Fireflies of the mind	p. 149
Evident coherence	p. 154
The inner life	p. 159
The simulation hypothesis	p. 159
Simulation through a global workspace	p. 165
Open-ended affordance	p. 168
Conceptual blending	p. 171
Cognitive fluidity and the frame problem	p. 174
Space, time, and memory	p. 180
Remembering and reconstructing	p. 183
Talking to ourselves	p. 187
Bibliography	p. 193
Index	p. 211
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.