How to Build a Mind
Subtitle: Toward Machines with Imagination
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: August 15, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780231120128
Subjects: General Theory of Computing; System Theory; Science; Computers - General Information; Science/Mathematics; Artificial Intelligence - General; Neuroscience; Philosophy & Social Aspects; Medical / Neuroscience; Artificial Intelligence; Imagination
First sentence: As I sit tapping the keys on my laptop, I notice the oval table on which it is propped up with a newspaper so as not to wobble.
Description: "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.".

"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 concepts 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."--BOOK JACKET.