Inhaltsangabe
Written mainly with the student and general reader in mind, this book explores the nature of conscious intelligence in a concise and straightforward fashion. It tackles the subject using material from a variety of related fields—philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory. Exploiting this unusually broad perspective, it provides a fresh description of the major issues in the current philosophical/scientific debate, a comprehensive discussion of the competing philosophical theories and methodological approaches, and an up-to-date outline of the most important theoretical arguments and empirical data.
Following an introduction, chapters cover the ontological problem (the mind-body problem), the semantical problem, the epistemological problems (self-awareness and other minds), the methodological problem, and computers and artificial intelligence. There is a substantial chapter on the several neurosciences. A concluding chapter speculates on the distribution of intelligence in the universe, and on the possible expansion of human introspective consciousness.
Críticas
"Difficult matters are treated from an introductory perspective gracefully, interestingly, and with remarkably little in the way of distorting simplification. A number of the chapters are models of how to present difficult material painlessly and in a way that hooks the reader.... My prediction is that the word about this book will spread, and it will soon be a standard textbook."--Ned Block, MIT
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