Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence

by John Haugeland (Editor)

Mind design is the endeavor to understand mind (thinking, intellect) in terms of its design (how it is built, how it works). Unlike traditional empirical psychology, it is more oriented toward the "how" than the "what." An experiment in mind design is more likely to be an attempt to build something and make it work—as in artificial intelligence—than to observe or analyze what already exists. Mind design is psychology by reverse engineering. When Mind Design was first published in 1981, it became a classic in the then-nascent fields of cognitive science and AI. This second edition retains four landmark essays from the first, adding to them one earlier milestone (Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence") and eleven more recent articles about connectionism, dynamical systems, and symbolic versus nonsymbolic models. The contributors are divided about evenly between philosophers and scientists. Yet all are "philosophical" in that they address fundamental issues and concepts; and all are "scientific" in that they are technically sophisticated and concerned with concrete empirical research. Contributors
Rodney A. Brooks, Paul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Daniel C. Dennett, Hubert L. Dreyfus, Jerry A. Fodor, Joseph Garon, John Haugeland, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, William Ramsey, Jay F. Rosenberg, David E. Rumelhart, John R. Searle, Herbert A. Simon, Paul Smolensky, Stephen Stich, A.M. Turing, Timothy van Gelder

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Academic, Nonfiction, Technology

488 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

Reviews

[Alamir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect summer reading. If you're at a family-gathering and the conversation veers into a discussion about philosophy of the mind, this book will give you an advantage against your cousin's crazy theory about robots programmed to have human souls.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Churchland's "On the nature of theories: a neurocomputational perspective" blew my muthafuckin mind. I never expected to find a neuroscientist supporting the plasticity and theory-ladenness of perceptual judgements.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read/study. This is from the MIT press, and is used in conjunction OpenCourseWare.