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Mindware is an introductory text with a difference. In eight short chapters it tells a story and invites the reader to join in some up-to-the-minute conceptual discussion of the key issues, problems, and opportunities in cognitive science. The story is about the search for a cognitive scientific understanding of mind. It is presented as a no-holds-barred journey from early work in Artificial Intelligence, through connectionist (artificial neural network) counter-visions, and onto neuroscience artificial life, dynamics and robotics. The journey ends with some wide-ranging and provacative speculation about the role of technology and the changing nature of the human mind itself. Each chapter is organized as an initial sketch of a research program or theme, followed by a substantial discussion section in which specific problems and issues (both familiear and cutting-edge) are raised and pursued. Discussion topics include mental causation, the hardware/software distinction, the relations between life and mind, the nature of perception, cognition and action, and the continuity (or otherwise) of high-level human intelligence with other forms of adaptive response. Classic topics are treated alongside the newer ones in an integrated treatment of the various discussions. The sketches and discussions are accompanied by numerous figures and boxed sections, and followed by suggestions for futher reading.
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The computer scientist Marvin Minsky once described the human brain as a meat machine-no more no less. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The computer scientist Marvin Minsky once described the human brain as a meat machine-no more no less. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
It was a real pleasure to return to this book some ten years later, having read so much more in the cognitive science domain in the intervening years. This book picks up where standard introductions to the Philosophy of Mind such as Kim's Philosophy of Mind or Mitchell's Philosophy of Mind and Cognition: An Introduction leave off. We begin with the classical paradigms of Artificial Intelligence, and the SOAR architecture of Newell and Laird, which assumes that the mind is a symbol processing system, much like a computer. On these accounts the brain instantiates states that directly correspond to the concepts we use in our everyday talk of beliefs, ideas and actions. We then examine Connectionism and its implications for the classical model, when concepts have become distributed over extended arrays of neural units. We are introduced to the fascinating triangular debate between Fodor and his language of thought, in which the modules of the brain exchange symbols for manipulation by logical processors. Against this we have the Neurophilosophy of the Churchlands, who argue that connectionist models of the brain render our folk psychology a clumsy set of fictions, that a completed cognitive science will one day banish to the realms of phlogiston and ether. At the third corner is Daniel Dennett with his Intentional Stance, and the position that distributed concepts can still do the causal work that belief and action theory requires. We then press on to state of the art developments, and look at the embodied cognition and dynamic systems theory (artificial life) perspectives. We ask how applicable these more recent approaches are in helping us to understand human level intelligence, and to what extent a blending of all these approaches might help us to make progress to truly understanding the mechanisms of the mind.
This is a brief but conceptually rich book, and Clark writes with great clarity, making the ideas of some of the thinkers he covers more transparent then their original texts (I'm thinking of Fodor in particular here).
The book includes two appendices both of which are quite superb. The first is a potted account of the standard categories of philosophy of mind from dualism, through behaviourism, identity theory and functionalism. The second is a masterly little essay on the author's take on the present state of the consciousness debate, which topic he has carefully avoided in the main text, wishing to confine himself to the problems of human intelligence. In it he gives an extraordinarily lucid summary of the broad positions of the representationalists and higher order thought theories, the property dualism of Chalmers and what he calls the narrativism of Dennett's Consciousness Explained. In summarising he poses what he calls the meta-hard problem; `is there a hard problem of consciousness'.
After re-reading this I find myself greatly looking forward to Clark's most recent offering, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension.
This is a brief but conceptually rich book, and Clark writes with great clarity, making the ideas of some of the thinkers he covers more transparent then their original texts (I'm thinking of Fodor in particular here).
The book includes two appendices both of which are quite superb. The first is a potted account of the standard categories of philosophy of mind from dualism, through behaviourism, identity theory and functionalism. The second is a masterly little essay on the author's take on the present state of the consciousness debate, which topic he has carefully avoided in the main text, wishing to confine himself to the problems of human intelligence. In it he gives an extraordinarily lucid summary of the broad positions of the representationalists and higher order thought theories, the property dualism of Chalmers and what he calls the narrativism of Dennett's Consciousness Explained. In summarising he poses what he calls the meta-hard problem; `is there a hard problem of consciousness'.
After re-reading this I find myself greatly looking forward to Clark's most recent offering, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is an intriguing and provocative introduction to cognitive science. I do not share the author's materialist blinkers, but at least he makes you aware that he has them! All in all a good read.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Great Overview of Cognitive Science
28 Jan 2004
Format:Paperback
This book was recommended to me by a cognitive scientist researcher at my university as the single best thing I could read to obtain an up-to-date overview of what's going on in cognitive science. The book lived up to this promise. I found it an excellent, scientifically and philosophically informed, treatment of this topic.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Great Book, But No Introduction
24 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
First, let me say, I took so much from this book. I'm a cognitive science major myself and there were ideas in this book that hadn't ever come to my attention. I would like to say, however, that the chapter on connectionism didn't do the topic justice. Also, the book's chapters on the whole tend to mesh together to build up to the author's personal philosophical paradigm, extended mind hypothesis and largely embodied cognition (which is what most cognitive scientists believe). I find that in doing this, however, the reader misses out on the history and therefore context that these competing paradigms share.
Second, although this is a great book, I'm not sure I could recommend it to a layman audience. For that reason (not being as the title says, an introduction) I deducted one star from the review. However, if there's any philosophers of the mind, psychologists, biologists, or just curious people out there, I'd recommend this book to read for cognitive science (also, it helps a lot, for undergrad cog sci majors to give this a read before entering into your first cogs class).
Second, although this is a great book, I'm not sure I could recommend it to a layman audience. For that reason (not being as the title says, an introduction) I deducted one star from the review. However, if there's any philosophers of the mind, psychologists, biologists, or just curious people out there, I'd recommend this book to read for cognitive science (also, it helps a lot, for undergrad cog sci majors to give this a read before entering into your first cogs class).
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