Mind Out of Matter

Mind Out of Matter aims to transform the way we think about consciousness and the physical world. Unlike many contemporary volumes, it develops a robust and philosophically satisfying account of the mind/body relationship without doing violence to fundamental physics. It expunges popular but ludicrous assumptions about the `in principle' capabilities of cognizers and, with the help of tools from mathematics and scientific fields, supplants flawed notions of representation, function, and mental state with objective and physically grounded alternatives. It debunks quantum theories of consciousness, constructs a simple zombie recipe, and evaluates recent research on chaotic analogue networks. This book is indispensable for readers in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, and for mathematicians applying complexity theory or information theory to biological cognition. Audience: General academic/university libraries, plus university departmental libraries in philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computer science. Researchers and specialists in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, artificial life, complexity theory, and information theory. Researchers in the telecommunications industry.

Inhalt

Series Preface. Table of Figures. Foreword. 1. Frontal Assault. 2. Zombies and their Look-Alikes. 3. Information, Complexity, and Representation. 4. A Rose, By Any Other Name (Or Description). 5. Functional Systems. 6. Self Models. 7. Schrödinger's Cat is Dead. 8. Building Conscious Data Structures. 9. Chaos, Computability, and Real Life. 10. My `Hidden' Agenda. References. Index.