Brainchildren: Essays on Designing MindsA new collection of wide-ranging essays from one of cognitive science's most distingushed figures. Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came into existence and how they work. One of the foremost workers in this multidisciplinary field is Daniel Dennett. This book brings together his essays on the philosphy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Highlights include "Can Machines Think?," "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies," "Artificial Life as Philosophy," and "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why." Collected in a single volume, the essays are now available to a wider audience. |
Contents
Speaking for Our Selves | 31 |
DoItYourself Understanding | 59 |
Folk Craft versus Folk Science and Belief versus | 81 |
Real Patterns | 95 |
Julian Jayness Software Archeology | 121 |
Instead of Qualia | 141 |
Commentary | 171 |
The Frame Problem of | 181 |
Several Meanings | 249 |
Artificial Life as Philosophy | 261 |
Review of Allen Newell Unified Theories of Cognition | 277 |
Out of the Armchair and into the Field | 289 |
Hunting for Bargains or a Wild Goose | 307 |
Do Animals Have Beliefs? | 323 |
Commentary | 333 |
Pain Suffering and Morality | 351 |
Producing Future by Telling Stories | 207 |
A View | 215 |
A Tale of Cognitive Pursuit | 235 |
Foreword to Robert French The Subtlety of Sameness | 243 |
SelfPortrait | 355 |
Information Technology and the Virtues of Ignorance | 367 |
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