Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds

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MIT Press, 1998 - Computers - 418 pages
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.

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About the author (1998)

Born in Boston in 1942, Daniel Clement Dennett explores the philosophical links between mind and brain. His first book, Content and Consciousness (1969) was one of the earliest to examine this issue. It is one that he expands on in his other books, including Consciousness Explained (1991), where he uses philosophical "materialism" to examine the link between mind and body. Dennett is a Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor, a Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Medford Mass. He is interested in the development of artificial intelligence, was the co-founder of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has aided in the design of computer exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston and the Computer Museum in Boston.

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