Mindless

Mindless
Author: Simon Head
Publisher: Civitas Books
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0465018440

Argues that today's complex, computer-intensive management programs are being relied on by large organizations in favor of human expertise and are erroneously dictating business goals at the expense of middle-class workers, professional efficiency and customer service.

Society Of Mind

Society Of Mind
Author: Marvin Minsky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1988-03-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0671657135

Computing Methodologies -- Artificial Intelligence.

The Age of Spiritual Machines

The Age of Spiritual Machines
Author: Ray Kurzweil
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1101077883

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence—“a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next” (The New York Times Book Review). “Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.”—BILL GATES Imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, the “restless genius” (The Wall Street Journal), “ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweil’s prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in: • Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind) • Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers • Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

Mind, Machine and Morality

Mind, Machine and Morality
Author: Peter A. Hancock
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1351917455

Technology is our conduit of power. In our modern world, technology is the gatekeeper deciding who shall have and who shall have not. Either technology works for you or you work for technology. It shapes the human race just as much as we shape it. But where is this symbiosis going? Who provides the directions, the intentions, the goals of this human-machine partnership? Such decisions do not derive from the creators of technology who are enmeshed in their individual innovations. They neither come from our social leaders who possess only sufficient technical understanding to react to innovations, not to anticipate or direct their progress. Neither is there evidence of some omnipotent 'invisible hand,' the simple fact is that no one is directing this enterprise. In Mind, Machine and Morality, Peter Hancock asks questions about this insensate progress and has the temerity to suggest some cognate answers. He argues for the unbreakable symbiosis of purpose and process, and examines the dangerous possibilities that emerge when science and purpose meet. Historically, this work is a modern-day child of Bacon's hope for the 'Great Instauration.' However, unlike its forebear, the focus here is on human-machine systems. The emphasis centers on the conception that the active, extensive face of modern philosophy is technology. Whatever we are to become is bound up not only in our biology but critically in our technology also. And to achieve rational progress we need to articulate manifest purpose. This book is one step along the purposive road. Drawing together his many seminal writings on human-machine interaction and adapting these works specifically for this collection, Peter Hancock provides real food for thought, delighting readers with his unique philosophical perspective and outstanding insights. This is theoretical work of the highest order and will open minds accordingly.

Mind and Cosmos

Mind and Cosmos
Author: Thomas Nagel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2012-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199919755

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Minds, Machines and Evolution

Minds, Machines and Evolution
Author: Christopher Hookway
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1986-07-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780521338288

Original essays written by philosophers and scientists and dealing with philosophical questions arising from work in evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence.

Mind Making

Mind Making
Author: Patrick Roberts
Publisher: Patrick Roberts
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2009-12-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1449921884

"This book is ... not on philosophy, science or reality, but why and how minds might invent such things. The laws of mind, not the laws of gravity or electricity, but the methods of the mind that made these tools. It is not on brains of neurons, controllers or computers, but the logical possibilities of mind, from minimal axioms deducing all the kinds of mind that are and can ever be." Mind Making applies original artificial intelligence research to precisely define "mind." On that foundation, author Patrick Roberts advances ancient questions of free-will, reality and ethics. Deeper, the book offers a scientific method for resolving philosophical questions. "How to prove a model of mind? Only by testing an analogous combination of entirely mindless parts. Otherwise, you remain trapped in endless debates, never reaching certainties because you can't suspend your own mind. Twenty-five hundred years of futile verbal philosophical debate ends. Philosophy becomes an engineering problem: Machine mind m outperformed mind n in a statistically significant set of tests. n's assumptions about reality are wrong. m's are right and are complete because m contains no minds but those we made." To the psychologist, Mind Making offers a model of the human mind unburdened by the technicalities of neurons and chemistry. To the engineer, designs for more reliable, powerful machines. To the philosopher, proven ultimate reality. To the lay reader, better knowledge of his mind, and of his world as an effect of that mind. "These laws of mind are all that can be true for everyone, everywhere, forever. They can't be false because they made truth. Always true, you need never doubt them. In your mind, they are the last possessions you can lose. By comparison, all other knowledge is trivia."

How the Mind Works

How the Mind Works
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2009-06-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0393334775

Explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life.