SOME RECENT COGNITIVE BOOKS Matjaž Gams Institut Jožef Stefan

LITERATURE?  Google sites with “cognitive” 355 “cognitive book”  sites “intelligence”, 175 “weak intelligence”.  Amazon.com 5345 “cognitive” 3240 in , 287 in 2001, 9155 with “intelligence”  Many!

ENCIKLOPEDIAE  MIT's Cognitive Sciences Encyclopedia Ur. Robert Wilson, Frank Keil MITECS 500 concepts  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  Osherson, Invitation to CS  Gregory, The Oxford companion to the mind  Gazzaniga, The new cognitive neurosciences  Arbib, The handbook of brain theory..

EASY-HARD QUESTION  EASY: see, copy, make (child)  HARD: explain why, how, meta-level, Why are humans intelligent?

A. Da m asio, The feeling of what happens, HC, 386 str, 1999  neurology, brain anatomy and physiology, hardware-biology-medicine several new insights on feelings, feeling- functions and particularly on the feeling of self  The problem is related to the mind-body problem, the other-minds problem and the zombie problem. When asleep, are we zombies? Where is our mind?

M. Tomasello, The origins of human cognition, HUP, 248 str,  a comparative study of behavioral, social, conceptual and communicative capabilities of apes and children trying to establish differences and emergence of human properties like language and feelings, mind- read (reading what others have in mind), imitation capabilities etc.  major mind capabilities are related to fully functional language capabilities..

G.M. Edelman, G. Tononi, A universe of consciousness, BB, 274 pps,  a Nobel Prize winner - nature and biology rule also the mind and the brain. Functionalism and reductionalism, i.e. computers, are not sufficient to explain consciousness. In this book, however, Edelman and Tononi present a network supposed to express feelings. The network indeed resembles ideas about distribution, sub-processes and re-entrant models, but the essential difference seems to be missing.

J. Fodor, The mind doesn’t work that way, MIT, 126 str, On e of the classical opponents of the strong AI. His scientific work is based on analyzing human properties and language, similar to Chomsky. Chomsky (and later Gazzaniga) showed that language is strongly related to a complex inborn structure in the brain, which seems to have some universal properties related to our universe. Fodor extends these theories claiming (like Angell) that we as children just learn and pop names on top of meanings already in our heads. However, there is also the hard version of this theory – these properties seem too complex to be learned or created by normal learning processes.

NC. McGinn, The Mysterious Flame, BB, 242 pps, 1999  Suggests that our brains might not be able to comprehend the hard question. Indeed, there are two common arguments: 1) it might be too difficult to understand how our brains and minds work; and 2) due to the well-recognized problem of self-reference we might not be able to understand ourselves. Surrender??

R. Kurzweil, The age of spiritual achines: When computers exceed human intelligence, Viking, NY, 376 pps,  Optimistic, machine intelligence will surpass ours, humans will merge with computers and AI, and involve into postbiological cognitive machines thus integrating the better of the both worlds, biological and electronic. F irst artificial bones, knees, hearts, now we continue with artificial hearing and sight. In future, our mental capabilities will be supported by digital machines, either through connections to human nerve tissue or by direct implants. In this way we could get direct access to mass computer storing capabilities, achieve top-speed computing etc. As a result, computer artificial intelligence will merge with human intelligence, thus blurring the line in between.

M. Gams: Weak intelligence: Through the principle and paradox of multiple knowledge, Advances in computation: Theory and practice, Volume 6, Nova science publishers, inc., NY, ISBN , 245 pps,  Classical science + multiple knowledge = science about intelligence  Can we prove it?

WEAK INTELLIGENCE MULTIPLE KNOWLEDGE  Multiple processes with multiple interaction  Better accuracy  Stronger than classical science or the Turing machine

CONSEQUENCES  People are smarter than computers  Two worlds : material world and the world ob intelligent processing  Like two physical worlds – macro and micro world  Heisenberg’s principle – the principle of multiple knowledge  Multiple universes?  Intelligent machines – multiple!

CONFIRMATIONS  Wegner – interaction machine  Formal analysis  Simulated models  Machine learning (theory, measurements)  Humans (history, groups)  Multiple world theory

DEBATE  Interesting  Many attempts – no solution  The principle is valid?  We are masters of the universe?