The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics - Hardcover

Penrose, Roger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198519737 ISBN 13: 9780198519737

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

The proponents of artificial intelligence want to prove that it is only a matter of time before computers will be doing everything that a human mind can do. They take it for granted that pleasure and pain, the appreciation of beauty and humour, consciousness and free will are capacities that a computer will display once the appropriate programs of algorithms have been developed. Some disagree, because although electronic computers can calculate very rapidly, that does not make them understand what they are doing any more than, for example, an abacus does. The author puts forward his view that there is some facet of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. He shows the physical and mathematical ideas that are the background to his argument - from Turing machines, algorithms and the Chinese room, via quantum mechanics, cosmology and relativity to the structure of the brain, inspiration and consciousness itself.

About this title

Review:

perhaps the most engaging and creative tour of modern physics that has ever been written (Sunday Times)

About the Author:

About the Author Roger Penrose is the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize which he shared with with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0198519737
• ISBN 13: 9780198519737
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 479