How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon - Hardcover

Pollock, J

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262161133 ISBN 13: 9780262161138

Publisher: MIT Press, 1990

Synopsis

Building a person has been an elusive goal in artificial intelligence. This failure, John Pollock argues, is because the problems involved are essentially philosophical; what is needed for the construction of a person is a physical system that mimics human rationality. Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.In developing the philosophical superstructure for this bold undertaking, Pollock defends the conception of man as an intelligent machine and argues that mental states are physical states and persons are physical objects as described in the fable of Oscar, the self conscious machine.Pollock brings a unique blend of philosophy and artificial intelligence to bear on the vexing problem of how to construct a physical system that thinks, is self conscious, has desires, fears, intentions, and a full range of mental states. He brings together an impressive array of technical work in philosophy to drive theory construction in AI. The result is described in his final chapter on "cognitive carpentry.""A Bradford Book"

About this title

Synopsis:

Building a person has been an elusive goal in artificial intelligence. Pollock (philosophy and cognitive science, U. of Arizona) describes an original theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons. A sophisticated synthesis of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science

About the Author:

John L. Pollock is Regents Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0262161133
• ISBN 13: 9780262161138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204