An entertaining introduction to the clashes between philosophy and AI over the last 70 years, from claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, to arguments about cognitive architecture and ChatGPT.Now updated to include the latest developments in AI, this is an exploration of the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. The arguments are organized into four central AI wars, showing how...

A 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThis book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence.From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explain...

Flipping convention on its head, Eric Dietrich argues that science uncovers awe-inspiring, enduring mysteries, while religion, regarded as the source for such mysteries, is a biological phenomenon. Just like spoken language, Dietrich shows that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Science is the source of perplexing yet beautiful mysteries, however natural the search for answers may be to human existence.Excellent Beauty undoes our misconception of scientific inquiry as...

Recent work in cognitive science, much of it placed in opposition to a computational view of the mind, has argued that the concept of representation and theories based on that concept are not sufficient to explain the details of cognitive processing. These attacks on representation have focused on the importance of context sensitivity in cognitive processing, on the range of individual differences in performance, and on the relationship between minds and the bodies and environments in whic...

The New York Times bestselling author explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail.What we read in the news today is full of subjectivity, half-truths, and blatant falsehoods; and thus it is more necessary now than ever to safeguard the truth with facts. In his provocative new book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne aims to do exactly that in the arena of religion. In clear, dispassionate detail he explai...

If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what’s true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness answers all these questions in lavish detail, without complex jargon. A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics. Topics include free will, the nature of the universe, the meaning...

Three of the most original thinkers of our time explore issues that call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life.• A wide-ranging investigation of the ecology of inner and outer space, the role of chaos theory in the dynamics of human creation, and the rediscovery of traditional wisdom.In this book of "trialogues," the late psychedelic visionary and shamanologist Terence McKenna, acclaimed biologist and originator of the morphogenetic fi...

Cognitive science is a cross-disciplinary enterprise devoted to understanding the nature of the mind. In recent years, investigators in philosophy, psychology, the neurosciences, artificial intelligence, and a host of other disciplines have come to appreciate how much they can learn from one another about the various dimensions of cognition. The result has been the emergence of one of the most exciting and fruitful areas of inter-disciplinary research in the history of science. This volume...

An updated exploration of the latest scientific research on how the brain makes us believers or skeptics."[Shermer] is uniquely equipped to carry out this comprehensive analysis of the nature of belief. . . . Insightful, intriguing, and enlightening." — American ScientistIn this scientific investigation of God and faith, bestselling author and Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer offers fresh insi...

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The...

Big ideas in the mathematics curriculum for older school students, especially those that are hard to learn and hard to teach, are covered in this book. It will be a first port of call for research about teaching big ideas for students from 9-19 and also has implications for a wider range of students. These are the ideas that really matter, that students get stuck on, and that can be obstacles to future learning. It shows how students learn, why they sometimes get things wrong, and the stre...

“Carter Phipps brilliantly expands our understanding of evolution by showing us that a new science is emerging—one that will holistically integrate our understanding of consciousness, cosmology, and evolution.”—Deepak ChopraBlending cutting-edge ideas with incisive spiritual insights, Evolutionaries is the first popular presentation of an emerging school of thought called “evolutionary spirituality.” Carter Phipps, the former executive editor of EnlightenNext magazine, asse...