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.
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978-0-09-980370-6 (9780099803706)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Part 1 Can a computer have a mind?: the Turing test; artificial intelligence; an AI approach to pleasure and pain; strong AI and Searle's Chinese room; hardware and software. Part 2 Algorithms and Turing machines: background to the algorithm concept; Turing's concept; binary coding of numerical data; the Church-Turing thesis; numbers other than natural numbers; the insolubility of Hilbert's problem; Church's lambda calculus. Part 3 Mathematics and reality: the land of Tor'Bled-Nam; real numbers; construction of the Mandelbrot set; Platonic reality of mathematical concepts. Part 4 Truth, proof and insight: Hilbert's programme for mathematics; Godel's theorem; Platonism of intuitionism?; Is the Mandelbrot set like non-recursive mathematics?. Part 5 The classical world: the status of the physical theory; Euclidean geometry; the dynamics of Galileo and Newton; the mechanistic world of Newtonian dynamics; Hamilton mechanics; Maxwell's electromagnetic theory; computablility and the wave equation; the Lorentz equation of motion - runaway particles; the special relativity of Einstein and Poincare; Einstein's general relativity; relativistic causality and determinism; computability in classical physics - where do we stand?; mass, matter and reality. Part 6 Quantum magic and quantum mystery: do philosophers need quantum theory?; problems with classical theory; probability amplitudes; Hilbert space; measurements; Spin and the Riemann sphere of states; objectivity and measurability of quantum states; photon spin; the paradox of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen; Schrodinger's equation - Dirac's equation; quantum field theory; Schrodinger's cat; various attitudes in existing quantum theory. Part 7 Cosmology and the arrow of time: the flow of time; the inexorable increase of entropy; the origin of low entropy in the universe; does the big bang explain the second law?; black holes; the structure of space - time singularities. Part 8 In search of quantum gravity: what lies behind the Weyl curvature hypothesis?; time-asymmetry in state-vector reduction; when does the state-vector reduce?. Part 9 Real brains and model brains: what are brains actually like?; where is the seat of consciousness?; split-brain experiments; information processing in the visual cortex; how do nerve signals work?; conputer models; parallel computers and the "oneness" of consciousness; is there a role for quantum mechanics in brain activity?. Part 10 Where lies the physics of the mind?: what are minds for?; what does consciousness actually do?; animal consciousness?; contact with Plato's world; a view of physical reality; tilings and quasicrystals; possible relevance to brain placticity; the time-delays of consciousness.
