ENGLISH

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

By Roger Penrose

Book information

Publisher
Random House UK
Year
1994
ISBN
0099771705, 9780099771708
LCC
Q335 .P415 1989
Open Library ID
OL19979604M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
26 MB (27498798 bytes)
Pages
479\479
Topic
Computers
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

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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