Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More

Description

This is the first book-length presentation and defense of a new theory of human and machine cognition, according to which human persons are superminds. Superminds are capable of processing information not only at and below the level of Turing machines (standard computers), but above that level (the "Turing Limit"), as information processing devices that have not yet been (and perhaps can never be) built, but have been mathematically specified; these devices are known as super-Turing machines or hypercomputers. Superminds, as explained herein, also have properties no machine, whether above or below the Turing Limit, can have. The present book is the third and pivotal volume in Bringsjord's supermind quartet; the first two books were What Robots Can and Can't Be (Kluwer) and AI and Literary Creativity (Lawrence Erlbaum). The final chapter of this book offers eight prescriptions for the concrete practice of AI and cognitive science in light of the fact that we are superminds. Front Matter....Pages i-xxx What is Supermentalism?....Pages 1-48 A Refutation of Penrose’s Gödelian Case....Pages 49-84 The Argument from Infinitary Reasoning....Pages 85-132 Supermentalism and the Fall of Church’s Thesis....Pages 133-170 The Zombie Attack on Computationalism....Pages 171-200 The Argument from Irreversibility....Pages 201-236 What are We? Where’d We Come From?....Pages 237-277 Supermentalism and the Practice of AI....Pages 278-307 Back Matter....Pages 309-342