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Invite Ten Leading-Edge Thinkers into Your Classroom.
Save more than 20% on complete set of 4 DVDs.
Complete set includes two Thinking Allowed VideoQuartets, One Single and One Innerwork.
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 | INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS (#Q424)
MIND AS SOCIETY
Marvin Minsky
Conscious intelligence may be viewed as a computer system composed of many smaller parallel processing programs. Marvin Minsky, Ph.D., is one of the acknowledged founders of the mathematical theory of computation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. He argues that understanding the individual as a very sophisticated machine actually affirms human dignity.
EXPERT SYSTEMS
Edward Feigenbaum and H. Penny Nii
Edward A. Feigenbaum, Ph.D., recognized as the "father of expert systems." He is co-editor of The Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and co-author, with H. Penny Nii, of The Rise of the Expert Company. Here they describe the use of "knowledge engineering" to create expert computer systems which function at levels of high competency in medicine, engineering, financial forecasting, manufacturing, quality control.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
John McCarthy
The science of artificial intelligence is a program to accomplish the Socratic injunction, "Know Thyself." John McCarthy, Ph.D., invented LISP, the major language today used for artificial intelligence. Here he discusses the history of artificial intelligence and the future role which non-monotonic reasoning will play in enabling computers to simulate the human mind.
INFINITY AND THE MIND
Rudy Rucker
The mind itself partakes of infinity, as does every object in the physical world. Rudy Rucker, Ph.D., is author of many books including Mind Tools, The Fourth Dimension and Infinity and the Mind. Rucker hypothesizes that conscioussness need not be limited to human beings or even to living organisms.
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| COMPUTERS AND THE MIND (#Q274)
THE CULT OF INFORMATION
Theodore Roszak
Our real educational and cultural needs are in danger of becoming lost in the erroneous fascination with the information processing model of the mind. One of America's foremost social critics, Theodore Roszak, Ph.D., author of The Making of the Counter-Culture, Eco-Psychology and The Cult of Information, delivers a scathing indictment of the over-selling of computer and high-tech ideology to the American public.
TOOLS FOR THOUGHT
Howard Rheingold
The revolution in personal computer use has yet to occur, according to Howard Rheingold, author of Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology and editor of Whole Earth Review. Rheingold says that in the next ten years personal computers will be sufficiently powerful to realize the dreams of many innovators who write about "fantasy amplifiers," "expert systems" and computerized villages.
MIND OVER MACHINE
Hubert Dreyfus
Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph.D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. Dr. Dreyfus, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, is author of What Computers Can't Do and co-author of Mind Over Machine.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMPUTERS
William Whitson
William Whitson, Ph.D., is currently involved in creating computer databases containing the world's great ethical and humanitarian teachings. Dr. Whitson, a foreign affairs specialist and former Rand Corporation executive, describes the role of computers in the democritization of knowledge, claiming that "gaming" capabilities once limited to the military and industrial elite are now available to those seeking world peace.
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Bernard J. Baars
HOW CONSCIOUSNESS FUNCTIONS (#W009)
 Consciousness was dismissed as a topic for scientific discussion in psychology for over fifty years. Now things have changed. Bernard J. Baars presents a model of consciousness as a global workspace and suggests that the contours of consciousness can be understood by contrasting conscious and unconscious events. Generally, the unconscious processes work far more efficiently that those that are conscious.
 Baars points out that we are conscious only of the goals of our actions and not of the thousands of miniscule steps that are necessary for even the simplest of muscular movements. He describes the "self" as a concept that represents the continuity of all the conscious and unconscious processes of the mind.
Bernard J. Baars, Ph.D., is author of The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology and A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. He is also editor of Consciousness and Cognition, an academic journal, and a professor of psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. (A Ninety-minute InnerWork video.)
John Searle, Ph.D.
MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE (#S493)
 | Will computers ever achieve consciousness? John Searle, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at U.C. Berkeley and author of Intentionality and Minds, Brains and Science. He challenges the notion that the human mind operates like a computer, pointing out that intentionality and other human faculties are not achievable through artificial intelligence. (A 30-minute Thinking Allowed Single) |
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