Author: Eric Baum
Date: 10:46:35 02/02/04
New Book: What is Thought? Eric B. Baum MIT Press 478p *What is Thought?* proposes a model that explains how mind is equivalent to execution of an computer program, addressing aspects such as understanding, meaning, creativity, language, reasoning, learning, and consciousness, that is consistent with extensive data from a variety of fields, and that makes empirical predictions. Meaning is the computational exploitation of the compact underlying structure of the world, and mind is execution of an evolved program that is all about meaning. Occam's Razor, as formalized in the recent computer science literature, is explained and extrapolated to argue that meaning results from evolving a compact enough program behaving effectively in the world; such a program can only be compact by virtue of code reuse, factoring into interacting modules that capture real concepts and are reused metaphorically. For a variety of reasons, including arguments based on complexity theory, developmental biology, evolutionary programming, ethology, and simple inspection, this compact Occam program is most naturally seen to be in the DNA, rather than the brain. Learning and reasoning are then fast and almost automatic because they are constrained by the DNA programming to deal only with meaningful quantities. Evolution itself is argued to exploit meaning in related ways and thus to speed itself up in ways analogous to how it speeds our learning and reasoning. An important part of this exposition is to describe how understanding is equivalent to exploiting underlying structure of problems. The games of CHESS and GO, for example, have huge state spaces -- there are many possible arrangements of the pieces -- yet are defined by relatively compact sets of rules, giving them structure. To gain insight into such questions, *What is Thought?* discusses the approaches of computer science programs (such as Deep Blue and more recent chess programs based on search and evaluate), artificial intelligence programs (such as PARADISE for chess and the expert system approach to Go), as well as the thought processes of humans and the computations of evolved programs on a variety of problems. New techniques for evolutionary computing are described and shown to result in surprising, human like performance on problems such as Rubik's cube and some planning problems that foil AI approaches yet have human-exploitable structure. The origin and nature of language is discussed within the context of this picture. Why it took so long for evolution to produce language is discussed. Words are seen as labels for meaningful computational modules. Using the abilility to pass along programs through speech, humans have made cumulative progress in constructing, as part of their minds, useful computational modules built on top of the ones supplied by evolution. The difference between human and chimp intelligence is largely in this additional programming, and thus can be regarded as due to better nurturing. The many aspects of consciousness are also naturally and consistently understood in this context. For example, although the brain is a distributed system and the mind is a complex program composed of many modules, the unitary self emerges naturally as a reification (manifestation) of the interest of the genes. Qualia (the sense of experience of sensations such as pain or redness) have exactly the appropriate nature and meaning that evolution coded in the DNA so that the compact program behaves effectively. No previous familiarity with computer science (or other fields) is assumed-- *What is Thought?* presents a pedagogical survey of the relevant background for its arguments. ----------------------------------------------- Best price right now is at Barnesandnoble.com (BN.com) $32, with free shipping. To buy this book: Barnes and Noble.com: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2WI405VPJU&isbn=0262025485&itm=17 Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262025485/qid=1074532277/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-6265544-0286451?v=glance&s=books MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=AF8A6531-E5E9-4710-A781-CA47C6B64621&ttype=2&tid=9978 --------------------------------------- >From the back cover: "This book is the deepest, and at the same time the most commonsensical, approach to the problem of mind and thought that I have read. The approach is from the point of view of computer science, yet Baum has no illusions about the progress which has been made within that field. He presents the many technical advances which have been made -- the book will be enormously useful for this aspect alone -- but refuses to play down their glaring inadequacies. He also presents a road map for getting further and makes the case that many of the apparently 'deep' philosophical problems such as free will may simply evaporate when one gets closer to real understanding." --Philip W. Anderson, Joseph Henry Professor of Physics, Princeton University, 1977 Nobel Laureate in Physics "Eric Baum's book is a remarkable achievement. He presents a novel thesis -- that the mind is a program whose components are semantically meaningful modules -- and explores it with a rich array of evidence drawn from a variety of fields. Baum's argument depends on much of the intellectual core of computer science, and as a result the book can also serve as a short course in computer science for non-specialists. To top it off, *What is Thought?* is beautifully written and will be at least as clear and accessible to the intelligent lay public as *Scientific American*." --David Waltz, Director, Center for Computational Learning Systems, Columbia University "What's great about this book is the detailed way in which Baum shows the explanatory power of a few ideas, such as compression of information, the mind and DNA as computer programs, and various concepts in computer science and learning theory such as simplicity, recursion, and position evaluation. *What is Thought?* is a terrific book, and I hope it gets the wide readership it deserves." --Gilbert Harman, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University "There is no problem more important, or more daunting, than discovering the structure and processes behind human thought. *What is Thought?* is an important step towards finding the answer. A concise summary of the progress and pitfalls to date gives the reader the context necessary to appreciate Baum's important insights into the nature of cognition." --Nathan Myhrvold, Managing Director, Intellectual Ventures, and former Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft
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