How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon [Hardcover]

John Pollock (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262161133 | ISBN-13: 978-0262161138 | Publication Date: December 8, 1989 | Edition: 1st Ed.

Building a person has been an elusive goal in artificial intelligence. This failure, John Pollock argues, is because the problems involved are essentially philosophical; what is needed for the construction of a person is a physical system that mimics human rationality. Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.

In developing the philosophical superstructure for this bold undertaking, Pollock defends the conception of man as an intelligent machine and argues that mental states are physical states and persons are physical objects as described in the fable of Oscar, the self conscious machine.

Pollock brings a unique blend of philosophy and artificial intelligence to bear on the vexing problem of how to construct a physical system that thinks, is self conscious, has desires, fears, intentions, and a full range of mental states. He brings together an impressive array of technical work in philosophy to drive theory construction in AI. The result is described in his final chapter on "cognitive carpentry."

A Bradford Book

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Pollock is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 189 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1st Ed. edition (December 8, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262161133
• ISBN-13: 978-0262161138
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,328,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you know the author, maybe you'll like the book, December 26, 2000

By 

baylor (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon (Hardcover)

Quick check - do you *love* to use terms like de se, de re, defeasible reasoning, supervenient, attenuated rational functionalism, intentionality, individuating, Tversky's representativeness heuristic, rebutting defeater, doxastic assumption, physicalism and simpliciter? If so, we _might_ have a book for you here

i'm not sure how to describe this book. i realize my rating (1 star) is harsh, so let me justify it by saying that this book appeals to a very small niche, and if you're not in that niche (which i am not), this book will probably bore you to tears

Although Pollock claims to be a philosopher, having read the book i'm going to guess that his specialty is symbolic logic. Pollock, obviously an active academic, talks exclusively about formal logic - "building a person" means only the ability to do formal logic. Like many boring academic works, it is chock full of citations, and the author seems to assume that you've read most of them. Actually, i get the feeling that the author expects that you wrote some of them, as the writing tone reminds me of an email pulled out of the end of a long, detailed flame war.

People who follow arguments in formal logic closely (i.e., other logicians) might find something interesting in this book. However, since i know relatively little about the current state of formal logic, this book went right over my head. As such, i'm really not qualified to say anything about the book other than, if you aren't part of the niche this book is targeting, you probably won't like it