Additions to the Bibliography on Mind and Consciousness
compiled by Piero Scaruffi
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Talbot Michael: THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE (Harper, 1991)Tarski Alfred: LOGIC, SEMANTICS, METAMATHEMATICS (Clarendon, 1956)Tarski created the first model theory for quantified predicate logic. Taylor Charles: THE EXPLANATION OF BEHAVIOR (Routledge & Kegan, 1964)Taylor, Timothy: THE ARTIFICIAL APE (MacMillan, 2010)Click here for the full review Tegmark, Max: "Life 3.0" (2017)Click here for the full review Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre: "The Phenomenon of Man" (1955)Click here for the full review Thagard Paul: MIND (MIT Press, 1996)Thelen Esther & Smith Linda: A DYNAMIC SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITION AND ACTION (MIT Press, 1994)Click here for the full review Thom Rene': SEMIOPHYSICS (Addison-Wesley, 1990)Thom rediscovers an ancient theory of Aristotle, which bases Mathematics on the concept of continuum, rather than on the generative properties of numbers, and shows that this approach better suits the biological domain. Thom Rene': MATHEMATICAL MODELS OF MORPHOGENESIS (Horwood, 1983)Thom takes issue with general systems theory. A system is the content of a region of space-time, but, topologically speaking, this is not a set of objects. Thom models the seat of the morphogenetic process into domains of different attractors, separated by shock waves. Shock wave surfaces are singularities called "catastrophes". A catastrophe is a state beyond which the system is detroyed in an irreversible manner. In a 4-dimensional world there are 7 types of elementary catastrophes. Elementary catastrophes include: "fold", destruction of an attractor which is captured by a lesser potential; "cusp", bufurcation of an attractor into two attractors; etc. From these singularities, more and more complex catastrophes unfold, until the final catastrophe. Thom's immediate goal was embryology: he proves that the adult organism is a product of the unfolding of the dynamics which is already in the egg. All morphogenesis is due to a conflict between attractors. What catastrophe theory does is to "geometrize" the concept of "conflict". Incidentally, catastrophe theory provides a mathematical justification for Waddington's "epigenetic landscape". Applications to Physics, Linguistics and Biology are also reviewed. Thom Rene': STRUCTURAL STABILITY AND MORPHOGENESIS (Benjamin, 1975)Every physical form is represented by a mathematical quantity called "attractor" in a space of internal variables. If the attractor satisfies the mathematical property of being "structurally stable", thenthe physical form is the stable form of an object. Changes in form, or morphogenesis, is due to the capture of the attractors of the old form by the attractors of the new form. This is the process called "catastrophe". All morphogenesis is due to the conflict between attractors. Thom's basic tenet is that any system is associated to a "catastrophe set", a set of the values that would cause an irreversible change in its form, a "morphogenesis". Thom's is a purely geometric theory of morphogenesis, His laws are independent of the substance, structure and internal forces of the system. .LP Elementary catastrophes are "local accidents". The form of an object is due to the accumulation of many elementary catastrophes. Local forms are defined by closed sets of points called attractors. Each attractor defines a "basin". Thom proves that in a 4-dimensional space there exist only 7 elementary types of catastrophe. The difference between static and metabolic form is due to the nature of the attractor: static form is due to an attractor of the space of internal states. Static form is a solid. Metabolic form is smoke. Thom relates catastrophe theory to Physics and to Information Theory. Then applies catastrophe theory to biological morphogenesis. Thom thinks that the fundamental problem of biology is a topological problem: how form is built. The biochemistry of life should therefore be explained by morphogenesis, not the other way around. He goes on to propose a detailed model of the global evolution of a cell (division, mitosis, meiosis, etc.) Death is easily defined: the trasformation of a metabolic field into a static field. But life would require an "infinite" number of local transformations in order to achieve the anabolic transformation from static to metabolic. Furthermore, once life occurs it is not clear why it stops at all: the underlying processes are reversible, therefore life should continue forever. Thom Rene: APOLOGIE DU LOGOS (Hachette, 1990)Thompson D'Arcy: ON GROWTH AND FORM (Cambridge University Press, 1917)Click here for the full review Tipler Frank: THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY (Doubleday, 1994)Samuel Todes: BODY AND WORLD (MIT Press, 2001)Tomasello, Michael: THE CULTURAL ORIGINS OF HUMAN COGNITION (Harvard University Press, 1999)Toffoli Tommaso & Margolus Norman: CELLULAR AUTOMATA MACHINES (MIT Press, 1987)Many chapters detail applications of cellular automata, particularly to Physics. Tononi, Giulio: "Phi, A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul" (Pantheon, 2012)Touretzky David: THE MATHEMATICS OF INHERITANCE SYSTEMS (Morgan Kaufman, 1986)Touretzky argues that there is a natural partial ordering of defaults in inheritance systems that is implicit in the hierarchical structure of the inheritance graph: the inferential distance, which determines subclass/superclass ordering (a class is a subclass of another class if there is an inheritance path from the former to the latter). Touretzky claims that default rules about subclasses should override default rules about the superclasses that contain them. Subclasses override superclasses. The best path in a network is the one that minimizes inferential distance (as opposed to the shortest path method of traditional inheritance systems, i.e., the shortest proof is not always the best proof). Trefil, James S.: Are We Unique?; A Scientist Explores the Unparalleled Intelligence of the Human Mind (Wiley, 1997)Trehub Arnold: THE COGNITIVE BRAIN (MIT Press, 1991)Trivers, Robert: SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Benjamin/Cummings, 1985)Tulving Endel & Craik Fergus: THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MEMORY (Oxford Univ Press, 2000)Tulving Endel: ORGANIZATION OF MEMORY (Academic Press, 1972)In a subsequent paper Tulving proposed to distinguish different memory systems based on the following characteristics: kinds of information they process, operations that can be performed, neural substrates that are affected, timing of appearance in phylogenetic and ontogenetic development, and format of representation. A memory system can therefore be defined in terms of its brain mechanisms, the information it processes and the principles of its operation. Tulving Endel: ELEMENTS OF EPISODIC MEMORY (Oxford Univ Press, 1983)Turbayne Colin Murray: THE MYTH OF METAPHOR (Yale Univ Press, 1962)Descartes and Newton founded modern science on the basis of a metaphysics of mechanism. Turbayne presents a different metaphor: he treats events in nature as if they compose a language, and the world as a universal language. Turchin Valentin: PHENOMENON OF SCIENCE (Columbia Univ Press, 1977)Turing Alan Mathison: MORPHOGENESIS (North-Holland, 1992)Turing devised a model to generate stable patterns: X catalyzes itself: X diffuses slowly X catalyzes Y: Y diffuses quickly Y inhibits X Y may or may not catalyze or inhibit itself Some reactions might be able to create ordered spatial schemes from disordered schemes. The function of genes is purely catalytic: they catalyze the production of new morphogenes, which will catalyze more morphogenes until eventually form emerges. Turing Alan: PURE MATHEMATICS (Elsevier Science, 1992)In 1936 with his seminal paper "On computable numbers" Alan Turing defined computation as the formal manipulation of symbols by the application of formal rules. A Turing machine is capable of performing all the operations that are needed to perform logical calculus: read current symbols, process them, write new symbols, examine new symbols. Depending on the symbol that it is reading and on the state in which it is, the Turing machine decides whether it should move on, backwards, write a symbol, change state or stop. Turing's machine is an automatic formal system: a system to automatically compute an alphabet of symbols according to a finite set of rules. The universal machine is a Turing's machine capable of simulating all possible Turing's machines. It contains a sequence of symbols that describes the specific Turing machine that must be simulated. For each computational procedure the universal machine is capable of simulating a machine that performs that procedure. The universal machine is therefore capable of computing any computational function. Turing Alan: MECHANICAL INTELLIGENCE (Elsevier Science, 1992)In "Computing machinery and intelligence" (1950) Turing proposed a famous test to verify whether a machine is intelligent or not: ask the same questions of a machine and a human being, without being told which one is which, and if you can't tell which one is which, then the machine is intelligent. Turner Raymond: LOGICS FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Ellis Horwood, 1985)Turner, Scott: THE EXTENDED ORGANISM (Harvard Univ Press, 2000)Turner Scott: THE CREATIVE PROCESS (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994)The architecture employs for classes of goals: thematic goals (development of the story theme, point, moral), concistency goals (plausibility constraints), drama goals (artistic quality) and presentation goals (effective style). Turvey Michael: PERCEIVING, ACTION AND KNOWING (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977)Tversky Amos, Kahnemann Daniel & Slovic Paul: JUDGMENT UNDER UNCERTAINTY (Cambridge University Press, 1982)People employ heuristics to answer questions such as: what is the probability that an object belongs to a given class? that an event originates from a given event? that a process will generate a given event? Heuristics that affect the decision include prior probabilities of outcome, sample size, predictability; but they are not reflected in the theory of probability. At the same time, deviations of subjective probability from objective probability are systematic. Experiments show that people predict by similarity (representativeness). Experiments also show that causal inferences have greater efficacy than diagnostic inferences. Tversky criticizes probabilistic reasoning as a way to describe human thinking as it is subject to "framing effects". Tversky & Shafer offered a "constructivist" theory of probabilities in which probabilities describe an ideal situation that can still be related to the real situation. Tye Michael: THE METAPHYSICS OF MIND (Cambridge University Press, 1989)Tye thinks that the phenomenal aspects of experience ("what it is like") are unrelated to their representational contents. Tye Michael: THE IMAGERY DEBATE (MIT Press, 1991)The main flaw of the book (besides misrepresenting some of the ancient thinkers) is that it neglects too much of modern experimental research and theoretical approaches to the field for a book whose title is "the imagery debate". Thus his attempt at unifying the two main schools ends up sounding a bit amateurish. Tye Michael: TEN PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (MIT Press, 1995) |
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