Product Description

The author of this book claims that brain, body and world are united in a complex and extended computational activity. The book weaves these several threads into one and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the tools and techniques needed to make sense of the embodied mind. Clark brings together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant psychology and artificial intelligence to address a broad range of adaptive behaviours, from cockroach locomotion to the role of linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #379312 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 291 pages

Customer Reviews

probably the most readable and reasonable book on mind-body
Clark develops in a very clear way the main threads of contemporary mind-body research. He argues for a non-dogmatic approach to the very difficult questions that epistemology, brain research and artificial life have put in the last twenty years. His position is with those who are not trying to explain everything from a single source or with single set of tools. Not reductionism, not holism or not only emergence or cognitivism or connectionism. Still, he sees the advantages of each theory and he gives a very subtle and insightful overview of what each strand has to contribute. I have read maybe twenty books on the subject in the past few months, from Varela to Jackendorf and from Minsky to Harré, but only Clark seems to be able to make the field transparent and coherent. If he sometimes loses in boldness, he certainly wins in promise. A book that should become a compulsary reading for anyone who wants to be introduced in the field.