July 5, 2012
ARISTOTLE'S LAPTOP
Vol. 1 of the World Scientific Series on Machine Consciousness 
ARISTOTLE’S LAPTOP The Discovery of our Informational Mind by Igor Aleksander (Imperial College London, UK) & Helen Morton (Imperial College London, UK)
Aristotle’s convincing philosophy is likely to have shaped (even indirectly) many of our current beliefs, prejudices and attitudes to life. This includes the way in which our mind (that is, our capacity to have private thoughts) appears to elude a scientific description. This book is about a scientific ingredient that was not available to Aristotle: the science of information. Would the course of the philosophy of the mind have been different had Aristotle pronounced that the matter of mind was information? This “mind is information” assertion is often heard in contemporary debates, and this book explores the verities and falsehoods of this proposition.
Contents: Information: The New Kid on the Block Shannon (19162001) Little Boxes that Reason and Learn Networks with Internal States Information Integration: The Measure of Consciousness Automata and Information Integration The Philosophy of Information The Structure of the Informational Mind Language and Information The Secret State: Freud and Automata Detractors and Open Minds Conclusion: Aristotle’s Laptop
Readership: Philosophers, scientists and those interested in consciousness and machine consciousness; readers of multidisciplinary books on machine analyses of consciousness.