Everything about Society Of Mind Theory totally explained
The Society of Mind is a book and theory of natural
intelligence as written and developed by
Marvin Minsky.
Minsky's model
In a step-by-step process, Minsky constructs a model of human intelligence which is built layer by layer from the interactions of simple parts called
s, which are themselves mindless. He describes the postulated
interactions as constituting a "society of mind", hence the title.
The book
The book, published in
1988, was the first comprehensive description of Minsky's society of mind theory, which he began developing in the early 1970s. It is composed of 270 self-contained essays which are divided into 30 general chapters. The book was also made into a CD-ROM version.
In the process of explaining the society of mind, Minsky introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts. Minsky develops theories about how processes such as
language,
memory, and
learning work but he also covers concepts such as
consciousness, the sense of
self, and
free will; Because of this many view
The Society of Mind as a work of philosophy.
The book wasn't written to prove anything specific about
AI or
cognitive science, and doesn't reference physical brain structures. Instead it's a collection of ideas about how the mind and thinking work on the conceptual level.
The theory
Minsky first started developing the theory with
Seymour Papert in the early 1970s. Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks.
Nature of mind
A core tenet of Minsky's philosophy is that "minds are what
brains do". The society of mind theory views the human mind and any other naturally evolved
cognitive systems as a vast society of individually simple processes known as
agents. These processes are the fundamental thinking entities from which minds are built, and together produce the many abilities we attribute to minds. The great power in viewing a mind as a society of agents, as opposed to as the consequence of some basic principle or some simple
formal system, is that different agents can be based on different types of processes with different purposes, ways of representing knowledge, and methods for producing results.
This idea is perhaps best summarized by the following quote:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Society Of Mind Theory'.
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