Table of Contents

One: Frontal Assault.- 1. Structure and Overview.- 2. Underlying Themes and Methods.- 3. Cognitive Dissonance.- Two: Zombies and Their Look-Alikes.- 1. An Embarrassment to Our Discipline.- 2. Building A Zombie.- 3. Zombies, Functions, and Mathematical Mysticism.- Three: Information, Complexity, and Representation.- 1. Information is Physical.- 2. Measuring Information.- 3. Grounding Representation.- 4. GöDEL DE-MYSTIFIED.- 5. Platonic Hell.- Four: A Rose, by any other Name (or Description).- 1. Sensations and Descriptons—Preliminaries.- 2. Getting Sensations from Descriptions.- 3. ‘Macmary’.- 4. A Tasty Side Note.- 5. The Third Person Problem.- Five: Functional Systems.- 1. Liberal Functionausm.- 2. Logical Depth Measures.- 3. Choosing Modules by Minimising Complexity.- 4. Broader Concerns about Functional Decomposition.- Six: Self Models.- 1. Supervenience and Levels of Explanation.- 2. Prelude to a Theory of Consciousness.- 3. Troubles with ‘Mental States’.- 4. Capturing Consciousness.- 5. Inside the Self Model.- Seven: Schrödinger’s Cat is Dead.- 1. Two Problems of Interpretation.- 2. Quantum Formalism in a Nutshell.- 3. Consistent Histories.- 4. The Classical Approximation.- 5. Interactive Decoherence.- 6. Is This a Fapp?.- 7. mind—what’s QM Got to Do With it?.- Eight: Building Conscious Data Structures.- 1. Information and the Self Model.- 2. Representation and Function in Neural Systems.- 3. Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory.- 4. Circuits of the Self Model.- Nine: Chaos, Computabiltty, and Real Life.- 1. Too Much of a Good Thing?.- 2. Models and Computation.- 3. Dynamical Systems.- 4. Chaotic Systems.- 5. Extended Computabjlity.- 6. Computability and Chaotic Analogue Systems.- 7. Chaos And Cognition In Real Life.- Ten: My ‘Hidden’Agenda.- 1. What Good is a Theory of Mend And Body?.- 2. A Partial Picture In Soft Focus.- 3. Philosophical Futures.- References.

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Reviews

Professional endorsements:
`You've read the rest, now try the best. Mulhauser takes on a wild safari tour of the outer limits of mind science. There are a lot of dangerous ideas out there; many a good mind has come back worse for the encounter. Mulhauser's technical sophistication and philosophical sensitivity make him the ideal guide. No metaphysical snake-oil here; just unswerving good sense at the frontiers of cognitive science.'
Tim van Gelder, University of Melbourne
`One of the first serious applications of algorithmic information theory; fun to read!'
G.J. Chaitin, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
`Though I still regard myself to live in what Mulhauser calls `Platonic Heaven' (he would place me - as someone who believes that my mental gymnastics go beyond the physical and the computable - in `Platonic Hell'), reading his book was an absolute joy. It is a remarkable blend of technical know-how, smooth prose, and stimulating examples. This book can give readers command over the relevant formal landscape, while simultaneously engaging them in good old-fashioned philosophical reflection.'
Selmer Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
`We all know that chaos, neural nets, and consciousness must be connected. Mulhauser's challenging book gives us the first thought-out account of what the connections could be.'
Adam Morton, University of Bristol
`It is engagingly written, and Mulhauser is well informed, acute, and enthusiastic.'
Robert Kirk in Philosophical Books, July 2000