Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Andy Clark

MIT Press, Jan 23, 1998 - Psychology - 292 pages

Brain, body, and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational activity. In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and techniques needed to make sense of the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. Clark brings together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant psychology, and artificial intelligence. He addresses a broad range of adaptive behaviors, from cockroach locomotion to the role of linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought.

Contents

• Autonomous Agents Walking on the Moon: 11
• 12 The Robots Parade: 12
• 13 Minds without Models: 21
• 14 Niche Work: 21
• 15 A Feel for Detail?: 23
• 16 The Refined Robot: 27
• The Situated Infant: 31
• 22 Action Loops: 32
• 23 Development without Blueprints: 35
• 24 Soft Assembly and Decentralized Solutions: 38
• 25 Scaffolded Minds: 41
• 26 Mind as Mirror vs Mind as Controller: 43
• Mind and World The Plastic Frontier: 49
• 33 Leaning on the Environment: 55
• 34 Planning and Problem Solving: 59
• 35 After the Filing Cabinet: 63
• Collective Wisdom SlimeMoldStyle: 67
• 42 Two Forms of Emergence: 69
• 43 Sea and Anchor Detail: 72
• 44 The Roots of Harmony: 73
• 45 Modeling the Opportunistic Mind: 76
• A Capsule History: 79
• Explaining the Extended Mind: 81
• Evolving Robots: 81
• 52 An Evolutionary Backdrop: 82
• 53 Genetic Algorithms as Exploratory Tools: 83
• 54 Evolving Embodied Intelligence: 84
• 55 SIM Wars Get Real: 88
• 56 Understanding Evolved Embodied Embedded Agents: 91
• Emergence and Explanation: 97
• 63 Dynamical Systems and Emergent Explanation: 107
• 64 Of Mathematicians and Engineers: 113
• 65 Decisions Decisions: 117
• 66 The Brain Bites Back: 121
• The Neuroscientific Image: 123
• 72 The Monkeys Fingers: 124
• From Feature Detection to Tuned Filters6: 127
• 74 Neural Control Hypotheses: 130
• 75 Refining Representation: 135
• Being Computing Representing: 137
• 83 ActionOriented Representation: 143
• 84 Programs Forces and Partial Programs: 147
• 85 Beating Time: 154
• 86 Continuous Reciprocal Causation: 157
• 87 RepresentationHungry Problems: 160
• 88 Roots: 164
• 89 Minimal Representationalism: 170
• Further: 171
• Minds and Markets: 173
• 92 Lost in the Supermarket: 174
• 94 Inside the Machine: 180
• 95 Designer Environments: 184
• Language The Ultimate Artifact: 187
• 102 Beyond Communication: 188
• 103 Trading Spaces: 194
• The Mangrove Effect: 201
• 105 The Fit of Language to Brain: 205
• 106 Where Does the Mind Stop and the Rest of the World Begin?: 207
• Minds Brains and Tuna A Summary in Brine: 213
• A Brain Speaks: 217
• Notes: 223
• Bibliography: 243
• Index: 259

About the author

Andy Clark is Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again; A Bradford Book
• Author: Andy Clark
• Publisher: MIT Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0262260522, 9780262260527
• Length: 292 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition