7.6 /10 1 Votes
Country England Publication date November 9, 1989 Originally published 9 November 1989 Page count 480 Genre Artificial intelligence | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 480 Publisher Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-851973-7 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subject Artificial Intelligence Media type Print (hardcover and paperback) Similar Roger Penrose books, Physics books, Cybernetics books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics is a 1989 book by mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose.
Contents
Penrose argues that human consciousness is non-algorithmic, and thus is not capable of being modeled by a conventional Turing machine, which includes a digital computer. Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function.
The majority of the book is spent reviewing, for the scientifically minded layreader, a plethora of interrelated subjects such as Newtonian physics, special and general relativity, the philosophy and limitations of mathematics, quantum physics, cosmology, and the nature of time. Penrose intermittently describes how each of these bears on his developing theme: that consciousness is not "algorithmic". Only the later portions of the book address the thesis directly.
Overview
Penrose states that his ideas on the nature of consciousness are speculative, and his thesis is considered erroneous by experts in the fields of philosophy, computer science, and robotics.
Following the publication of this book, Penrose began to collaborate with Stuart Hameroff on a biological analog to quantum computation involving microtubules, which became the foundation for his subsequent book, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness.
The Emperor's New Mind attacks the claims of artificial intelligence using the physics of computing: Penrose notes that the present home of computing lies more in the tangible world of classical mechanics than in the imponderable realm of quantum mechanics. The modern computer is a deterministic system that for the most part simply executes algorithms. Penrose shows that, by reconfiguring the boundaries of a billiard table, one might make a computer in which the billiard balls act as message carriers and their interactions act as logical decisions. The billiard-ball computer was first designed some years ago by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Recognition
Penrose won the Science Book Prize in 1990 for this book.