Attitudes, Chaos and the Connectionist Mind

This book presents a broad-ranging and fascinating examination of attitudes: how we form them; how we organize them towards others; and whether they are inherently human or could also be developed by computers. Professor Eiser suggests there are fundamental objections to the idea of a computer having a sense of self or a set of attitutdes. List of Figures xi

Preface xii

1. A Brief History of Attitude Research 1

2. Mind and Body 32

3. Experience and Identity 52

4. Mind and Behaviour 72

5. Observation and Reality 89

6. Expression and Shared Experience 110

7. Attitudes and Social Reality 129

8. Changing Shapes 153

9. The Makings of Mind 186

10. The Emergent Self 214

Self-reflection 236

Attitudes: a final word 241

References 244

Subject Index 249

Author Index 253

J. Richard Eiser is the author of Attitudes, Chaos and the Connectionist Mind, published by Wiley. Attitudes, Chaos, and the Connectionist Mind presents a broad ranging and fascinating examination of attitudes: how we form them; how we organize them towards others. Beginning with more traditional views of attitudes from the philosophy of Hume through early psychological writings to more recent research in connectionism and cognitive science, Professor Eiser argues that human attitudes should not be regarded as simple evaluative judgements but rather as part of a more complex dynamic system. Attitudes are something inherently social - closely tied in with our own self-identity and with our communication with others- and, as such, they may prove an important test of differences between machine intelligence and human consciousness.

This ambitious and wide-ranging book will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in how the human mind operates.