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Enchanted Looms

Conscious Networks in Brains and Computers

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Hardcover | 11 January 1999

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Hardcover
524 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.41 x 16.99 x 2.87

Hardcover

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The title of this book was inspired by a passage in Charles Sherrington's Man on his Nature. When that famous physiologist died in 1952, the prospects for a scientific explanation of consciousness seemed remote. Enchanted Looms shows how the situation has changed dramatically over the past forty years, and provides what is probably the most wide-ranging account of the phenomenon ever written. Rodney Cotterill bridges the gap between the bottom-up approach to understanding consciousness, anchored in the brain's biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, and the top-down strategy, which concerns itself with behavior and the nervous system's interaction with the environment. He argues that an explanation of consciousness is now at hand, and extends the discussion to include intelligence and creativity, unlike other books on the subject. This beautifully written and illustrated book will be valued for its provocative approach to one of science's last great challenges. Enchanted Looms will change forever our view of consciousness and our concept of the human being.

Industry Reviews

'Rodney Cotterill has performed a greatly needed service ... to clarify for readers freshly arriving on the scene the hundreds of threads making up the tapestry of current neuroscience ... Cotterill is to be commended for bringing his work and person again to the fore.' Journal of Consciousness Studies ' ... three things about this book make it exceptional. First, that Rodney Cotterill is equipped to talk authoritatively about all three of the areas - neurophysiology, psychology and artificial intelligence ... Second, that as a brilliant teacher he has an extraordinary gift not only for clear exposition but also for seeing analogies that force one to look at things anew ... Finally ... he has a humility in expressing it that is quite exceptional in a field dominated by egotistical dogmatists ... where Cotterill absolutely stands out from other authors in the field is that he can actually write. He is a master of the well-balanced phrase, the appropriate epithet, the exact choice of word: much is almost poetry ... it is full of novel insights and new ways of looking at old problems, to the extent that even the most-knowledgeable reader will come away with a feeling of having learnt a great deal from it.' Roger Carpenter, Trends in Neurosciences 'The book is well structured, moving easily between anatomical detail, functional theories, methodologies and the analyses of others, making it mandatory reading for those considering doing research on this topic.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Science Biology, Life Sciences Human Biology Psychology Cognition & Cognitive Psychology Science in General Popular Science Computing & I.T.Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks & Fuzzy Systems

Engineering & Technology Technology in General

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

Published: 24th November 2000

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Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction
A forbearing machine	p. 1
Intelligence and consciousness--a first look	p. 5
The ultimate black box
The apparent independence of life behind the eyes	p. 12
The suspicious accuracy of the imagination	p. 17
Elements of black boxology	p. 21
Under the lid
A long-standing curiosity	p. 30
Structures and strategies	p. 37
Maps and missions	p. 46
The view from without	p. 50
The logic of emotion	p. 55
Hierarchies and lowerarchies	p. 58
Games neurons play
The workhorses of the nervous system	p. 60
Origins of agitation	p. 63
Influential connections	p. 66
Variations on the theme	p. 70
Neuronal dictatorship	p. 73
Spreading the responsibility	p. 75
Pieces of neural circuitry	p. 78
The complexity of reality	p. 85
Lasting impressions
Indoctrinating organisms	p. 88
Freezing the moment	p. 96
In the longer term	p. 99
Keeping things tidy	p. 102
Caught in the net	p. 104
From temporary to permanent	p. 114
At the blackboard	p. 120
Getting organized	p. 124
From percept to concept
Computers and brains	p. 130
The perceptron	p. 134
A surprising headache	p. 137
Concealed wisdom	p. 140
Progress through regress--back propagation	p. 141
Hidden layerology	p. 151
Percept and concept	p. 157
Reader in English	p. 162
A sheep in wolf's clothing	p. 165
Roots and routes	p. 171
The grand design
The burden of mandatory change	p. 183
Window on the mind	p. 186
To each his own?	p. 198
Fine tuning	p. 211
Subtler control	p. 218
The power of feeling	p. 221
Vergence and reciprocity	p. 227
Global closure	p. 234
The first half second
Mechanics of the mind	p. 239
Ripples in the cortex	p. 251
Early warning system	p. 256
Paying attention	p. 263
A relevant limitation in colour vision	p. 281
Bandwidth, breakthrough and working memory	p. 282
Dissection of sequence	p. 286
Midwives of reflection
An inadequacy of colloquialisms	p. 295
Further probes of the unconscious	p. 298
The philosophical nub	p. 300
The reality of filling in	p. 303
The gullibility of senses	p. 311
Phantom sensations	p. 313
Deferment of automation	p. 315
A consciousness agenda	p. 319
Trains of thought	p. 322
Unfinished business	p. 324
The theatre that never closed	p. 328
Black boxology revisited	p. 334
Active acquisition of information	p. 344
The core circuitry of consciousness	p. 347
Schemata	p. 351
Why do I feel that I am in my head?	p. 354
Attention and binocular rivalry	p. 364
Qualia--the feelings of consciousness	p. 368
The content of consciousness	p. 372
Bottom-up meets top-down?	p. 374
The apparent freedom of volition	p. 377
In a night's sleep	p. 378
The depth of reason
Language, introspection and Helen Keller	p. 384
A recapitulation	p. 388
The kinematics of language	p. 390
Why is language cortically lateralized?	p. 396
An invisible shell	p. 398
Holes in the mind	p. 400
Roots of intelligence and creativity	p. 405
Emotional intelligence?	p. 409
The scope of the simian mind	p. 414
Deep Blue and Deep Thought	p. 417
The message and the medium
Of all possible worlds	p. 421
John Searle's Chinese Room	p. 425
The brain--the overall picture	p. 427
Consciousness will be seen in computers	p. 434
Notes and bibliography	p. 437
Glossary	p. 468
Author index	p. 486
Subject index	p. 500
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Enchanted Looms

Conscious Networks in Brains and Computers

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

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