Contemplating Minds: A Forum for Artificial Intelligence

The book review column in “Artificial Intelligence” has evolved from simple reviews to a forum where reviewers and authors debate current, often competing, theories of human and artificial intelligence. “Contemplating Minds” brings together a selection of these reviews in a form suitable for the general scientific reader, seminar organizer or student wanting a critical introduction that synthesizes and compares some of the most important and influential books and ideas to have emerged in AI over the past decade. “Contemplating Minds” is divided into four parts, each with a brief introduction, that address the major themes in artificial intelligence, human intelligence and cognitive science research: symbolic models of mind, situated action, architectures of interaction, and memory and consciousness.