The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics | 
 enlarge | Author: Roger Penrose
Creator: Michael Jackson
Publisher: New Millennium Audio
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 1591148
Format: Abridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 3 x 2
ISBN: 1931056781
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.3
EAN: 9781931056786
ASIN: 1931056781
Publication Date: September 2001
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Amazon.com
Some love it, some hate it, but The Emperor's New Mind, physicist Roger Penrose's 1989 treatise attacking the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, is crucial for anyone interested in the history of thinking about AI and consciousness. Part survey of modern physics, part exploration of the philosophy of mind, the book is not for casual readers--though it's not overly technical, it rarely pauses to let the reader catch a breath. The overview of relativity and quantum theory, written by a master, is priceless and uncontroversial. The exploration of consciousness and AI, though, is generally considered as resting on shakier ground. Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, and ultimately derives his anti-AI stance from his proposition that some, if not all, of our thinking is non-algorithmic. Of course, these days we believe that there are other avenues to AI than traditional algorithmic programming; while he has been accused of setting up straw robots to knock down, this accusation is unfair. Little was then known about the power of neural networks and behavior-based robotics to simulate (and, some would say, produce) intelligent problem-solving behavior. Whether these tools will lead to strong AI is ultimately a question of belief, not proof, and The Emperor's New Mind offers powerful arguments useful to believer and nonbeliever alike. --Rob Lightner
Product Description
For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do?
In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.
He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his "little finger" told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects.
The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 A great, great book. September 12, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I was compelled to write as I came by on the way to buying Dr. Penrose's more recent book ("Road to Reality") and was appalled that Amazon features 2 out of 3 negative views on the first page, including one which dismisses the "Emperor's new mind" as "rubbish". Surely the book is controversial in certain quarters, but the vehemence of much of the criticism can only make me wonder why some people are so defensive about it.
I have to admit I have not reread this book since my original reading around 1990, so take my remarks at some discount on that basis. But I will tell you that this book remains influential in my choice of what I read and how I evaluate things even to this day. It has indeed changed my life.
Dr. Penrose's premise is that a computer simulation of a brain will not achieve the equivalent of human consciousness. I don't wish to enter the fray of arguing points. Dr. Penrose is a mathematical and scientific genius, a deep thinker on the nature of reality, and he can do his own counterpoint. Read this book with an open mind, and even if you disagree with some of his arguments, you will take much away with you.
Here's my take. "Consciousness" is pretty central to the whole enterprise of scientific endeavor, as well as how each of us understands our place in the world. Consciousness, as modeled by psychological and AI researchers, has a lot to say about the biological/physical systems that underpin what is happening in our heads, but one has to wonder about claims that consciousness is now completely understood. To this end, Dr. Penrose takes us on a fascinating journey to the frontiers of scientific knowledge, at scales both large and small. This is entirely relevant to the central theme. Science can only talk about what we can measure, and there are limits to what we can now measure. Our current picture of reality is not as complete as some people would have us believe.
So read Penrose. Read Stephen Jay Gould. Read Raymond Smullyan. Read about the Banach-Tarski theorem. Read about Fermat's last theorem. Read great literature. Keep an open mind. Peace!
A mess September 7, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is a real mess, and although I am giving it five stars, I don't really recommend anyone read anything like all of it. In fact, most of it isn't about the problems with strong AI at all. Mostly, it's a general, populist book about modern physics and mathematics. That can be an interesting read too, but probably Penrose isn't the person to be writing such a thing. He uses way too many exclamation points and I suspect he also tends to think he knows more than he really does. For example, it is clear by his one use of the word "ergodic" that he thinks it means something like "single orbits of a measurable set spread out and fill the whole space". That's mixing, not ergodicity. Lots of ergodic transformations do nothing of the kind, like for example irrational rotations of the circle. I only know this because I'm an ergodic theorist; I do tend to wonder how many other things I would catch Penrose speaking as if he knew more about them than he does, if only I knew more about them than I do.
So why does this book get five stars? Mostly because it has no good competitors. Daniel Dennett, for example, wrote a book called "Consciousness Explained." In it, he didn't even try to explain consciousness. Which is not to say he didn't write a terrific book. He did. It's wonderful. But when it comes to consciousness, Dennett just punts and doesn't seem to realize this is what he is doing (hence the ludicrously inappropriate title). This is why Searle thinks cognitive scientists come out, on analysis, "too stupid for words" (Dennett's phrase, speculating on what Searle thinks--if you haven't read these two guys' reviews of each others books, you really are missing some top-flight entertainment). As scientists, that's not really fair, but as philosophers of consciousness, it's probably pretty apt. Unfortunately Searle, marvelously adept at diagnosing the deficiencies of others, is ill-equipped to give a positive account. Penrose on the other hand at least gives us an inkling of what a positive account might look like. He does this mostly in the last chapter of the book, which is all I think anybody really needs to read (read the chapter on quantum theory too, if you don't remember anything about it).
Is Penrose right? I think, in broad outline, probably so. I do think consciousness has some power to choose at quantum branching points. I think this because I believe in the causal closure of the physical, I believe in the efficacy of consciousness, I don't believe that consciousness is physical, and I don't believe in overdetermination. You can only rectify these beliefs (as far as I can tell), by booting causal closure upstairs into the many-worlds arena and letting consciousness slide around in this ultra-high-dimensional plane with some measure of latitude. It's also the only way I can imagine that consciousness could have evolved in the first place (given that the strong AI premise that consciousness is automatically, miraculously generated by the execution of an algorithm really is too stupid for words).
I'm sure I'm one of hundreds of people who took quantum mechanics as an undergraduate and immediately formed these opinions; I am happy to defer to Penrose as to the details of how it might work. Are these details worked out in full, or even correctable in principle? Probably not. But almost surely it's not for being too crazy; the truth of the matter about consciousness is probably much, much crazier than even Penrose can imagine. Indeed, probably too crazy to be of any practical use to congnitive science now (maybe ever). So you're still going to have good reason to read your Daniel Dennett.
Oh, right. Penrose thinks the quagmire of consciousness has a lot to do with computability, tilings, entropy and Godel incompleteness. It doesn't (though the aperiodic tilings make for a good analogy involving unusual crystals). Those are just things Penrose knows a lot about, and paranoids think that all the things they know about are related.
Do yourself a favor and read this book! March 19, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Jeez, twelve bucks and one hell of a good read! Stick your neck out and find out for YOURSELF if the book is any good. I'm suspicious that Penrose is being persecuted for theist tendencies.
 Walking past one another... November 21, 2006
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
I skimmed over the equations, and still found the exposition clear enough, with one significant exception. At one point, Penrose describes how an event in the Andromeda galaxy would already have occurred for a person on Earth walking toward the galaxy and not for another at the same spot walking away. the implication is that information would arrive at the same place at significantly different times for people walking in different directions. Penrose is assuming simultaneity of the events on our planet and in the Andromeda galaxy -- after several pages of discussion of how relativity excludes it!
Penrose soon returns to form though, stating that neither person would perceive the event until information about it arrived at the speed of light, millions of years later. Even if people could live that long, they would have to keep walking away from one another to perceive the event at very different times. That would be not be possible on our little round planet.
This is the one place where Penrose's discussion of modern physics lost me for a little while. Otherwise, I found it compelling. In particular, his explanation that Newtonian physics is deterministic stuck with me.
The discussion of mind at the end of the book is inconclusive and speculative, as it must yet be. The mechanical structure of living beings reflects Newtonian physics -- for example, the leg must be strong enough to support the body. Digestion can be explained in terms of chemistry, the nervous system uses electrical conduction, the reception of light by the eye is a quantum phenomenon. But then, there is the mind. Though the uncertainty in quantum physics allows of free will, it does not explain that, or consciousness. Evolution takes advantage of physical phenomena not yet understood -- after all, none were understood until very recently. The question of consciousness and that of the structure of the universe converge. Thought-provoking, indeed!
 Will you answer "no" to this question ? April 19, 2006
12 out of 28 found this review helpful
For those people who didn't make it through the book, here is a (perhaps oversimplified) summary.
Assumption 1 : Machines function algorithmically. The human brain functions at least partly non-algorithmically
Assumption 2 : There are some mathematical problems that can not be solved by algorithms f.i. proving the correctness of a self-referring statement.
Conclusion from 1 and 2 : Humans are able to solve problems that machines will never be able to solve.
Assumption 3 : Intelligence means being able to solve every possible problem.
Conclusion : Humans are intelligent, machines will never be intelligent.
My thoughts on this :
assumption 1 : Non-algorithmically ? There is not a shred of evidence of non-algorithmic thinking in humans. There are on the other hand plenty of mechanisms taking place in the brain that are clearly algorithmic (like vision, pattern recognition etc.)
assumption 2 : Apparently Penrose believes that humans are able to solve these problems. I am not so sure. I challenge you to answer the next question correctly : Will you answer "no" to this question ? It cannot be answered correctly. It is in the nature of the problem itself. The problems Penrose mentions are of the same nature.
assumption 3 : We don't know the nature of consciousness. We have no understanding of what intelligence implies. Penrose believes it implies that an intelligent creature is able to solve EVERY problem. Therefore, if there is one problem a machine can not solve, the machine is not intelligent.
So the only thing Penrose has to do to prove his point is ask a question that has no correct answers : ask the machine to overcome the incompleteness theorem of G?del, or to answer the above question correctly. (and ignore the fact that people cannot answer it correctly either).
I have enjoyed the book in a way ... while seeking arguments to demolish Penrose's theory.
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