Mechanical mind.(Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, 2 vols.)(Book review)

MIND AS MACHINE: A History of Cognitive Science. Margaret A. Boden. Two volumes, xlviii + 1631 pp. Oxford University Press, 2006. $225.

The term cognitive science, which gained currency in the last half of the 20th century, is used to refer to the study of cognition--cognitive structures and processes in the mind or brain, mostly in people rather than, say, rats or insects. Cognitive science in this sense has reflected a growing rejection of behaviorism in favor of the study of mind and "human information processing." The field includes the study of thinking, perception, emotion, creativity, language, consciousness and learning. Sometimes it has involved writing (or at least thinking about) computer programs that attempt to model mental processes or that provide tools such as spreadsheets, theorem provers, mathematical-equation solvers and engines for searching the Web. The programs might involve rules of inference or "productions," "mental models," connectionist "neural" networks or other sorts of parallel "constraint satisfaction" approaches. Cognitive science so understood includes cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and artificial life; conceptual, linguistic and moral development; and learning in humans, other animals and machines.

Among those sometimes identifying themselves as cognitive scientists are philosophers, computer scientists, psychologists, linguists, engineers, biologists, medical researchers and mathematicians. Some individual contributors to the field have had expertise in several of these more traditional disciplines. An excellent example is the philosopher, psychologist and computer scientist Margaret Boden, who founded the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex and is the author of a number of books, including Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (1977) and The Creative Mind (1990). Boden has been active in cognitive science pretty much from the start and has known many of the other central participants.

In her latest book, the lively and interesting Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, the relevant machine is usually a computer, and the cognitive science is usually concerned with the sort of cognition that can be exhibited by a computer. Boden does not discuss other aspects of the subject, broadly conceived, such as the "principles and parameters" approach in contemporary linguistics or the psychology of heuristics and biases. Furthermore, she also puts to one side such mainstream developments in computer science as data mining and statistical learning theory. In the preface she characterizes the book as an essay expressing her view of cognitive science as a whole, a "thumbnail sketch" meant to be "read entire" rather than "dipped into."

It is fortunate that Mind as Machine is highly readable, particularly because it contains 1,452 pages of text, divided into two very large volumes. Because the references and indices (which fill an additional 179 pages) are at the end of the second volume, readers will need to have it on hand as they make their way through the first. Given that together these tomes weigh more than 7 pounds, this is not light reading!

Boden's goal, she says, is to show how cognitive scientists have tried to find computational or informational answers to frequently asked questions about the mind--"what it is, what it does, how it works, how it evolved, and how it's even possible." How do our brains generate consciousness? Are animals or newborn babies conscious? Can machines be conscious? If not, why not? How is free will possible, or creativity? How are the brain and mind different? What counts as a language?

The first five chapters present the historical background of the field, delving into such topics as cybernetics and feedback, and discussing important figures such as Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and John von Neumann, as well as Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who in 1943 cowrote a paper on propositional calculus, Turing machines and neuronal synapses. Boden also goes into some detail about the situation in psychology and biology during the transition from behaviorism to cognitive science, which she characterizes as a revolution. The metaphor she employs is that of cognitive scientists entering the "house of Psychology," whose lodgers at the time included behaviorists, Freudians, Gestalt psychologists, Piagetians, ethologists and personality theorists.