First thing first

Science News, Dec 6, 2008 by Peter Eisenhardt

I was intrigued by the ideas discussed in Bruce Bower's "Body in Mind" article (SN.. 10/25/08, p. 24) since I have long felt that there is an overemphasis on algorithms in efforts to create artificial intelligence. I remember arguing with one of Stephen Hawking's students in Cambridge in 1978 that sensors and actuators are essential to intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

Antonio Damasio makes a persuasive case for the inseparability of emotion and reason in his 1994 book Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. And as aptly summarized by the actor who plays Dr. Maurice Bucke in John Kent Harrisons' 1990 movie Beautiful Dreamers: "Feeling precedes thinking."

Peter Eisenhardt, Altadena, Calif.

COPYRIGHT 2008 Science Service, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

 

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