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Message from Dean - May 8th 2007
I am currently testing out a new version of the APF Bridge Component - If you notice any errors within this demo store please drop me a line.
List Price: $24.99Amazon.com's Price: $22.49 You Save: $2.50 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.3
EAN: 9780195106466
ISBN: 0195106466
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: August 22, 1996
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The bestselling author of The Emperor's New Mind offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts an even more powerful attack on artifical intelligence. Shadows of the Mind points the way to a new science, one that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind. 49 illustrations.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Just opening this book to a random page and reading that page - sets one's mind on fire.
The basic thread running throughtout the book is that of 'what is computable and what is not'. The process of 'Understanding' as humans know it - Penrose argues - is NON-COMPUTABLE. He provides brilliant examples of how computers can 'solve' any problem - without 'understanding' what they are solving (e.g. DeepThought and the simple chess move which stumped it).
This theme in itself would make this a worthwhile read. However - this book offers further gems from Quantum Physics - with perhaps the simplest and best explanation of lesser known quantum paradoxes such as the 'delayed choice' experiments. Godel's theorem is also dealt with lucidly.
Few authors can tackle the issue of 'mind and conciousness' without stepping into some mystical/unscientific goo. Penrose stays scientific - and works from facts and well known experiments.
I do not know of ... Read More
Rating:  -
Penrose, while more famous, does not do as well at popularizing the heady physics and mathematics in this area as Barrow in Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being and Tipler in The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (see my reviews there). His reasoning is too tortured and formula-heavy for me, and I consider myself an advanced popular reader.
However, he does reach the deep conclusion that "whatever brain activity is responsible for consciousness . . . It must depend upon a physics that lies beyond computational simulation (p. 411)." Instead of resorting to the mind as mystical or mysterious, Penrose postulates that consciousness, while incalculable, is still physical, perhaps in an interaction in the brain between classical physics and quantum physics not yet discovered or understood. Penrose points to the possibility of "microtubules" (part of the cytoskeleton that exist even in single-cell paramecium--and seem to give that ... Read More
Rating:  -
Another stunning book by Sir Roger Penrose. It's really a five star book discounted here by one star because those lacking physics and mathematics will find some passages hard work, even though the author is being as kind as possible in a book of this calibre.
The book is a neat sequel to his "The Emperor's New Mind", extending the central theme that our little-understood human consciousness allows us to think way beyond the computational and mindless world of artificial intelligence.
In doing so, we have a marvellous survey of classical and modern physics, including the mysteries of the quantum world.
Sir Roger raises the question 'Will we ever be able to truly understand our own Nature-provided brain and its processes in terms of our own science?', and argues that, somewhere out there beyond our present reach, there is a unifying Platonic view of the Universe.
This book is a tour de force on several planes. Highly recommended.
Rating:  -
Roger Penrose is confident that consciousness can't be explained without some kind of "new physics". He's not very explicit here, as to what this "new physic" should be.
Penrose spends a lot of effort describing paradoxes of quantum physics, so we should assume that "new physics" would have something to do with those paradoxes. He also spends a lot of effort trying to prove that consciousness can't be produced by any kind of Turing machine. He presses this point very hard, giving examples of non-computable problems, but I do not find him to be really persuasive.
Here's a good example of his style, on pg. 290: "I am going to suppose that detector itself can also be assigned a quantum state... This is the usual practice in quantum theory. It is not altogether clear to me that it really makes sense to assign a quantum-mechanical description to a classical-level object, but this is not normally questioned in the discussions of this kind."
What's this "not normally ... Read More
Rating: -
This book explains how personal consciousness develops from processes of the nervous system. There are structures along nerves and brain cells that have superconductive properties which can process information consistent with how the mind works. The magician will gain an understanding of what the aura is and how magical phenomena follow from the nature of these properties of the nervous sytem.
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