Minds and Machines

“In this remarkable book, Dawson refines and develops synthetic psychology – an approach to explaining mental capacities that takes as its inspiration the investigation of simple systems exhibiting emergent behavior. Rich with examples, the book shows with extraordinary clarity how ideas from embodied cognitive science, robotics, artificial life, and connectionism can be combined to shed new light on the workings of the mind. It’s hard to imagine a better book for anyone wishing to understand the latest advances in cognitive science.” Larry Shapiro, University of Wisconsin

“Minds and Machines provides an easily understood introduction to synthetic psychology – start with simple processes, see what emerges, and analyze the resulting system. Dawson lays a solid foundation describing the strengths and weaknesses of various modeling approaches in psychology, and then builds on this by giving concrete examples of how connectionism – using the synthetic approach – can be used to provide simple explanations of seemingly complex cognitive phenomena.” David A. Medler, The Medical College of Wisconsin

“Thisis a wonderful book, both in terms of the thought-provoking technical content and the delightfully conversational style that readers have come to expect from the author of Understanding Cognitive Science. Dawson has a real gift for presenting complex ideas in an accessible and engaging way that does not dilute the scientific or philosophical intricacies involved.” Stefan C. Kremer, University of Guelph, Canada

“An important virtue of this book is that the content and order of presentation has clearly been tested at length in the classroom of a dedicated and creative teacher. The book has many illustrations from teaching practice, and would be an excellent basis for a senior undergraduate or introductory graducate course on cognitive modelling, and I’d be delighted to use it for that purpose myself … This is a fine book, and I suspect it would be a valuable resource for those who don’t know much about synthetic psychology but would like to get a clear sense of the lie of the land.” David Spurrett, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Psychology in Society, 30, 2004, 77-79

Michael R. W. Dawson is a member of the Department of Psychology and the Biological Computation Project at the University of Alberta, Canada. His primary research interests concern the foundations of cognitive science, learning and representation in connectionist networks, and computational models of motion perception. He is the author of Understanding Cognitive Science (Blackwell Publishers, 1998).