Society of Mind theory
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''The Society of Mind'' is both the title of a 1986 book and the name of a theory of natural
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...
as written and developed by
Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...
. In his book of the same name, Minsky constructs a model of human intelligence step by step, built up from the interactions of simple parts called '' agents'', which are themselves mindless. He describes the postulated
interaction Interaction is action that occurs between two or more objects, with broad use in philosophy and the sciences. It may refer to: Science * Interaction hypothesis, a theory of second language acquisition * Interaction (statistics) * Interactions o ...
s as constituting a "society of mind", hence the title.


The book

The work, which first appeared in 1986, was the first comprehensive description of Minsky's "society of mind" theory, which he began developing in the early 1970s. It is composed of 270 self-contained essays which are divided into 30 general chapters. The book was also made into a CD-ROM version. In the process of explaining the society of mind, Minsky introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts. He develops theories about how processes such as
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
,
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...
, and learning work, and also covers concepts such as
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
, the sense of
self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhoo ...
, and
free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
; because of this, many view ''The Society of Mind'' as a work of philosophy. The book was not written to prove anything specific about AI or cognitive science, and does not reference physical brain structures. Instead, it is a collection of ideas about how the mind and thinking work on the conceptual level.


The theory

Minsky first started developing the theory with
Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificia ...
in the early 1970s. Minsky said that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks.


Nature of mind

A core tenet of Minsky's philosophy is that "minds are what
brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...
s do". The society of mind theory views the human mind and any other naturally evolved cognitive systems as a vast society of individually simple processes known as ''agents''. These processes are the fundamental thinking entities from which minds are built, and together produce the many abilities we attribute to minds. The great power in viewing a mind as a society of agents, as opposed to the consequence of some basic principle or some simple
formal system A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system. A form ...
, is that different agents can be based on different types of processes with different purposes, ways of representing knowledge, and methods for producing results. This idea is perhaps best summarized by the following quote:


See also

* Cognitive psychology * Cognitive science *
Consciousness Explained ''Consciousness Explained'' is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. Dennett describes consciou ...
*
Distributed cognition Distributed cognition is an approach to cognitive science research that was developed by cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins during the 1990s. From cognitive ethnography, Hutchins argues that mental representations, which classical cognitive ...
*
Divided consciousness Divided consciousness is a term coined by Ernest Hilgard to define a psychological state in which one's consciousness is split into distinct components, possibly during hypnosis. Origin(s) The theory of a division of consciousness was touched ...
* DUAL (cognitive architecture) *
Dual consciousness Dual consciousness is a theoretical concept in neuroscience. It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy. The idea first began circulatin ...
*
Lateralization of brain function The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebr ...
* Left-brain interpreter * Parallel computing *
Philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...
* Self-awareness *
Situated cognition Situated cognition is a theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts. Under this assumption, which requires an epistemological shift ...
*
The Emotion Machine ''The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind'' is a 2006 book by cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky that elaborates and expands on Minsky's ideas as presented in his earlier book ''Society of ...
*
Theory of mind In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different fro ...


Citations


References

* {{cite book, last1=Minsky, first1=Marvin, title=The Society of Mind, date=1986, publisher=Simon & Schuster, location=New York, isbn=0-671-60740-5, url=https://archive.org/details/societyofmind00marv


External links


''Examining the Society of Mind''
on the
MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

''The Society of Mind'' text and video archive
Philosophy of mind literature Artificial intelligence publications Society of Mind, The Consciousness studies Intelligence Books about cognition