Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Brain, body, and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational activity. In Being There , Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and techniques needed to make sense of the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. Clark brings together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant psychology, and artificial intelligence. He addresses a broad range of adaptive behaviors, from cockroach locomotion to the role of linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface: Deep Thought Meets Fluent Action
• Acknowledgments
• Groundings
• Introduction: A Car with a Cockroach Brain
• I Outing the Mind
• 1 Autonomous Agents: Walking on the Moon
• 1.1 Under the Volcano
• 1.2 The Robots' Parade
• 1.3 Minds without Models
• 1.4 Niche Work
• 1.5 A Feel for Detail?
• 1.6 The Refined Robot
• 2 The Situated Infant
• 2.1 I, Robot
• 2.2 Action Loops
• 2.3 Development without Blueprints
• 2.4 Soft Assembly and Decentralized Solutions
• 2.5 Scaffolded Minds
• 2.6 Mind as Mirror vs. Mind as Controller
• 3 Mind and World: The Plastic Frontier
• 3.1 The Leaky Mind
• 3.2 Neural Networks: An Unfinished Revolution
• 3.3 Leaning on the Environment
• 3.4 Planning and Problem Solving
• 3.5 After The Filing Cabinet
• 4 Collective Wisdom, Slime-Mold-Style
• 4.1 Slime Time
• 4.2 Two Forms of Emergence
• 4.3 Sea and Anchor Detail
• 4.4 The Roots of Harmony
• 4.5 Modeling the Opportunistic Mind
• Intermission: A Capsule History
• II Explaining the Extended Mind
• 5 Evolving Robots
• 5.1 The Slippery Strategems of the Embodied, Embedded Mind
• 5.2 An Evolutionary Backdrop
• 5.3 Genetic Algorithms as Exploratory Tools
• 5.4 Evolving Embodied Intelligence
• 5.5 SIM Wars (Get Real!)
• 5.6 Understanding Evolved, Embodied, Embedded Agents
• 6 Emergence and Explanation
• 6.1 Different Strokes?
• 6.2 From Parts to Wholes
• 6.3 Dynamical Systems and Emergent Explanation
• 6.4 Of Mathematicians and Engineers
• 6.5 Decisions, Decisions
• 6.6 The Brain Bites Back
• 7 The Neuroscientific Image
• 7.1 Brains: Why Bother?
• 7.2 The Monkey's Fingers
• 7.3 Primate Vision: From Feature Detection to Tuned Filters6
• 7.4 Neural Control Hypotheses
• 7.5 Refining Representation
• 8 Being, Computing, Representing
• 8.1 Ninety Percent of (Artificial) Life?
• 8.2 What Is This Thing Called Representation?
• 8.3 Action-Oriented Representation
• 8.4 Programs, Forces, and Partial Programs
• 8.5 Beating Time
• 8.6 Continuous Reciprocal Causation
• 8.7 Representation-Hungry Problems
• 8.8 Roots
• 8.9 Minimal Representationalism
• III Further
• 9 Minds and Markets
• 9.1 Wild Brains, Scaffolded Minds
• 9.2 Lost in the Supermarket
• 9.3 The Intelligent Office?
• 9.4 Inside the Machine
• 9.5 Designer Environments
• 10 Language: The Ultimate Artifact
• 10.1 Word Power
• 10.2 Beyond Communication
• 10.3 Trading Spaces
• 10.4 Thoughts about Thoughts: The Mangrove Effect
• 10.5 The Fit of Language to Brain
• 10.6 Where Does the Mind Stop and the Rest of the World Begin?
• 11 Minds, Brains, and Tuna: A Summary in Brine
• Epilogue: A Brain Speaks
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

"Mind is a leaky organ, forever escaping its 'natural' confines and mingling shamelessly with body and with the world." This simple statement from Clark's Being There exemplifies the rich complexity as well as the simple beauty of his thesis. Clark (Washington Univ. of St. Louis) maintains that studies of the mind remain entrenched in the Cartesian tradition--a tradition that is defined by its claim that the mind and body are fundamentally different substances. As an alternative, Clark offers a refreshingly persuasive account of the mind as "embodied" and influenced by, as well as active on, its Umwelt. Clark's account is informed by data from cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, and artificial intelligence studies and is provocative because of the rich descriptive, explanatory, and predictive powers such an interdisciplinary approach allows. If Clark is successful in defending his thesis, his book will serve as a catalyst for years to come, for it requires that researchers consider again not only the nature of human rationality but also the very methods by which we have studied human nature. Highly recommended. Helpful endnotes; excellent bibliography. Upper-division undergraduate through professional. H. Storl; Augustana College (IL)