"What is mind?" "Can we build synthetic or artificial minds?" Think these questions are only reserved for Science Fiction? Well, not anymore. This collection presents a diverse overview of where the development of artificial minds is as the twenty first century begins. Examined from nearly all viewpoints, Visions of Mind includes perspectives from philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, social studies and artificial intelligence. This collection comes largely as a result of many conferences and symposiums conducted by many of the leading minds on this topic. At the core is Professor Aaron Sloman’s symposium from the spring 2000 UK Society for Artificial Intelligence conference. Authors from that symposium, as well as others from around the world have updated their perspectives and contributed to this powerful book. The result is a multi-disciplinary approach to the long term problem of designing a human-like mind, whether for scientific, social, or engineering purposes. The topics addressed within this text are valuable to both artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and also to the academic disciplines that they draw on and feed. Among those disciplines are philosophy, computer science, and psychology.

Dr. Darryl N. Davis is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Hull (UK). He graduated from the University of Sussex (UK) with a BSc in Experimental Psychology. He graduated from Heriot-Watt University (UK) with a M.Sc, in Knowledge Base Systems. The MSc thesis was on data mining in a medical domain. He subsequently worked at the University of St. Andrews (UK)on human visual perception, particularly human face recognition. He worked in the Departments of Orthodontics and Medical Biophysics at the University of Manchester (UK) for his Ph.D. on the use of AI Architectures for Medical Image interpretation, graduating from Victoria University of Manchester (UK)with a Ph.D. in Investigative and Diagnostic Medicine. He has been at the University of Hull since 1999, lecturing in Artificial Intelligence and researching in related areas. He is also a consultant editor (in AI) for Palgrave, MacMillan.