Combining ideas from philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neurobiology, Daniel Dennett leads the reader on a fascinating journey of inquiry, exploring such intriguing possibilities as: Can any of us really know what is going on in someone else’s mind? What distinguishes the human mind from the minds of animals, especially those capable of complex behavior? If such animals, for instance, were magically given the power of language, would their communities evolve an intelligence as subtly discriminating as ours? Will robots, once they have been endowed with sensory systems like those that provide us with experience, ever exhibit the particular traits long thought to distinguish the human mind, including the ability to think about thinking? Dennett addresses these questions from an evolutionary perspective. Beginning with the macromolecules of DNA and RNA, the author shows how, step-by-step, animal life moved from the simple ability to respond to frequently recurring environmental conditions to much more powerful ways of beating the odds, ways of using patterns of past experience to predict the future in never-before-encountered situations. Whether talking about robots whose video-camera ”eyes” give us the powerful illusion that ”there is somebody in there” or asking us to consider whether spiders are just tiny robots mindlessly spinning their webs of elegant design, Dennett is a master at finding and posing questions sure to stimulate and even disturb.

我们真的能够知道别人的心思吗？女人有可能了解男人的感觉吗？婴儿在分娩过程中的体验如何？胎儿在子宫里如果有体验的话，是什么样的呢？非人类的心灵又如何呢？马在想些什么？秃鹫吃了腐尸为何不会呕吐？当鱼的嘴唇被钩住时，它会不会像你的嘴唇被钩住时那样痛呢？蜘蛛们会思考吗？机器人是否会像人那样感觉得到疼痛，并为自己的未来操心呢……

那些问题，它们曾不止一次萦绕在我们的脑海，我们也不指望谁能够以科学上的论据来给讲清楚，但是，现在有科学家在认真地讲了。丹尼尔·丹尼特是美国著名的哲学家和认知科学家。他在《心灵种种》这本书里，试图用一种更形象和令人信服的方式让人们了解“心灵”。作者以广阔的视野和清晰的框架，用生动和丰富的例子，探讨了心灵的起源与结构。全书深入浅出，引人入胜，既有各种鲜活易懂的实例，也有从哲学、人工智能、神经科学角度的理论阐述。