Society of Mind

About the course

The subject of this course is to discuss theories about how minds work. We will emphasize aspects of thinking that are so poorly understood that they are still considered to be more philosophical than scientific. Our goal is to replace ill-defined folk theories of ‘consciousness’, ‘self’ and ‘emotion’ with more concrete computational concepts.

This course centers around two books, Society of Mind and The Emotion Machine. Both books are available in paperback at the Coop, and the full text of The Emotion Machine is also available on Prof. Minsky's homepage.

There are no course prerequisites for 6.868. However, you are expected to have read Society of Mind in advance.

Expectations (yours and ours)

This class takes the form of an interactive seminar, in which you will be able to actively discuss and debate ideas. We expect that you will be thoughtful, inquisitive, and prepared.

• You should come to every class prepared to ask a clear and important question. This class presents a real opportunity to figure out hard problems about consciousness, intelligence, selfhood, and human nature—among others. To be successful, you need only study the material carefully and critically outside of class.
• You should read Society of Mind. Because this class immediately builds upon the ideas presented in the book, you will benefit the most if you have carefully read it ahead of time.

Now about your expectations:

• Lectures. The lectures will be extemporaneous; at the start of class, you'll raise questions, criticisms, and suggestions about the material, or about your own theories, which will then guide the course of Prof. Minsky's talks.
• Student-driven discussions. We will have student-driven discussions in the latter half of most lectures. This will involve small groups of students forming a panel in the front of the class and talking among themselves and with the audience about a particular topic— very much like a talk show. You'll know the topic in advance, and will know which week will be your turn, so you'll be able to plan and prepare accordingly.
  
  We will provide supplementary materials (articles, book chapters, websites, online videos, etc.) and questions to help you prepare for the student-driven discussion. We expect that the discussions will be informal and fun— not intimidating — however, if you believe that this will not be the case for you, you should contact the TAs so that we can discuss it.
• Visiting lecturers. We anticipate a number of eminent guest speakers throughout the semester. These speakers could give a talk about their specialty, or engage in discussion with the audience about a pre-determined paper. In short, you'll have the opportunity to hear and speak with several luminaries of artifical intelligence and other nearby fields.
• Final project. The culmination of your work in the course will be an open-ended final project in which you'll apply your understanding of the ideas in 6.868. This project can take several different forms, depending on your individual interests. More details about the project follow:
  • If your project involves programming, you should submit your source code, along with a 3-5 page description detailing your problem statement, documentation for your code, and conclusions from your project.
  • If your project is entirely written, it should be 10-15 pages in length, and should include proper citations.
  • For other kinds of projects, contact us so we can discuss equivalent grading criteria. (In most cases, your requirements will be analogous to those for programming projects.)
  • Standard formatting guidelines apply: please use 11-12pt serif font (for example, Times New Roman), single or 1.5 spacing, with 1″ margins. Your written components should be submitted in either PDF or plain text format.
  • In order for your project to be successful, you will need to demonstrate your comprehension of ideas in Society of Mind. For example, you should replace vague suitcase words like thinking, understanding, knowing with more precise and explicit terms. More fundamentally, you should use what you learned from reading Society of Mind and The Emotion Machine in your project— if you could have implemented your project proposal using what you knew before reading Prof. Minsky's ideas, it is at least doubtful that it would make a good final project for this class.
  • We are happy to help you with your project. In addition to e-mailing us with questions or attending office hours, you may submit your project to the staff (society-of-mind@mit.edu) for review at any time, and we will give you constructive feedback. Your project is finally due by 5pm on the last day of classes, 16 May. The official due date is Thursday, although we will accept papers until Friday.
• Succeeding in 6.868. Your success in this in this course will be determined by your preparation and participation in class discussion, and by your ability to understand and employ the main ideas of the class.
  
  We measure your participation through your involvement in the lectures and in the student-led discussion, as well as through brief written assignments which we may collect from time to time. We measure your ability to understand and employ the main ideas of the class through your final project.

Other Resources

You can watch the video clips from the interactive Society of Mind Voyager CD-ROM here.

You can read a summary of your responses to Chapter 6 here.

Course topics