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Prologue
Society of Mind
The Society of Mind
Written by
Marvin Minsky
Formatted for the web by
Dylan Holmes
prologue
1
Building blocks
1.1
The agents of the mind
1.2
The mind and the brain
1.3
The society of mind
1.4
The world of blocks
2
Wholes and parts
2.1
Components and connections
2.2
Novelists and reductionists
2.3
Parts and wholes
2.4
Holes and parts
2.5
easy things are hard
2.6
confusion
2.7
Are people machines?
3
conflict and compromise
3.1
conflict
3.2
Noncompromise
3.3
hierarchies
3.4
Heterarchies
3.5
destructiveness
3.6
Pain and pleasure simplified
4
the self
4.1
the self
4.2
one self or many?
4.3
the soul
4.4
the conservative self
4.5
exploitation
4.6
self-control
4.7
long-range plans
4.8
ideals
5
individuality
5.1
circular causality
5.2
unanswerable questions
5.3
the remote-control self
5.4
personal identity
5.5
fashion and style
5.6
traits
5.7
permanent identity
6
insight and introspection
6.1
consciousness
6.2
signals and signs
6.3
thought-experiments
6.4
B-Brains
6.5
Frozen reflection
6.6
momentary mental time
6.7
the causal now
6.8
thinking without thinking
6.9
heads in the clouds
6.10
worlds out of mind
6.11
in-sight
6.12
internal communication
6.13
self-knowledge is dangerous
7
problems and goals
7.1
intelligence
7.2
uncommon sense
7.3
the puzzle principle
7.4
problem solving
7.5
learning and memory
7.6
reinforcement and reward
7.7
local responsibility
7.8
difference-engines
7.9
intentions
7.10
genius
8
a theory of memory
8.1
k-lines: a theory of memory
8.2
re-membering
8.3
mental states and dispositions
8.4
partial mental states
8.5
level-bands
8.6
levels
8.7
fringes
8.8
societies of memories
8.9
knowledge-trees
8.10
levels and classifications
8.11
layers of societies
9
summaries
9.1
wanting and liking
9.2
gerrymandering
9.3
learning from failure
9.4
enjoying discomfort
10
papert's principle
10.1
piaget's experiments
10.2
reasoning about amounts
10.3
priorities
10.4
papert's principle
10.5
the society-of-more
10.6
about piaget's experiments
10.7
the concept of concept
10.8
education and development
10.9
learning a hierarchy
11
the shape of space
11.1
seeing red
11.2
the shape of space
11.3
nearnesses
11.4
innate geography
11.5
sensing similarities
11.6
the centered self
11.7
predestined learning
11.8
half-brains
11.9
dumbbell theories
12
learning meaning
12.1
a block-arch scenario
12.2
learning meaning
12.3
uniframes
12.4
structure and function
12.5
the function of structures
12.6
accumulation
12.7
accumulation strategies
12.8
problems of disunity
12.9
the exception principle
12.10
how towers work
12.11
how causes work
12.12
meaning and definition
12.13
bridge-definitions
13
seeing and believing
13.1
reformulation
13.2
boundaries
13.3
seeing and believing
13.4
children's drawing-frames
13.5
learning a script
13.6
the frontier effect
13.7
duplications
14
reformulation
14.1
using reformulation
14.2
means and ends
14.3
seeing squares
14.4
brainstorming
14.5
the investment principle
14.6
parts and holes
14.7
the power of negative thinking
14.8
the interaction-square
15
Consciousness and memory
15.1
momentary mental state
15.2
self-examination
15.3
memory
15.4
memories of memories
15.5
the immanence illusion
15.6
many kinds of memory
15.7
memory rearrangements
15.8
anatomy of memory
15.9
interruption and recovery
15.10
losing track
15.11
the recursion principle
16
emotion
16.1
emotion
16.2
mental growth
16.3
mental proto-specialists
16.4
cross-exclusion
16.5
avalanche effects
16.6
motivation
16.7
exploitation
16.8
stimulus vs. simulus
16.9
infant emotions
16.10
adult emotions
17
development
17.1
sequences of teaching-selves
17.2
attachment-learning
17.3
attachment simplifies
17.4
functional autonomy
17.5
developmental stages
17.6
prerequisites for growth
17.7
genetic timetables
17.8
attachment-images
17.9
different spans of memories
17.10
intellectual trauma
17.11
intellectual ideals
18
reasoning
18.1
must machines be logical?
18.2
chains of reasoning
18.3
chaining
18.4
logical chains
18.5
strong arguments
18.6
magnitude from multitude
18.7
what is a number?
18.8
mathematics made hard
18.9
robustness and recovery
19
Words and ideas
19.1
the roots of intention
19.2
the language-agency
19.3
words and ideas
19.4
objects and properties
19.5
polynemes
19.6
recognizers
19.7
weighing evidence
19.8
generalizing
19.9
recognizing thoughts
19.10
closing the ring
20
context and ambiguity
20.1
ambiguity
20.2
negotiating ambiguity
20.3
visual ambiguity
20.4
locking-in and weeding-out
20.5
micronemes
20.6
the nemeic spiral
20.7
connections
20.8
connection lines
20.9
distributed memory
21
trans-frames
21.1
the pronouns of the mind
21.2
pronomes
21.3
trans-frames
21.4
communication among agents
21.5
automatism
21.6
trans-frame pronomes
21.7
generalizing with pronomes
21.8
attention
22
expression
22.1
pronomes and polynemes
22.2
isonomes
22.3
de-specializing
22.4
learning and teaching
22.5
inference
22.6
expression
22.7
causes and clauses
22.8
interruptions
22.9
pronouns and references
22.10
verbal expression
22.11
creative expression
23
comparisons
23.1
a world of differences
23.2
differences and duplicates
23.3
time blinking
23.4
the meanings of more
23.5
foreign accents
24
frames
24.1
the speed of thought
24.2
frames of mind
24.3
How trans-frames work
24.4
default assumptions
24.5
nonverbal reasoning
24.6
direction-nemes
24.7
picture-frames
24.8
how picture-frames work
24.9
recognizers and memorizers
25
frame arrays
25.1
one frame at a time?
25.2
frame-arrays
25.3
the stationary world
25.4
the sense of continuity
25.5
expectations
25.6
the frame idea
26
language-frames
26.1
understanding words
26.2
understanding stories
26.3
sentence-frames
26.4
a party-frame
26.5
story-frames
26.6
sentence and nonsense
26.7
frames for nouns
26.8
frames for verbs
26.9
language and vision
26.10
learning language
26.11
grammar
26.12
coherent discourse
27
censors and jokes
27.1
demons
27.2
suppressors
27.3
censors
27.4
exceptions to logic
27.5
jokes
27.6
humor and censorship
27.7
laughter
27.8
good humor
28
the mind and the world
28.1
the myth of mental energy
28.2
magnitude and marketplace
28.3
quantity and quality
28.4
mind over matter
28.5
the mind and the world
28.6
minds and machines
28.7
individual identities
28.8
overlapping minds
29
the realms of thought
29.1
the realms of thought
29.2
several thoughts at once
29.3
paranomes
29.4
cross-realm correspondences
29.5
the problem of unity
29.6
autistic children
29.7
likenesses and analogies
29.8
metaphors
30
mental models
30.1
knowing
30.2
knowing and believing
30.3
mental models
30.4
world models
30.5
knowing ourselves
30.6
freedom of will
30.7
the myth of the third alternative
30.8
intelligence and resourcefulness
appendix
postscript
glossary
