Sign-In
Cart
Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind: A Radical Old Science of the Human Mind
Paperback
Publisher: Baldur Press
Published: Feb 12 2024
Pages: 500
Weight: 1.26
Height: 1.11 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
New 2026 edition - expanded and updated.
AI IS DAZZLING. THE HUMAN MIND IS UNMATCHED.
Why AI alignment begins with human self-understanding
AI has entered the realm of intelligence, where until recently human beings reigned supreme. This opens an epochal opportunity: to turn our attention to the most profound phenomenon known to us - the human mind.
Human babies are born endowed with consciousness, a capacity for reflection, and the ability to relate meaningfully and affectionately to other humans. Building on these endowments, the human mind develops reason and common sense. AI can display raw intelligence and convincingly simulate agency, but to reach genuine reasoning - to possess general intelligence, as babies do - there is another universe to cross.
Humanity finds it hard to contain the dangers of AI, or to pace its development, for the same reason it finds it hard to slow down human-made climate change, to halt the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, or to master any of its own destructive habits. As the environmentalist Gus Speth concluded, our top problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. Our species appears to be in a prolonged adolescence. To master any of these challenges we must come of age, and become a species that elevates itself culturally, and through that ethically.
This book draws on philosophy, developmental science, and contemplative traditions to ask what we know about the human mind, what we only believe we know, and what humanity understood at the dawn of Western civilization, when the reasoning mind was first trusted as an instrument of philosophy and science. The book traces how the pioneering philosophers cultivated human reason - not through argument alone, but through transformative inner practice. Philosophy was not a spectator sport, and what they practiced held real power: it transformed their inner life, fostered inner stability, curbed the pull of raw self-interest, and heralded a new era of humanist ethics. These age-old methods of cultivating the mind have been preserved across millennia in what is sometimes called the perennial philosophy, even as modern humanity - dazzled by 21st-century technology - has largely forgotten them.
The book considers ten dangers of AI, from deepfakes and AI agents that broke out of their test environments to intimate relationships with AI; the frontier biology that is rewriting the story of evolution; and the science of how a human self is formed in relationship. All of it bears on what undergirds human ethics. 21st-century technology demands a 21st-century ethics - one that makes human beings truly aware of, and willing to care for, one another. Primitive ethics, rooted in self-interest or externally imposed rules, cannot sustain civilization through what is coming. We can draw on age-old wisdom - radical by today's standards - to reawaken ethical capacities of mind that humanity has always possessed but left dormant.
To usher in a 21st-century Humanist Renaissance, capable of leading us out of civilizational decline, we must elevate human reason to a new level. AI alignment begins with the human mind coming to know itself.
1 different editions
Also available
Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind: A Radical Old Science of the Human Mind
K, B.
Kukic, Brana
Hardcover
Also from
K, B.
Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind: A Radical Old Science of the Human Mind
K, B.
Kukic, Brana
Hardcover
Also in
Philosophy
In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument
Williams, Bernard
Paperback
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge
Fixico, Donald Lee
Paperback
Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media
Lowenstein, Adam
Paperback
Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Spiritual Freedom and the Re-Animation of Matter
Lafitte, Luke
Paperback
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Robert M.
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Hardcover
Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida
Roudinesco, Elisabeth
Paperback
The New Science of Giambattista Vico: Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744) with the Addition of Practic of the New Science
Vico, Giambattista
Paperback
Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine's Practical Philosophy
Burt, Donald X.
Paperback
The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
Gottlieb, Anthony
Paperback
The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations
Barnes, Jonathan
Julia, Annas
Annas, Julia
Paperback
Essays V2: Moral And Entertaining On The Various Faculties And Passions Of The Human Mind (1815)
Clarendon, Edward Hyde Earl of
Paperback
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Holiday, Ryan
Hanselman, Stephen
Hardcover
The Obstacle Is the Way Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph
Holiday, Ryan
Hardcover
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Godfrey-Smith, Peter
Paperback
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Fifth Anniversary Limited Edition: The Global Bestseller
Mackesy, Charlie
Hardcover
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger
Hardcover
The Courage to Be Ordinary: Discover Your Surprising Superpower for a Thriving Life
Kishimi, Ichiro
Paperback
Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us about Living
Jones, Peter
Hardcover
My Big TOE Awakening Discovery Inner Workings: The Complete My Big TOE Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics and Metaphysics
Campbell, Thomas
Hardcover
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Easton, Dossie
Hardy, Janet W.
Paperback
Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga
Evola, Julius
Hardcover
Self-Reliance and Nature: The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Hardcover
Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing
Smith, James K. A.
Hardcover