Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies

Since 1977, Hofstadter, the author of Godel, Escher, Bach, and his students have been developing computer models of discovery, creation, and analogical thought. What has emerged is a sophisticated and unorthodox vision of the mind in which perception, at an abstract level, is the key: perception of situations, of patterns, of patterns among patterns. This book conveys this bold vision to a broad public. Illustrations.

* Prologue: The Why, the When, the Where, and the Who of This Book * To Seek Whence Cometh a Sequence Douglas Hofstadter * The Architecture of Jumbo Douglas Hofstadter * Numbo: A Study in Cognition and Recognition Daniel Defays * High-level Perception, Representation, and Analogy: A Critique of Artificial-intelligence Methodology David Chalmers, Robert French, and Douglas Hofstadter * The Copycat Project: A Model of Mental Fluidity and Analogy-making Douglas Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell * Perspectives on Copycat: Comparisons with Recent Work Melanie Mitchell and Douglas Hofstadter * Prolegomena to Any Future Metacat Douglas Hofstadter * Tabletop, BattleOp, Ob-Platte, Potelbat, Belpatto, Platobet Douglas Hofstadter and Robert French * The Emergent Personality of Tabletop, a Perception-based Model of Analogy-making Douglas Hofstadter and Robert French * Letter Spirit: Esthetic Perception and Creative Play in the Rich Microcosm of the Roman Alphabet Douglas Hofstadter and Gary McGraw * Epilogue: On Computers, Creativity, Credit, Brain Mechanisms, and the Turing Test