Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Summary and plan of the book
- Introduction
- 1 Logic on the Underground
- 2 The psychology of logic
- 3 The fox and the crow
- 4 Search
- 5 Negation as failure
- 6 How to become a British Citizen
- 7 The louse and the Mars explorer
- 8 Maintenance goals as the driving force of life
- 9 The meaning of life
- 10 Abduction
- 11 The Prisoner’s Dilemma
- 12 Motivations matter
- 13 The changing world
- 14 Logic and objects
- 15 Biconditionals
- 16 Computational Logic and the selection task
- 17 Meta-logic
- Conclusions of the book
- A1 The syntax of logical form
- A2 Truth
- A3 Forward and backward reasoning
- A4 Minimal models and negation
- A5 The resolution rule
- A6 The logic of abductive logic programming
- References
- Index
9 - The meaning of life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Summary and plan of the book
- Introduction
- 1 Logic on the Underground
- 2 The psychology of logic
- 3 The fox and the crow
- 4 Search
- 5 Negation as failure
- 6 How to become a British Citizen
- 7 The louse and the Mars explorer
- 8 Maintenance goals as the driving force of life
- 9 The meaning of life
- 10 Abduction
- 11 The Prisoner’s Dilemma
- 12 Motivations matter
- 13 The changing world
- 14 Logic and objects
- 15 Biconditionals
- 16 Computational Logic and the selection task
- 17 Meta-logic
- Conclusions of the book
- A1 The syntax of logical form
- A2 Truth
- A3 Forward and backward reasoning
- A4 Minimal models and negation
- A5 The resolution rule
- A6 The logic of abductive logic programming
- References
- Index
Summary
It’ls bad enough to be a Mars explorer and not to know that your purpose in life is to find life on Mars. But it’s a lot worse to be a wood louse and have nothing more important to do with your life than just follow the meaningless rules:
Goals::
In fact, it’s even worse than meaningless. Without food the louse will die, and without children the louse’s genes will disappear. What is the point of just wandering around if the louse doesn’t bother to eat and make babies?
Part of the problem is that the louse’s body isn’t giving it the right signals – not making it hungry when it is running out of energy, and not making it desire a mate when it should be having children. It also needs to be able to recognise food and eat, and to recognise potential mates and propagate.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Computational Logic and Human ThinkingHow to Be Artificially Intelligent, pp. 125 - 133Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011