Download or read book Oswald Wiener's Theory of Thought written by Thomas Eder and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a versatile and creative thinker, Oswald Wiener (1935—2021) developed from an artist into a researcher out of sheer necessity. At the end of his life he emphasized: ”I do not aim at a synthesis of introspection and automata theory but rather at contrasting them. Which relationships identified in introspection can — in a fairly satisfactory way — be understood as realizations of relationships within a formal system, e.g., the formal system of automata theory. Or the other way around: How well does automata theory as a model (i.e., the computer as mental metaphor, 'Physical Symbol Systems,' today's Artificial Intelligence ...) capture essential features of human thought? What does 'in a fairly satisfactory way' mean in this context? What, and how strongly, does the formal system abstract from natural processes?“ In this book, three conversations with Wiener about the development of his theory and four essays introduce and elaborate on this new ap proach to the theory of thought, which has previously received too little attention in academic discourse. A pivotal role is played by Wiener's last major essay ”Cybernetics and Ghosts.“