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It is a rainy night in Cambridge, England and C. P. Snow, the British novelist and physicist, has invited some remarkable people to dinner. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, physicist Erwin Schrodinger, geneticist J. B. S. Haldane, and Alan Turing, inventor of the “Turing machine” and coauthor of the computer age have joined Snow for a multicourse meal. Only Snow knows who is coming, for he has planned this get-together so that these brilliant
minds can debate the question of whether it is possible to create a machine that thinks, feels, and is aware. Are we reducible to component parts? Is cognition merely computation? Is mind an emergent property of certain computational machines? Is there something special about mind—a first-person perspective, meaning, intention, consciousness? In 1949, our world was at the dawning of a new age because of a new technology, with unimagined possibilities that continue to transform us each and every day. The computer age was born, and with it modern cognitive science. Computer models of mind and brain have dominated theory and research since.
John Casti has written a fascinating account of this imaginary conversation, a construction, if you will, which he terms a work of “scientific fiction.” While the conversation seems “staged” at times and not entirely realistic, the author does a fine job. He has researched his characters, their scientific accomplishments, and the personal and philosophical attachments that spring from their discoveries. Casti builds the conversation around a meal and crafts a discussion of modern philosophical, biological, psychological, and technological theory. He masterfully brings to life the personalities of the guests, the dynamics of their interchanges, and the complexity of the issues at hand. The reader is invited to partake in a high-level interdisciplinary discussion without needing to be an expert in any particular area. I cannot decide which is the greater pleasure—the intellectual feast or the vo