Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal About the Mind and Artificial Intelligence

Rating:
Summary: One of a kind, and much needed
Review: Craig Delancey has stepped up to the plate to take on a topic that, from fear or neglect, few others in the philosophy of mind have been willing to take a swing at. And he has hit the ball out of the park. His book is comprehensive, sensitive, and lucid, exploring the topic without the sentimentality that prevents progress or the hard-headedness that trivializes our emotional lives. In this thoughtful book, we see a compelling case made for why emotion is at the center of our mental lives, and why the best work in the science and philosophy of mind needs to be, and can be, critiqued in light of this pivotal fact. This book should change the way philosophers and cognitive scientists look at their own work going forward.

Rating:
Summary: A long overdue perspective on emotion
Review: This book is just right in tone and content. Insightful, sensitively written, and important, it does the world a service by bringing to the public the central scientific work on the emotions, and carefully exploring what this work means for philophosy and the rest of us. Delancey's central conclusion, that our understanding of the mind should start with the question of how an organism can achieve autonomy in its environment rather than how to create "cognition", is compellingly argued. His is a welcome addition to the growing chorus of voices for that position.