The Mit Press imprint: 939 books
Robotics Through Science Fiction
Artificial Intelligence Explained Through Six Classic Robot Short Stories
Language: English
Release Date: November 30, 2018
Six classic science fiction stories and commentary that illustrate and explain key algorithms or principles of artificial intelligence.
This book presents six classic science fiction stories and commentary that illustrate and explain key algorithms or principles of artificial intelligence....
Philosophical Provocations
55 Short Essays
Language: English
Release Date: August 11, 2017
Pithy, direct, and bold: essays that propose new ways to think about old problems, spanning a range of philosophical topics.
In Philosophical Provocations, Colin McGinn offers a series of short, sharp essays that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism,...
Prehension
The Hand and the Emergence of Humanity
Language: English
Release Date: August 14, 2015
In praise of the hand: A philosopher considers the crucial role of the hand in human evolution, particularly with respect to language.
“McGinn is an ingenious philosopher who thinks like a laser and writes like a dream.”
—Steven Pinker
This book is a hymn to the hand. In Prehension,...
Philosophy of Language
The Classics Explained
Language: English
Release Date: January 23, 2015
An introduction to philosophy of language through systematic and accessible explanations of ten classic texts by such thinkers as Frege, Kripke, Russell, and Putnam.
Many beginning students in philosophy of language find themselves grappling with dense and difficult texts not easily understood...
Inborn Knowledge
The Mystery Within
Language: English
Release Date: January 1, 2016
An argument that nativism is true and important but mysterious, examining the particular case of ideas of sensible qualities.
In this book, Colin McGinn presents a concise, clear, and compelling argument that the origins of knowledge are innate—that nativism, not empiricism, is correct in...
The Rhythmic Event
Art, Media, and the Sonic
Language: English
Release Date: July 25, 2014
An investigation into the affective modes of perception, temporality, and experience enabled by experimental new media sonic art.
The sonic has come to occupy center stage in the arts and humanities. In the age of computational media, sound and its subcultures can offer more dynamic ways of...
Why Only Us
Language and Evolution
Language: English
Release Date: January 15, 2016
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it.
**“A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon...
Plato's Revenge
Politics in the Age of Ecology
Language: English
Release Date: August 19, 2011
A provocative essay that imagines a truly ecological future based on political transformation rather than the superficialities of “sustainability.”
In this provocative call for a new ecological politics, William Ophuls starts from a radical premise: “sustainability” is impossible. We...
Hanan al-Cinema
Affections for the Moving Image
Language: English
Release Date: September 25, 2015
An examination of experimental cinema and media art from the Arabic-speaking world that explores filmmakers' creative and philosophical inventiveness in trying times.
In this book, Laura Marks examines one of the world's most impressive, and affecting, bodies of independent and experimental...
Reinventing Los Angeles
Nature and Community in the Global City
Language: English
Release Date: October 12, 2007
Describes how water politics, cars and freeways, and immigration and globalization have shaped Los Angeles, and how innovative social movements are working to make a more livable and sustainable city.
Los Angeles—the place without a sense of place, famous for sprawl and overdevelopment and...
The Machine Question
Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics
Language: English
Release Date: July 13, 2012
An investigation into the assignment of moral responsibilities and rights to intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making.
One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal...
New Romantic Cyborgs
Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine
Language: English
Release Date: February 24, 2017
An account of the complex relationship between technology and romanticism that links nineteenth-century monsters, automata, and mesmerism with twenty-first-century technology's magic devices and romantic cyborgs.
Romanticism and technology are widely assumed to be opposed to each other. Romanticism—understood...
The Time of Our Lives
A Critical History of Temporality
Language: English
Release Date: January 13, 2012
A study of the emergence in post-Kantian continental philosophy of a focus on the lived experience of temporality.
The project of all philosophy may be to gain reconciliation with time, even if not every philosopher has dealt with time expressly. A confrontation with the passing of time and...
by Brian Upton
Language: English
Release Date: March 20, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: March 20, 2015
A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative.
The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since...