Vehicles. Experiments In Synthetic Psychology
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher’s black cloth, spine gilt, original illustrated dust jacket.
First edition, advance review copy, of Italian neuroanatomist and cybernetics thinker Valentino Braitenberg’s influential series of speculative essays. A foundational work in synthetic psychology and embodied cognition, this AI urtext features Braitenberg imagining a sequence of simple self-operating "vehicles," each built from increasingly complex arrangements of sensors, motors, and internal connections, whose movements come to resemble fear, aggression, love, logic, memory, concept formation, and free will. Constructing behavior from a fundamental level to argue that intelligent or emotional action can arise from simple mechanical systems, Vehicles remains widely cited for demonstrating how lifelike behavior can be produced without presuming complex inner states. Illustrated with black-and-white drawings and diagrams. Dust jacket designed by Irene Elios featuring art by animator Maciek Albrecht. Publisher’s review slip laid in. Slight dustiness to cloth, minor embrowning to endpapers from binder's glue; unclipped dust jacket with minor toning and edgewear. Near fine. Item #12819
$250.00