Interesting Book on AI

"How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Artificial Intelligence", Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard. The authors demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body, but tightly constrained and, at the same time, enabled by it (which is similar to Spinoza's "idea of the body").

They argue that the kinds of thoughts we can have are predetermined by their foundation in our embodiment: in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies (Dolphins, any one?)

The authors use the basic methodology of artificial intelligence—understanding by building—to describe their insights. If we understand how to design and build intelligent systems, they reason, we will better understand intelligence in general. In accessible, nontechnical language, with many examples, they introduce the basic concepts, drawing from recent developments
in robotics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology to outline a possible theory of intelligence.

MIT Press; mitpress.mit.edu; 0-262-16239-3; 394 pp.