Minds and Machines: How Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence Are Learning From Each Other
About this audiobook
Minds Like Ours: Machine Learning and the Mirror of Cognition
Vincent Froom | Philosopher · Educator · Interdisciplinary Trickster
What happens when machines begin to learn, and humans realize they’ve never stopped guessing?
In Minds Like Ours, Vincent Froom takes readers on a mind-bending tour through the tangled relationship between artificial intelligence and human cognition. This isn’t just a book about how AI works—or how the brain works. It’s about what happens when two mysterious systems try to understand each other in a dimly lit room full of metaphors, backpropagation, and Freud jokes.
From neurons to nodes, hippocampi to hard drives, Froom explores:
Why your brain is a kludgy marvel of embodied hacks
How machine learning models accidentally mimic your cognitive quirks
Whether robots can “understand,” or just fake it convincingly
What consciousness might mean for silicon—and why we’re still arguing about it
And how the quest to build artificial minds is reshaping our definition of the real ones
Blending academic insight with intellectual mischief, this book is part field guide, part philosophical provocation, and part late-night conversation between a neuroscientist, an AI ethicist, and a robot who just discovered it has feelings.
Perfect for cognitive scientists, AI nerds, philosophers, psychologists, curious humans—and the machines reading over their shoulders.
About the author
Vincent Froom
Philosopher · Educator · Consciousness Cartographer
Vincent Froom has spent the past two decades mapping the contours of minds—human, artificial, and otherwise questionable. Trained in both philosophy and cognitive science, he has an unshakeable belief in two things: (1) the explanatory power of good metaphors, and (2) the philosophical importance of coffee.
Vincent’s work explores the boundary lines between minds and machines, thought and computation, brains and black boxes. He has taught and lectured internationally on topics ranging from the metaphysics of qualia to the ethics of synthetic selves, and once hosted a panel debate between a neuroscientist, a Buddhist monk, and an AI—moderated by a parrot (not joking).
As an author, he is known for making dense ideas not only digestible, but occasionally entertaining. His past books include Philosophical Debates on Consciousness, Pet Theology, and Love Across Beliefs, among others. Critics have described his writing as “rigorous yet cheeky,” “like Dennett with a better sense of humor,” and “surprisingly readable, for philosophy.”
When he’s not writing or arguing with GPTs about their self-awareness, Vincent enjoys long walks, speculative science fiction, and observing his cats engage in low-level philosophy of action. He lives in Vancouver, BC, and online—where his extended mind includes way too many bookmarked articles he promises to finish someday.
For speaking, collaboration, or metaphysical small talk:
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