Only the virtual mental computer is taken seriously, not the silicon chips that emulate it.(Note: You cannot stack requiem on top of Over Heaven or the other way around, meaning you cannot be Over Heaven and Requiem at the same time. The commercial computer is first programmed to emulate the hypothetical mental computer (creating what computer scientists call a virtual machine), in much the same way that a Macintosh can be programmed to emulate a PC. These models are often simulated on commercial computers, but that is just a convenience. (p.65)ĭoes this mean that the human brain is a Turing machine? Certainly not.other kinds of symbol-processors have been proposed as models of the human mind. No, intelligence does not come from a special kind of spirit or matter or energy but from a different commodity, information. Pinker concludes that none of these is a successful explanation, then offers one that focuses on the abstract idea of information, which leads him to his metaphor of the mind as an information-processing machine, a biological Turing machine (or virtual mental computer). But even the hottest emotions do not literally correspond to a buildup and discharge of energy (in the physicist's sense) somewhere in the brain. The hydraulic model, with its psychic pressure building up, bursting out, or being diverted through alternative channels, lay at the center of Freud's theory and can be found in dozens of everyday metaphors: anger welling up, letting off steam, exploding under the pressure, blowing one's stack, venting one's feelings, bottling up rage. Occasionally the brain surface has been described as a continuous vibrating medium that supports holograms or other wave interference patterns, but that idea, too, has not panned out.
The school of Gestalt psychology tried to explain visual illusions in terms of electromagnetic force fields on the surface of the brain, but the fields were never found. Orbs, luminous vapors, auras, vibrations, magnetic fields, and lines of force figure prominently in spiritualism, pseudoscience, and science-fiction kitsch. Intelligence has often been attributed to some kind of energy flow or force field. Darwin wrote that the brain "secretes" the mind, and recently the philosopher John Searle has argued that the physico-chemical properties of brain tissue somehow produce the mind just as breast tissue produces milk and plant tissue produces sugar. But the theory faces an insurmountable problem: How does the spook interact with solid matter? (p.64)Īnother explanation is that mind comes from some extraordinary form of matter. The traditional explanation of intelligence is that human flesh is suffused with a non-material entity, the soul, usually envisioned as some kind of ghost or spirit.
He examines alternative explanations for intelligence. Pinker is a strong supporter of the "computational theory of mind," his "recurring metaphor of the mind as machine." This is the idea in cognitive science that we can learn a great deal from computing machines about intelligence and the reasoning processes in our minds.
#Duality orb a universal time free#
Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Emil Roduner Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium
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