Brains, Minds, and Computers

Humans have the capability of reflecting on their own minds. So naturally we created disciplines such as neuroscience, pyschology, computer science, and the philosophy of mind to investigate the mind and brain.

Questions

Here are some questions to motivate the study of mind and brain:

Sources

Start your study by browsing, reading, or watching the following:

The Mind-Body Problem

This Mind-Body Problem asks how the mind and body are related, or how mental and physical properties are related. It has a long history and you could spend millions of hours reading about it.

You can also read the Wikipedia article on the topic and read about Dualism and Monism at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Approaches

While it may be an oversimplification to say there are two main approaches, there are two main approaches:

Exercise: Read the Dualism and Monism articles at the SEP. Write a paper summarizing the arguments for and against each.
Exercise: Read this defense of downward causation. What does the author say about pluralism as an alternative to dualism?

Views

So who says what about this famous “problem”? Do some research.

Exercise: Put together a list of different viewpoints on the mind-body problem, and the people that hold them.

Here’s an excerpt of a Thinking Allowed interview with John Searle in which the problem is brought up:

Exercise: Searle criticizes Decartes in this video. What is the criticism?

Musing on the mind-body problem may seem like a useless philosophical endeavor. What a waste of time. But insights into the brain and mind help us deal with people’s physical and mental illnesses better, and maybe help us unlock abilities we didn’t know we had, or be more creative, or understand where alturists and criminals are coming from. And to gain these insights, we could philosophize, do field research and clinical studies, or we can try building minds and brains.

Minsky’s Society of Mind

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Years of working in AI Labs building robots and similar systems led Marvin Minsky to claim that the mind is best viewed as a society of (highly specialized) mindless agents.

The interactions of all these components give rise to what we call the mind. The many chapters of the book discuss mental processes such as recognizing objects in a scene; planning, achieving, or giving up on goals; resolving competing desires within the mind; learning; understanding; and using language.

He covers emotions, common sense, reasoning, intention, ambiguity, humor, knowledge, metaphor, thought, freedom of will, and consciousness.

Where did the ideas come from? From work in the laboratory, building robots:

It was this body of experience, more than anything we learned about psychology, that led us to many ideas about societies of mind.

Note that this comment is not saying anything negative about psychology; he is saying psychology at the time did not include “building robots” as part of its culture. It does now.

Exercise: Read the book. Is the theory of the society of mind ultimately reductionistic, emergent, or both?

Baum’s Computational Explanation of Thought

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In What is Thought?, Baum asks “how [can] the computational events that take place within the spatial boundaries of your brain be accounted for by computer science?”

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Hofstadter on Brains, Minds, and Thoughts

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Hofstadter’s influential book Gödel, Escher, Bach is, in its author’s words, "a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"

Chapters 11-13 in the text, and the accompanying dialogues, address the topics of brains, minds, thoughts, semantics, levels of understanding, and computer systems. Here is a summary of his main points:

Levels of Description

TODO

Brains and Thoughts

TODO

Minds and Thoughts

TODO

Cognition

In addition to philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science, a lot of brain and mind research has come from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Here are some great sources in these areas:

Foundalis’s exposition of the fundamental principles of cognition is a great starting point. Among the highlights of his presentation:

Although cognition emerged as an evolutionary property of biological organisms, it stands alone as a discipline, independent of its biological underpinnings. — Harry Foundalis

Brain Science and Computing

Here’s an old, but still relevant talk from 2003 by Jeff Hawkins. Notice how he cites Thomas Kuhn around 3:07. Note also how he insists that the study of the brains should be part of AI.

Here’s Kwabena Boahen talking about some of the differences between the brain and electronic computers, and a bit on how he’s working to engineer silicon computers to work similar to the way brains work:

Don’t miss this one:

These mirror neurons might make you think of the human capacity for empathy? What is empathy? Is it always a good thing? Before you answer yes, read this article.

There are dozens more TED Talks on the brain and mind. Start with any one and follow the "What to Watch Next" or "What’s Related" links.

Collective Brains

Here’s a thought. Perhaps individual silicon-based power-hungry computers of the early 21st century don’t act like brains and, if intelligent at all, have a seemingly different kind of intelligence from humans.

But what about massive computer networks? Can a collective intelligence emerge?

First check out this old (from 2007) but good talk by Kevin Kelly:

Now, do some research on the whole Singularity thing. What can you find about machine consciousness, collective brains, human bioenhancement, brain-computer interfaces, and the like? Here’s Kurzweil answering a couple questions on bigthink:

And check out this short post on the metaweb from NovaSpivak.com, too.

Have fun searching for more!