Abstract
Is it meaningful to ask how many subunits, circuits, and cross-connections among channels1 will turn a computer into a mind? Is it possible to measure how complicated computing machines need to be in order to attain consciousness?
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Notes
Ladd, p. 98.
J. Bernstein, p. 71.
Bronowski, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, p. 84.
Jacob Bronowski, A Sense of the Future (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1977), p. 65.
Kline, p. 204.
Jacob Bronowski, Magic, Science, and Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 77.
Kline, pp. 221–222.
Koestler, p. 34.
Kline, pp. 190, 199.
Flew, p. 296.
Though delineating a class through some universal defining property can create paradoxes, overall definitions also have advantages. They can handle infinite sets not tractable through definitions that simply list a finite number of constituent class elements.
Kline, pp. 187, 199, 201, 203, 205, 212, 217, 221.
Scruton, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, pp. 245–246.
Flew, pp. 349–350.
Mary Elizabeth Tiles, “Gödel, Kurt,” in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, pp. 294–295.
“Turing, Alan Mathison” (no author given), in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, pp. 783–784.
Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 594–595.
These quandaries relate to the vain formalistic project of constructing an axiomatic system tightly enough to avoid inconsistencies yet loosely enough to encompass all of mathematics. The entire enterprise has proven unable to achieve either goal. Its double failure is mirrored in Gödel’s restrictions on axiomatic completeness and in the so-called Lowen-heim-Skolem theorem, which allows multiple interpretations of undefined terms in mathematics.
Max Delbruck, Mind from Matter? (Palo Alto: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 177–183.
Kline, pp. 176, 181, 191, 227–228, 255, 261, 263, 267–268, 271–273.
William Barrett, The Death of the Soul (Garden City: Double-day, 1986), p. 68.
J. Bernstein, p. 112.
Bronowski, A Sense of the Future, pp. 65, 82.
Flanagan, p. 215.
Kline, p. 263.
Palmer, Does the Center Hold? pp. 124, 344.
Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, pp. 178, 309, 331–338, 358.
Scruton, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, p. 247.
Bronowski, A Sense of the Future, p. 62.
Palmer, Looking at Philosopher, pp. 202–204.
Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life?/Mind and Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 157.
Scruton, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, pp. 125–126.
Dick Teresi, “Perhaps This Universe Is Only a Test,” New York Times Book Review (5 September 1993), p. 11.
Browder, “Does Pure Mathematics Have a Relation to the Sciences?” p. 549.
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, pp. 145–146, 152, 157, 162–163.
Vaclav Havel, “The End of the Modern Era,” New York Times (1 March 1992), p. E15.
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. xiv.
Frattaroli, pp. 73–74.
Briggs and Peat, pp. 24–32.
David Bloor, “Kuhn, Thomas Samuel,” in Kuper and Kuper, eds., The Social Science Encyclopedia, pp. 432–433.
Losee, p. 203.
Oldroyd, pp. 320–327.
Bronowski, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, pp. 46–47.
Bronowski, A Sense of the Future, pp. 46, 86–87, 90.
Ibid., p. 39.
Martin Gardner, “WAP, SAP, PAP & FAP: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,” New York Review of Books (May 8, 1986), pp. 22–25.
Bronowski, The Identity of Man, p. 34.
Ibid., pp. 132–133.
Hearnshaw, pp. 226–227, 230–233.
Kessen and Cahan, p. 647.
Bronowski, The Identity of Man, p. 78.
Hearnshaw, pp. 128, 132, 136–137.
Harold Morowitz, The Wine of Life (New York: Bantam, 1979), p. 148.
Hubel, p. 9.
Ladd, p. 54.
Winson, p. 188.
Ladd, pp. 4–5.
Kandel, pp. 1033–1036.
Eric Kandel, “Environmental Determinants of Brain Architecture and of Behavior: Early Experience and Learning,” in Principles of Neural Science, eds. Eric Kandel and James Schwartz (New York: Elsevier, 1981), pp. 625–631.
Gregory Chaitin, “Randomness and Mathematic Proof,” Scientific American 232 (May 1975), pp. 47–52.
Capra, pp. 123, 132, 143–144.
David Gelman, Debra Rosenberg, Paul Kandell, and Rebecca Crandall, “Is the Mind an Illusion?m” Newsweek (20 April 1992), pp. 71–72.
Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, p. x.
Ibid., p. xi.
Daniel Dennett and John C. Haugeland, “Intentionality,” in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, p. 383.
Palmer, Looking at Philosophy, p. 361.
Dennett and Haugeland, p. 383.
Intentionality has roots going back to Aristotle. Medieval Scholastics such as Saint Thomas Aquinas coined the actual term from a Latin word that means “to point at” or “extend toward.” More modern ways to address intentionality include “hermeneutic” modes of inquiry, which approach their subject matter as an interpretable “text” concealing levels of meaning that require imaginative commentary. The latter perspective forms the basis for work by such philosophers as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Feyerabend, Derrida, Kuhn, and, to some extent, Freud [Flanagan, p. 28; Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 6–7, 10].
Flanagan, pp. 62, 179.
Hearnshaw, pp. 233–237, 239–243.
Flanagan, p. 179.
Ibid., p. 29.
John Searle, Minds, Brains and Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 39.
Flanagan, p. 376.
Flew, pp. 48–49.
Hearnshaw, p. 234.
Georges Thines, “Brentano, Franz,” in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, pp. 117–118.
Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, as quoted in Hearnshaw, p. 234.
Flanagan, pp. 62, 179.
Searle, Minds, Brains and Sciences, p. 39.
Flanagan, p. 30.
Ibid., p. 29.
John Searle, “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?” Scientific American 262 (January 1990), p. 27.
Hearnshaw, pp. 240–241
George Kerner, Three Philosophical Moralists (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 172.
William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique (Garden City: Anchor, 1976), p. 131.
Bronowski, A Sense of the Future, p. 71.
Eccles, p. 348.
Flanagan, p. 336.
Goodman, p. 559.
Crick, p. 136.
Fodor, pp. 107, 122.
Ladd, pp. 28–29, 31.
Hearnshaw, p. 272.
“Babbage, Charles” (no author given), in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, p. 68.
Frank George, “Wiener, Norbert,” in Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion, pp. 810–811.
J. E. Young, Information Theory (New York: Wiley, 1971), pp. 1–38.
Flanagan, p. 29.
Hearnshaw, pp. 240–241.
Searle, “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?” p. 26.
Hearnshaw, pp. 240–241.
Searle, “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?,” p. 28.
Hearnshaw, pp. 275, 293.
Flanagan, pp. 107–109, 237.
Johnson-Laird, pp. 184–190.
Palmer, Does the Center Hold? p. 152.
Johnson-Laird, p. 354.
Bronowski, The Identity of Man, p. 19.
Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science (New York: Dover, 1979), pp. 309–350.
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 243, 248, 249–251, 269–270, 288, 295–298.
Lawrence Wile, “Quantum Concepts,” Psychiatric Times (February 1993), p. 9.
John Searle, “Minds and Brains without Programs,” in Mind-waves, eds., Colin Blakemore and Susan Greenfield (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 209–210.
Flanagan, p. 258.
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© 1994 Donald Mender
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Mender, D. (1994). The Downside of Machine Metaphors. In: The Myth of Neuropsychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6010-8_7
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