It's been a while since I've posted here, but perhaps the best impetus for doing so is when I have more to say on a subject than can reasonably be covered in a Facebook post. I had recently shared
this article by famous psychologist Robert Epstein, claiming that the brain is not a computer: that it does not process information, retrieve knowledge, or store memories. This elicited a rather
mocking response from Jeffrey Shallit, a computer scientist who teaches at the University of Waterloo. I'm afraid my credentials pale in comparison to either of them. My degree is in sociology and anthropology, not computer science, psychology, or philosophy. My knowledge of computers and AI comes mostly second-hand from philosophers and scientists I've read on the subject. I am simply a philosophy enthusiast with a keen interest in issues of the philosophy of mind. Nonetheless, however limited my knowledge of computers or mathematics, I think I may be able to offer some insight on the situation at hand.
One of the central disagreements here seems to be the definition of "information." I'm prepared to award the point to Mr. Shallit here, I think we should at least attempt to understand what Epstein is getting at. Humans experience inputs just as computers do, but computers, as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong here), take in data bit-by-bit, building their models and programs from the ground up. The human mind, as Husserl astutely pointed out, encounters not merely the sense impressions of which Locke spoke, but
objects. There is a holistic quality to perception that moves from the general to the specific, not the other way around. I have no qualms with continuing to call this "information," so long as we understand that we are talking about very different kinds of information.
