On Brains and Computers

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.

The Mythology of the Modern World

I'd like to explore the mythology behind what we call the "scientific worldview." Just to clarify, when I speak of "mythology" here, I don't necessarily mean something that is false. Myths are rather metaphorical motifs by which we make sense of the world around us. Many people today imagine that what is propagated as the "scientific worldview" is based purely on empirical research, and has no untested assumptions or metaphorical ideas behind it. In response to this, I would like to give a genealogy of the modern worldview known as "scientific materialism."

We begin with Thales, the earliest recognized Greek philosopher. He was the first to try to explain the world without reference to traditional mythological explanations. He developed an alternative mythology which did not appeal to personal deities, but instead involved a theory of matter and form. Next, we come to Pythagoras, who saw all the world as an expression of mathematical equations. Many physicists today, when you scratch the surface, are still essentially Pythagoreans.

We then skip to Parmenides, who used logic to try to prove that change is an illusion, and that the one true reality is eternal and unchanging. His followers were impressed with his logic, but couldn't quite accept his conclusion. Instead, they all tried to figure out which aspect of reality was eternal and unchanging. For Plato, it was the eternal forms. Plato's allegory of the cave suggests that there is a reality hidden to the senses but accessible to reason, of which the world of appearances are like shadows on a cave. It is from this idea that we get the idea of eternal, unchanging laws of nature.