Biology and physics. Google Tim Van Gelder for a philosophical perspective on the benefits of using dynamics to explain cognition. I think he has papers online.
Presumably your brain is processing symbols right now, as your read this.
I think there’s an important distinction between being able to manipulate symbols and engaging in symbol processing. After all, I can use a hammer, but nobody thinks there’s hammers in my brain.
Caledonian,
But computer programmers don’t need to understand the hardware, either. Do you think they crack open metallurgy, electronics, and applied physics textbooks to accomplish their goals?
Computers are specifically designed so that we don’t have to understand the hardware. That’s why I said it’s spurious to call anything but an artifact a computer. You don’t need to understand the underlying physics because engineers have carefully designed the system that way. You don’t have to understand how your washing machine or your VCR works either.
If you don’t need to understand every level of hardware to manipulate electronic computational devices, why do you think anyone would need to understand the physics all the way down to deal with the mind?
I don’t think we need to understand the physics all the way down in a practical sense. We’ve already built our way up from physics through chemistry to molecular biology and the behavior of the cell. We can talk about the behavior of networks of cells too. The difference is that it’s the underlying physical properties that make this abstraction possible whereas, in a computer, the system has been specifically designed to have implementation layers with reference to a set of conventions. In a loose sense, it’s accurate to say we understand the physics all the way down in a biological system, because the fact of abstraction is a part of the system (i.e., the molecules interact in a way that allows us to treat them statistically).
mtraven,
Biology and physics. Google Tim Van Gelder for a philosophical perspective on the benefits of using dynamics to explain cognition. I think he has papers online.
I think there’s an important distinction between being able to manipulate symbols and engaging in symbol processing. After all, I can use a hammer, but nobody thinks there’s hammers in my brain.
Caledonian,
Computers are specifically designed so that we don’t have to understand the hardware. That’s why I said it’s spurious to call anything but an artifact a computer. You don’t need to understand the underlying physics because engineers have carefully designed the system that way. You don’t have to understand how your washing machine or your VCR works either.
I don’t think we need to understand the physics all the way down in a practical sense. We’ve already built our way up from physics through chemistry to molecular biology and the behavior of the cell. We can talk about the behavior of networks of cells too. The difference is that it’s the underlying physical properties that make this abstraction possible whereas, in a computer, the system has been specifically designed to have implementation layers with reference to a set of conventions. In a loose sense, it’s accurate to say we understand the physics all the way down in a biological system, because the fact of abstraction is a part of the system (i.e., the molecules interact in a way that allows us to treat them statistically).