Can Computers think?
Introduction
The concept of mind is so difficult to define that over the centuries scholars have sought its representation using an array of objects, usually the latest technological tools.[1][2][3] This mode of scientific discovery is known as the tools-to-theories heuristic; when the current tools used by science are incorporated into a theory and accepted due to widespread use of said tool.[2]
Currently, the most universally applicable tool in all the sciences is undoubtedly the computer, arguably the single most complex device ever created by humanity. The computer is the ultimate tool, replacing inanimate objects like typewriters, notepads, calculators, photo-albums, televisions, books; running complex models of attractors, road networks, the weather, the stock market and the universe; and replicating human bank tellers, porters, telephone operators, pilots, teachers,[4] even doctors [5] and artists.[6] Analogies have been drawn between mind and computer, but the computer is so much more than a metaphor.
My contention is that the usage, by philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists, of a computer as a metaphor for the mind is misuse. The mind, nature's most complex survival mechanism, is nothing more or less than a highly sophisticated, finely tuned computer.
[edit] Emergence, layers of abstraction, and Turing machines
One of the first computers was born out of the need to calculate large arithmetic operations by Babbage and was based on the fact that "an assemblage of unskilled workers, each knowing very little about the large computation" [2]:133 could be replaced by machines. Thus Babbage noticed that simple rules produce emergent phenomena.
Emergence is produced by complex biological systems [7], in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts.[8] Each worker can be thought of as a neuron or an ant, on their own practically useless, but placed in an network, or a colony, highly complex behaviour is produced by following simple
The concept of mind is so difficult to define that over the centuries scholars have sought its representation using an array of objects, usually the latest technological tools.[1][2][3] This mode of scientific discovery is known as the tools-to-theories heuristic; when the current tools used by science are incorporated into a theory and accepted due to widespread use of said tool.[2]
Currently, the most universally applicable tool in all the sciences is undoubtedly the computer, arguably the single most complex device ever created by humanity. The computer is the ultimate tool, replacing inanimate objects like typewriters, notepads, calculators, photo-albums, televisions, books; running complex models of attractors, road networks, the weather, the stock market and the universe; and replicating human bank tellers, porters, telephone operators, pilots, teachers,[4] even doctors [5] and artists.[6] Analogies have been drawn between mind and computer, but the computer is so much more than a metaphor.
My contention is that the usage, by philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists, of a computer as a metaphor for the mind is misuse. The mind, nature's most complex survival mechanism, is nothing more or less than a highly sophisticated, finely tuned computer.
[edit] Emergence, layers of abstraction, and Turing machines
One of the first computers was born out of the need to calculate large arithmetic operations by Babbage and was based on the fact that "an assemblage of unskilled workers, each knowing very little about the large computation" [2]:133 could be replaced by machines. Thus Babbage noticed that simple rules produce emergent phenomena.
Emergence is produced by complex biological systems [7], in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts.[8] Each worker can be thought of as a neuron or an ant, on their own practically useless, but placed in an network, or a colony, highly complex behaviour is produced by following simple