CAN COMPUTERS DO WHAT H[IMANS DO? A Cornipariaon Between Artificial Inteligence And Human Xxltelligence

mikhael bebela missakabo

A thesis submitted in confozmity with the sequiremente for the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Department of Education University of Toronto

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"Body am 1, and soulm -thus speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened and knowing Say: body am 1 entirely, and nothing else; and sou1 is only a word for something about the body. The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your little reason, my brother, which you cal1 l'spirit II -a little instrument and toy of your great reason ....Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage -whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom . (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra) Can Computers Do What Birmans Do? A Comparison Betueen Artificial Intelligence And Human Intelligence Master of Acts 1998 mikbael bebela missakabo Graduate Deputment of Educatioa University of Toronto

1s there a distinction between knowledge humans can acquire and/or generate and knowledge computers can acquire and/or generate? Unless taken in a metaphorical sense, in any contention about computers' "intelligence" there is an underlying assumption that computers somehow have "mind". The question is: what is the rnind? We have to know what the (nature of) mind is before attributing intelligence to computing machines. That is why 1 will briefly try to examine the (irn)possibility of knowing the nature of mind. Furthermore 1 will attempt to answer the question of whether computers or any other artifact can acquire and/or generate knowledge the way(s) humans do. This will be done by comparing and contrasting human problem capabilities and those of computers. In the end, 1 will try to emphasize that social interaction plays a significant role in the formation of the mind and the development of intelligence. 1 extend my gratitude to Prof. John Eisenberg and Prof. Harold

Troper for their vision and supervision. 1 cannot forget the assistance and suggestions for improvement over the years by Prof. George Moyal, Prof. Lutz Winckler, and Anke Winckler. To Julia Winckler, Shirin Khosravaneh, and Martine Giguère, I sincerely appreciate your everyday support and encouragement. 1 am also very much indebted to Prof. Neil Naiman, Prof. Fraser Cowley, Khoudia Camara, Patricia Pok Shin, Prof. Claude Gratton, and Prof. Pierre Belland. And a special thank to everybody 1 mentionned above for putting up with my 'warpedr notion of time. iii

Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents iii Introduction

On the nature of the Mind

1s the Brain the Mind?

Problem solving: Humans and Machines

Social interaction and the Mind Conclusion Bibliography Encore un mot, et je te laisse. Aie toujours présent à Ifesprit que la nature n'est pas Dieu; qu'un homme n'est pas une machine; qu 'une hypothèse n'est pas un fait: et sois assuré que tu ne m'auras point compris, partout 00 tu croiras apercevoir quelque chose de contraire d ces principes. Denis Diderot (1713-1 784)

Even though strength and agility seemed to be the most important abilities for ancient people, they also relied on such faculties as vision, hearing, and smell. In the struggle to survive, al1 these factors played a major role in decisions on how, when, and where to apply physical skills. But there must have been 'somethingr that coordinated and commanded al1 those distinct abilities or faculties and accounted for judgment, creativity, memories, and more. This 'sornething' could be identified as mental power, wisdom, or intelligence. In The Republic, Plato gives a similar scherne in which lesser virtues are governed by the highesc virtue, wisdom. In the modern language the word 'wisdom', connoting a more contemplative approach to life, has been replaced with the word 'intelligence'. However, it should be noted that Plato had a quite different take on wisdom and intelligence. Despite the fact that we are agnostic about what it is, it is still assumed that intelligence coordinates and commands our actions and decisions. And, supposedly, in order to improve life for al1 of us, scientists are trying to simulate intelligence by creating 'intelligent artifacts'. There is no doubt that these devices sometimes help us solve problems that requise a lot of mental and/or physical power. Do 'intelligent' devices really simulate intelligence? It is difficult to give a correct answer to this question unless we know what the term 'intelligence' stands for.

In general, this discussion will revolve around artificial intelligence and human intelligence. 1 will attempt to answer the question whether there is a distinction between knowledge humans can acquire and/or generate and knowledge compatets csn acquize and/or generate. In other words, it will be an attempt to find out whether there is a fundamental distinction between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Proponents of artificial intelligence are convinced that (human) intelligence can be duplicated in computing machines. This kind of speculation cannot be empirically verified because we don't seem to know what intelligence is. However we can dig out the assumptions underlying this belief. In this assertion it is obviously assumed that what we cal1 (human) intelligence has 3 ontological status. This means that intelligence has some physical and/or objective reality that could be expressed out and replicated in artifacts. And this artificial intelligence could be equated with hurnan or natural intelligence. In other words, there would be no difference in the way humans and computers think, corne to know things, and/or solve problems. The problem is that since we seem to be agnostic about the nature of intelligence, how could we draw the parallel between artificial intelligence and human intelligence?

Intelligence is generally viewed as the capacity of cognitively endowed beings, such as humans, to acquise and/or geneiate knowledge, and eventually to solve problems. For example, when a math student learns a method of factoring polynomials and uses it to solve a problem, that student could be said to have demonstrated some kind of intelligence. But what is meant by intelligence is not always clear. The term "intelligence" is used to describe various abilities. Charlie Parker was considered by some as a genius or highly intelligent, so was Albert Einstein. However the basis of what makes some of us believe that Charlie

Parker is a genius is not interchangeable with what makes some of us believe that Albert Einstein is a genius. In each case, the criterion used to determine intelligence varies. Charlie Parker is considered as a genius because of his outstanding talent as a jazz musician. Albert Einstein is considered as a genius because of outstanding insight in theoretical physics. Being an outstanding theoretical physicist doesn't make Einstein an outstanding jazz musician. 1 don't think that Charlie Parker's outstanding talent as a jazz musician would necessarily give him outstanding insights in theoretical physics. In both cases, it is arbitrarily assumed that intelligence refers to some mental capacity and/or activities. And artificial intelligence is striving to extend this capacity to machines. To illustrate this, chess playing would be a good example. In the field of artificial intelligence is believed that beside the real-world version of the game of chess, there is another version, one existing purely in the world of symbols and syntax (Le., formal systems), and his version mirrors exactly the real world game we normally see. ...The connection between the two worlds lies in the interpretation of the elements of the formal system in terms of the objects and operations of the mathematical structuresw (Casti;1985;~. 125) . This means that it is possible to have a formal systems that could play chess. There are already chess playing machines that beat grand masters. The problem is: machines and humans don't play the same way. For example, Deep Blue plays positional chess while humans such as Gary Kasparov play mostly tactical or strategic chess. Deep Blue's positional chess consists of simply evaluating billions of moves, and choosing the most probable best move by referring to patterns stored in its database. But humans such as Kasparov look for meaningful configuration, and often relies on intuition or hunches. It is brute force that makes Deep Blue successful because intelligence cannot be reduced simply to an evaluation based on probability.

If, as said earlier, the term refers to mental activities, and intelligence presupposes mind, then I would suggest that the nature of the end, the locus of intelligence, be determined before examining or comparing human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

On the question of the nature of mind, there seem to be two options: either the mind is simply a heuristic device which doesnlt have an objective reality or it is an ontological entity which must have some obiective reality. If it is simply a heuristic device that helps us point out 'what that acquires and/or generates knowledge', then it might not have reality outside the "mind" in which it is envisaged. And we don't have to worry about its nature.

Since artificial intelligence generally presupposes an ontological mind, the discussion would mostly be on the second option which is: the mind is an ontological 'entity'. John Haugeland thinks that this presupposition is "based on a theoretical conception as deep as it is daring: namely, we are at root, cornputers ourselves" (1985;p.2), The fact that Artificial Intelligence presupposes an ontological mind could explain why computer scientists are endeavouring to build machines that emulate the human brain. 1s the brain al1 that there is to the mind? The debate still rages on, and either answer (yes or no) raises more questions. That is why I intend to examine the question of whether the brain is the mind or, if it is not, the relation between mind and brain. More precisely, 1 will discuss the question of whether the ontological mind can be reduced to the brain. 1 will deal with claims such as Haugeland's in order to compare mental activities referred to as intelligence in humans and problem-solving capabilities referred to as intelligence in machines. Since creativity is often implied in problem solving strategies 1 will try to show that creativity cannot be replicated in machines. And, only a human being or more precisely a person, a conscious 'entity' interacting with the world (which is comprised of people and things) could be creative. Thus I should also examine the role social interaction plays in problem solving processes. My contention is that social interaction plays a major role in the formation of the mind, consequently it plays a role in problem-solving, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge generation processes. There are many cases showing that children who didnlt interact enough with the world cannot fully develop their mental capacities. They cannot articulate more than few words, they donlt seem to have developed logical patterns of thinking, and they have difficulty solving elementary problems. That is why I will end with an emphasis on the importance of social interaction in the formation of the mind. Whether it really exists or not, what we cal1 the mind seems to be at the core of the human intelligence and/or behaviour. 1 would contend that if the mind exists, then it is not an 'entity' that is distinct from the body. Although 1 donlt espouse the idea of the mind as a brain state or a process in the brain I view the mind as being materially supported. There has to be a biological organism in order to have a mind. ft seems difficult to deny the fact that without the brain and the central nervous system there cannot be a mind. Failure to see this is what Antonio Damasio (1995) calls Descartes ' error .

Roughly, 1 will be arguing against philosophical materialism which is a doctrine that claims that every mental phenornenon is totally explainable in physical terrns. However, as said before, 1 am not excluding the possibility of having mental phenomena being materially supported. This seems to be a dilemma. 1 have difficulty believing in an immaterial mind or sou1 but 1 will not subscribe to the contention that not only a conscious mind could be described in physical tems but also can be duplicated, even improved by computing machines.

1 will also try to give an historical perspective to my arguments. Because my belief is that in a particular society the prevailing cultural and intellectual environment as well as the socio-economical system by which the necessities of life are produced contribute to the formation of paradigms around which the intellectual activities revolve. The time and society in which we live influence and/or shape the way we see the world. 8 The comparison of human intelligence and artificial intelligence would not have been possible two hundred years ago simply because there were no 'intelligent' artifacts around. But John Haugeland thinks that this comparison "has nothing to do with advanced technologies but with deep theoretical assumptions". He argues that, "according to a central tradition in Western philosophy, thinking (intellection) essentially is rational manipulation of mental symbols (viz., ideas)" (1985;~.4) . Since computers also manipulate symbols the comparison is possible. 1 agree with Haugeland but I would Say that advanced technologies should not be ignored as a factor. The most straightforward reason is that with no advanced technologies we would not have computers. And the comparison would not be possible. The socio-intellectual environment should not be overlooked. The idea of comparing human intelligence to artificial intelligence has emerged within a particular tradition (rationalism/materialism) in Western philosophy .

Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science which investigates the extent to which mental behaviour of humans can be reproduced in and by machines. In other words, the goal of Artificial Intelligence is to make machines that think. Researchers in Artificial Intelligence argue that, even if computing machines lack cognition, they can still he described as intelligent by virtue of their ability to perform various complex tasks that have traditionally required human intelligence. We give people tasks; on the basis of performance in a task we consider that some thought has taken place in reaching a solution to a problem. Similarly, we can give cornputers the same task; then, it would seem to me, that it is only some kind of vulgar prejudice if we refuse the accolade of intelligence to the computer"(l980, p.13), Herbert Simon, a pioneer in the Artificial Intelligence, muses. Compared to popular notion of intelligence, Simon's definition is very narrow. It reduces intelligence to the ability to perform various complex tasks. But he fails to mention that this is done only in linear way following describable discrete steps. Besides, what Simon means by 'complex task' is not clear. There are 'cornplex tasks' involving the mental and the physical that a machine cannot obviously perform: learning progressively how to ride a bicycle, for example.

The notion of Artificial intelligence has been applied to computer systems and programs capable of performing 'complex tasks' such as information processing, game-playing, pattern recognition, and medical diaqnosis. However not many scientists believe that true Artificial Intelligence can ever be developed since the workings of the human mind are still little understood.

How can a machine duplicate complex processes that are still little understood?

Nonetheless Artificial Intelligence, "clearly delivers a product, whether it be an industrial robot, planes and tanks that 'think,' 10 or models of how to solve problems. Something seems to be working -even though what is meant by 'working' is not clearn (Eisenberg; 1992;p.23). But no 'intelligentf tank is capable of fighting a war without hurnans telling it what to do. Furthermore, would an 'intelligent' tank be aware of the fact that it is fighting a war? Could it suffer from such an elusive ailment as the 'Vietnam War Syndrome' or the 'Gulf War Syndrome1? Would it be sensitive to propaganda? Would it be capable of an act of bravery? Would it be capable of understanding what treason means? Would it be capable of empathy? I very much doubt that because 'intelligent' devices lack consciousness which is essential factor in al1 cases mentioned above.

Despite the fact that sometimes they alter the way we interact with them and the way we conceive and describe the world, 'intelligent' machines perform tasks but humans solve problems. Contrary to machines, humans are aware of the fact that they are solving problems'. Furthermore, much of the human knowledge generation and/or acquisition processes (including commonsense knowledge) is not explainable or describable by/in algorithms as in cornputers. Thus, Artificial Intelligence is still "four to 400 years" away, as John McCarthy, the field's narner, estimated three decades ago. McCarthy's prediction is somewhat paradoxical.

L Even those on production line who perform repetitive tasks are somehow aware of what they are doing. What is meant by intelligence is still not clear, even ta those who claim to be capable of measuring it2. The notion of intelligence seems to be full of paradoxes. I.Q. tests, which are believed to measure intelligence, are mostly based on reasoning skills and reading skills. In other words, psychometrists think that it is the combination of reading skills and reasoning skills that gives a picture of an individual's intelligence. There are cases in which either reading skills or reasoning skills are deficient but the person still shows signs of what is called intelligence. For example, a person who suffers from dyslexia, an impairment of the ability to read, could be successful in performing non language-related tasks. This shows how the notion of intelligence, however useful, can be fuzzy.

Prior to the question of whether computers can be intrinsically intelligent there is an assumption that computers are more than tools. They are capable of acquiring and/or generating knowledge. Indubitably, these two activities presuppose and require intelligence. Unless taken in a metaphorical sense, in any contention about cornputer intelligence there is an underlying assumption that cornputers can have minds. Because, in our

2 For example, C. Murray and R.Herrnstein, authors of The Bell Curve, acknowledge that they donrt know what intelligence is. But they "know" how to measure it, and they have faith in the rnethod of measuring it (I.Q. tests). How can you measure something that you don't know? 12 everyday language we tend to associate and/or conflate mind with intelligence. Having a sharp mind literally means being intelligent. However, I am not proposing to analyze the relationship between mind and intelligence. Neither am 1 going to

propose another theory of mind. In chapter 1, 1 will simply look, from an historical point view, at various attempts made in order to define the nature of the mind. I choose to add an historical perspective because, I think, it will help us understand not only the evolution of theories of mind but also the contexts in which they develop. But the focus will be on Descartes' attempt to define the mind as an immaterial substance that is distinct and independent of the body. Descartes, often referred to as the father of modern philosophy, is the one whose theory of mind Gilbert Ryle spoke of "with deliberate abusiveness, as 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine'" (Ryle;1949;p.15). Ryle thinks that Descartes represents the mind as being a ghost harnessed to a machine (the body) 3. The body is considered as a machine because the bodily processes can be explained in physical terms. Since the mind, supposedly, has no physical properties it cannot be described in physical terms. The two entities are different in nature but their interaction is realized in the pineal gland. And

1 choose to focus on Descartes because by separating the mind from the body and clairning that the pineal gland is the locus of the mind-body interaction Descartes not only provided the basis

3 Most likely in support of some religious doctrine of immortality. for philosophical materialism but also foreshadowed many contemporary theories of mind. Many contemporary scholars (for example, Marvin Minsky, Jerry Fodor) have a tendency to reduce the mind to the brain. In other words, the mind is identical with the brain and its functions. Herbert Feigl boldly states that "a thought merely is -not arises from, not accompanies, but identically is- a particular spatio-temporal firing pattern of neurons in your brain" (Harth;1993;p.100). This kind of argument serves to make materialist theories more 'scientificr and do away with the immaterial mind but also to avoid falling into the trap in which Descartes fel14.

In this discussion about human intelligence versus artificial intelligence the possibility of the mind being the brain5 is of a particular interest. The main reason is that: Artificial Intelligence presupposes an ontological mind which is the brain.

1s the brain really the mind? This will be the topic of chapter

2. As a follow up of chapter 1, the discussion will be on how progress and discoveries in Physiology have impacted and influenced the way the mind is viewed. Progress and discoveries in Physiology have allowed a reinterpretation of the concept of mind: an ontological reduction of Cartesian (immaterial)

4 This trap is the question of mind/body interaction for which Descartes could not offer a convincing argument. 5 This doesnlt mean that 1 am comrnitted to the idea of an ontological mind. substance to physical substance. I would have difficulty

believing that the brain is the mind. But, 1 cannot deny, for example, the correlation between brain damage and deterioration

of mental cornpetence. 1 would also try to show how the 'the brain is the mindl assumption is a key component of any computational

theory of mind. Thus my argument will be that in any computer mode1 of the mind the underlying assumption is that the mind is the brain. Because if when the mind is seen as having physical properties that its workings can be considered computational. For example, the computational theory of mind known as Connectionism or Parallel Distributed Processing, is an artificial intelligence approach to cognition derived from the view of the brain as a network of interconnected neurons.

1 will also maintain that reductionist/ materialist assumptions are essential to any Computational Theory of Mind because one cannot Say that mind is a computer if it (the mind) does not have physical properties. 1 will also argue that not only would there be a category-mistake in comparing such an elusive 'entity' as the mind with a computer, but, as a colleague once said: "it is a methodological danger to treat models/metaphors literally". This approach to understanding cognition is a good example of the prevailing scientific trend: materialism. As said earlier, materialism is a doctrine that claims that every phenomenon is explainable in physical terms. According to Hogan, materialists 15 believe that "any instantiation of any property by, or within, a human being is ultimately explainable in physical tems" (Hogan in Guttenplan;l995;p.472). And eliminative materialists "advocate the elimination of our mental vocabulary on the grounds that it is irredeemably unscientific and misleading" (Lyons;1995;p.lv). Matter is the ultimate reality, and the mind and/or phenomenon such as consciousness is an attribute or effect of matter. And it could be explained by physiochemical changes in the nervous system. The materialist approach does away with the problematic Cartesian mind. It is so appealing because it seems to do away with the mysterious aspect of phenomenon such as mind and/or consciousness. And to those who believe in it, it gives a false impression of power. Because it is supposed that once a phenomenon is described in physical terms it can easily be controlled. Maybe it can easily be handled by the intellect but not in the physical sense. Erich Harth sees "materialism as an outdated concept, rooted in the nineteenth-century belief that all phenomena could be explained as the mechanical interactions between many small indivisible and permanent material objects or elementary particles. Since then, the world of these supposedly indestructible units has been opened to reveal an immaterial confusion of fields, virtual states, and questionable causal relationsm6(~arth;1993;p.iix).Sergio Moravia asserts that this approach doesn't seem to go away despite the warnings

6 My italics sounded by more advanced contemporary thought, materialism, whether explicitly or implicitly, appears to be the general Weltanschauung underlying research programs which could quite well do without it. Why is this so? 1s there some fear that if a materialist conception of the world is abandoned, then there is no choice but to embrace spiritualism?"(l995;p.7).

But if someone doesn't believe in materialism, this doesnlt necessarily mean that they are spiritualists or mystics. 1 should also add that by seeking to reduce every hurnan phenomenon to a physical phenomenon, materialism becomes, as Hilary Putnam puts it, "one of the most dangerous contemporary intellectual tendencies"(l982b;p.147) which makes scientists believe in the possibility of predicting and controlling (human) behaviour. Because ''scientists (and others) are spooked by that which they cannot control. To overcome this discomfort they must meet the perceived challenge to control what appears so elusive and difficult to ~ontrol'~(Eisenberg;l992;p.15). It would seem that materialism is more than an intellectual trend. It is a practical, ethical and political program that could spell out danger. For example, intelligence is again being linked to the genetic make-up and/or ethnic background and, in some way, the socioeconomic status. This has been done by P. Rushton, and more recently by C. Murray and R. Herrnstein.

In chapter 3, my intention is to scrutinize the process of problem solving in both humans and cornputers by comparing and/or contrasting them. David Rummellhart, for example, believes that it is possible to apply the concept of parallel distributed processing (interlinked and concurrent computer operations) and to create networks of experimental computer chips (silicon neurons) that simulate or mimic data-processing functions of brain cells. It is an attempt to reproduce human problem solving capabilities in machines. The question is: does the mind function

and solve problems only in discrete steps? 1 donlt think so. It is true that some human problem solving processes can be mapped out. But the mind sometimes solves problem in a non-linear fashion that cannot be explained or described by discrete steps.

And 1 will also try to show that human problem solving capabilities involve more than a mere computation based on deductive reasoning. Very often, creativity and other psychological factors such as perseverance and courage play significant but necessary roles in human problern solving capabilities. As said earlier, "human problem solving capabilities involves more than a mere computation based on deductive reasoning". Because "the mind can be shown to operate intuitively, to know certain truths without linear calculations" (Eisenberg;~,22; 1992) . For example, the mathematician Jacques Hadamard believed that the roots of creativity "lie not in consciousness, but in the long unconscious work of incubation and in the unconscious aesthetic selection of ideas that thereby pass into consciousness'(Johnson-laird in Hadamard;l996;p.xiii). My other contention was that 'Icreativity and other factors such as perseverance and courage play significant roles in human problern 18

solving capabilities". However 1 will not discuss "factors such as perseverance and couragew7 and focus on creativity and/or imagination. And the discussion will include the question of whether creativity is uniquely human. Creativity plays a major role in problem solving. So does imagination in knowledge acquisition and problem solving. Very often, in order to understand and/or solve a problem we have to imagine or picture it. Imagination has helped Science make leaps and bounds. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a 17th century French essayist and philosopher, speculated about space travel. In the 19th century, Jules Verne, a French novelist, could imagine subrnarines. Today, space travel and undersea exploration are no longer in the realm of fiction.

In chapter 4, the discussion will be on the role of social interaction and/or environrnent in the formation of the mind.

Because 1 believe that the outside world or the environrnent in which we live not only shapes our view of the world but also influences the way we see the world. Furthemore, the world seems to be the material with which knowledge is constructed. As David

Olson states it: "any account of the cognitive processes of humans will therefore have to take into account the propesties of these cultural artifacts as well as of the biological organs.

7 Since these aptitudes have not been attributed to computing machines even by the most techno-optimist and/or the most techno-enthusiast. 19 Cognition rests as much on a cultural foundation as it does on biological onen(1980;p.3). Even self-knowledge implies some kind of differentiation and interaction with the rest of the world.

In this discussion, 1 will try to put an emphasis on the human being as a whole, and not simply on the mind. The choice of this topic is based on the fact that 1 tend to believe that it is futile to inquire into the nature of the mind and/or the mind- body interaction since we don't really know what the term mind refers to. Furthermore, 1 believe that a human being or a person is a whole being, an indivisible entity that is not an embodied rnind or spirit. A human being or a person is not a 'cornputer made out of meatt(Gardner in Penrose;l989;viii) either, as Marvin

Minsky maintains. Cornputers do not have the ability to display images internally and to order those images in a process called thought. This is, as Damasio (1995) suggests, an essential to having a mind. Furthermore 1 doubt that computers can experience 'what it is like to bel. However it seems plausible that what we cal1 the mind could be materially supported. But this doesn't mean that the mind can be reduced to a physical substance. In this work, attempts will be made to compare and contrast the two images (of human beings) prevailing in contemporary philosophy and modern science: the image of a human being as a machine with physical components and properties, and that of a human being as person, "producer of acts, symbols, and values connected essentially with his historical and cultural nature". As Gilbert 20

Ryle once said: "Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They are men -a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering" (1949). Instead of (or before) trying to find out what human being is made of, we should ask ourselves 'what is it to be a person. Since a human being doesn't live in a vacuum, I prefer the word 'person' because it connotes a subjective social entity living in a particular time and space and being the inheritor of a particular history. 1 shall say only that it is generally the ignorant who have given things their names, and so the names do not always fit the things with sufficient accuracy . R. Descartes (Replies to the Fiftb Set of Objections)

CHAPTER ONE

e rrati;ire of the

As said in the introduction, my contention is that: eithar the mind is simply a heuristic concept or it is an ontological entity. If it is simply a heuristic concept devised to help understand behaviour and solve problems then we don't have to worry about its nature. But if it is an ontological entity then it must have sorne reality, it is not simply a concept. Generally materialist thinkers believe that the mind is an ontological entity. David K. Lewis affirms that "materialists must accept the identity theory as a matter of fact: every mental experience is identical with some physical stateWB(1966;p.63). For an

8 The question seems to be an ideological one. If I define myself as a materialist, then 1 must accept that every mental state is identical with some physical (neurophysiological) state . If 1 don1t de£ine myself as a rnaterialist, then I may not accept that every mental state is identical with some physical (neurophysiological) state . ontological mind there could be two primary categories of existence: the physical and the nonphysical. The two categories of existence give way to two major ontological alternatives on the nature of the mind. Tautologically, the nonphysical option is that the mind is an immaterial substance, therefore, off limits to scientific inquiry; and the physical option would be that the mind has some physical reality. Many contemporary cognitive scientists opt for the physical option sometimes called: 'materialist ontology". According to this doctrine, the mechanisms of the mind are implemented by the brain. Because a well-functioning brain is the material seat of mental capacities. And mental capacities emerge from neurophysiological capacities. However mental capacities do not reduce to neurophysiological capacities . (see. Lloyd Morgan, C. D. Broad, Samuel Alexander, and George H. Lewes)

In this chapter 1 propose to examine the (dualist) idea of an ontological mind distinct from the body, or the mind as an immaterial substance. More precisely the discussion will be on the relation between the mind as an immaterial substance and the body. However a full discussion on the nature of mind with a historical perspective would be too arnbitious and beyond the scope of this work. Sergio Moravia thinks that "a systematic, historical study of the debate on the mind-body problem would certainly pose a fascinating challenge, but one would inevitably run the risk... of meshing such an investigation with the whole 23 history of philosophy (or science) from ancient times to the present" (1995; p. 1) .

A central metaphysical problem in the philosophy of mind is the question of whether mental phenomena are also physical phenomena and, if not, how they relate to physical phenomena. Ein Weltknoten, a world knot: this is how Arthur Schopenhauer once defined the problem of relationship between mind and body. This 'knot' ambiguously binds together what are, or appear to be, the two fundamental dimensions of man" (Moravia;l995;p.l). But the nature of the mind and that of the body, "the two fundamental dimensions of man" should be determined before attempting to solve the problem of how the two dimensions relate, if they relate9. The nature of the physical dimension or the body is knowable and open to empirical verification. But the nature of the other dimension, the postulated one known as the mind remains elusive, intractable and mysterious. And it highlights the limits of our capacity to understand the world.

As said in the introduction, 1 choose to examine mainly Descartesr take on the nature of the mind. Because he is the one, in modern philosophy, who first claimed that the mind was distinct from the body. In the sixth meditation, he said that

9 Because, for example, you cannot be in a process of building a car and driving it at the same time. 24 '*the first observation 1 make.. . is that there is a great difference between the Nnd and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible1*(Cottingham;l984;p.59). He also suggested that while the bodily processes could be explained in physical terms, the processes of the mind could not. Another important reason: despite the fact that the doctrine of mind and body as distinct entities is discussed throughout history of philosophy, Descartes is viewed as the father of modern mind-body problem. He is the one who, according to Gilbert Ryle, instituted the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine. Since, by separating the mind from the body, Descartes' approach raises more problems than it solves 1 would try to include, in this discussion, some subsequent reactions and theories on the nature of the mind.

What is the mind? John Haugeland thinks that our "commonsense concept of 'the mind' as an immaterial entity is surprisingly recent. It arose during the seventeenth century, along with modern science and modern mathematics -which is no mere coincidence" (1985;p.lS). Also, this concept seems to be a result of the medieval world view which was mainly a Christian adaptation of ideas put forward by ancient Greek thinkers such as Plato and Aristotie. Haugeland argues that the origin of the modern mind could be found in the socio-historical (and intellectual) context created by the Copernican distinction 25 between appearance and realitylO. If Haugeland is right, the Copernican revolution did affect not only Astronomy but also the prevailing Weltanschauung! It influenced Galileo Galilei whose discoveriesn were important factors in bringing about the ultimate triumph of the Copernican revolution. From Haugeland's perspective, the important point is that this revolution highlighted the distinction "...between how things seem and what they really are; that is, it fuxther separates thought £rom the world" (1985;p.23). However the consequences of the Copernican revolution came out with Descartes.

Descartes, seems to have immensely contributed to Our "commonsense concept of the mind". But Ryle also believes that Descartes was simply "reformulating already prevalent theological doctrines of the sou1 in the new syntax of Galile0"(1949;p.23).

This was done by describing the mind as not having physical properties. Charles Morris also thinks that the fundamental features of the Cartesian views can be found in Newton and Galileo12. As Bertrand Russell derides this approach:

'O 'O However I could argue that this distinction didnlt start with Copernicus. Plato contended that there was a difference between things and their forms (which bestow existence on them).

l1 Such as telescope, the changing phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and many more. 12 Galileo believed that 'the book of nature is written in the language of rnathematics. Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said 'Let Newton bel, and al1 was light.

Pxesumably under the influence of Newton and Galileo discoveries in physics, Descartes postulated a mathematically describable materialistic universe structured by mechanistic principles. And Russell adds that he regarded the bodies of men and animals as machines; animals he regarded as automata, governed entirely by the laws of physics, devoid of feelings or consciousness. Men are different: they have a soul, which resides in the pineal gland. There the soul cornes in contact with the 'vital spirits', and through this contact there is an interaction between soul and body" (Russell; 1961; p.545).

However by envisaging the universe (and its content) as machines, it is not in the way our senses view machines. 1 would Say that it is in the way machines are viewed on the drawing board and in engineersl minds. Descartes1 universe could accommodate the human body but it excluded the human mind. Since the human body is part of the universe, its processes could be explained in mechanical terrns. However the same could not be said for the mind which is not part of the universe. That is why 1 could contend that the prevalent 17th century concept of mind had a Galilean-Cartesian- Newtonian flavour but with an unmistakable déjà vu after taste. This after taste is the doctrine of immaterial soul that could be retraced back to Socrates and Plato or earlier Eastern philosophy.

The Galilean-Cartesian-Newtonian world-view is, in part in£luenced by classical ideas of Pythagoras and Plato. It regarded the world as a machine that could be described in mechanical and mathematical terms. Consequently humans, as 'things-in-the-world' could be and should be described in mechanical and mathematical terms. However the Galilean- Cartesian-Newtonian world-view conceded that human beings have a dual nature. They are body and Nnd (soul). Physically, they are parts of the world-machine. Mentally, they are spectators of the world-machine to which they are linked by the relation of knowledge.

Most likely influenced by his rationalist predecessors (i.e. Plato), Descartes explicitly founded his First Philosophy on the res cogitans (the mind/soul, the thinking thing) which is supposedly immaterial. However even if the mind, when directed towards itself, doesnlt perceive itself to be anything other than a thinking thing nothing tells us that the mind is indeed a thinking thing. Or, from simply the fact of thinking nothing tells us that there is an immaterial 'entity' behind this activity or either this activity is materially supported. Descartes goes further by claiming that not only the mind is totally different from the body but it also operates independently of it.

Ryle asserts that when Galileo showed that his methods of scientific discovery were competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every occupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting motives. As a man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from clockwork. The mental could not be just a variety of the mechanical (Ryle;1949;~. 18) .

The mind could not be an occupant of space (or a phpical entity). If it were an occupant of space (a physical entity), it would be subject to the laws of physics. In Descartesr view, the mind is an immaterial substance that thinks. It is, "a thing which doubts, understands, aif irms, denies, wills , refuses, which also imagines and feelsw (Works, 1,153). Here, Descartes' position on the status of the mind is quite ambiguous. 1s the mind a "thing which thinks" or an activity of the soul (thinking)? It cannot be the entity that does the thinking and be the thinking at the same time. Descartes thinks that the difference resides only in terminology. Like his predecessors, he believes that the substance in which thought immediately resides is called mind. But the nature of the mind remains unclear except, for dualists, that it is immaterial. However 'immateriality' seems to suggest lack of physical properties. In this case, 'imrnateriality' seems to be simply a negation of materiality.

Descartes prefers to "use the term 'mindl rather than 'soul' since the word 'soul' is ambiguous and is often applied to something corporeal" (Cottingham;l993; p.114). In the second meditation, Descartes said that he "imagined [the soul] to be sornething tenuous, like a wind or fise or ether, which permeated [his] more solid part~"(26)'~. My objection might sound a little bit anachronistic: saying that the soul is tenuous suggests that it is somewhat material. And if the sou1 could be corporeal, it would be perishable. Furthemore, what would be its status/position in relation with the mind and/or the body? In Les

Passions de 1 'âme, he clearly states that "1 'âme est d'une nature qui n'a aucun rapport à 1 'étendue ni aux dimensions ou autres propriétés de la matière dont le corps est composé." (1649; 1, art.30). It cannot be corporeal and not have "aucun rapport à

1 'étendue ni aux dimensions ou autres propriétés de la matière dont le corps est comp~sé'~.Descartes believed that the essence of physical substances is extension in space. Since he believes that mind/soul is not extended in space it is distinct from physical substances. Therefore the mind/soul is imateria1l4. Descartes' definition of 'immaterialityl seems to be simply a negation of physical characteristics. However there is no proof

l3 However this refers to the prior beliefs that didnlt resist to Descartes' methodical doubt. Since most of his beliefs were reinstated there is no reason this particular one would be a exception.

14 For Descartes, the "immateriality" of the soul made freedom possible since the body or any other physical object is subject to deteministic physical laws. And freedom plays a major role in the Christian system of beliefs. Without freedom, one cannot sin (unless you are a Calvinist). that the mind, if it does exist, is not extended in space.

If we take another look at the above-mentioned quote, we can also Say that Descartes is suggesting that physiological processes do not have any impact on mental activity. If so, then Descartes contradicted hirnself, in the first meditation, when he talked about madmen "whose brains are so damaged by the persistent vapours of melancholia that they firmly maintain they are kings when they are paupers . . ."15 (Cottingham;1993; p. 13) . If Descartes doesnlt contradict himself, then he believes that madness is a physiological state that affects the mind. But if, as he claimed, the body is distinct from the soul/mind how could it affect the soul/mind? For example, how would both entities interact when someone is drunk? In his letters to Queen Elizabeth (May 21 and June 28, 1643), Descartes talks about the 'union of mind and body' as a 'primitive notion'. He seems to be suggesting that just as, for example, length is a property that belongs solely to the body, properties such as understanding or sensation belong to the mind insofar as one is an embodied consciousness~From the suggestion that the property known as length cannot be separated from the physical body it describes, Descartes, in the Sixth Set of Replies, states that ".. .the mind, even though it is in fact a substance, can nonetheless be said to be a quality of the body to

15 This could be interpreted as the assertion of a free mind. But it is not really since 'the brain is damaged by the persistent vapours of melancholia'. which it is joined"(Cottingham;I984;p.297). And, if "properties

such as understanding or sensation belong to the mind insofar as one is an embodied consciousness~,then the mind is materially supported. Thus the mind cannot be separated from "embodied consciousness''. Despite the theory he developed in Les Passions de l'âme that the pineal gland in the brain is the 'seat of the soul' and al1 the physiological details, Descartes failed to give a convincing account of the mind-body interaction except the

obvious ones such as: 'my hand rises when 1 decide to raise it'. He gives no reason why one should believe that the mindhoul is related to the brain. Descartes also argued that the mind is not the brain because mind lacks spatial location. That the mind is ontological (that it really exists) is still an open question.

Descartes thought of the body as a machine driven by the soul. The underlying assumption is that It could not be otherwise since Descartes, a Christian, believed in the survival of the soul after death. He also believed that the mind could carry out its operations independently of the body. This assertion cannot follows from his assumptions such as 'the soul (mind) and the body are two distinct entities', and it cannot be verified16 Even

16 Descartes' views on the nature of mind/soul have been derided by Voltaire in his works Micromégas (1752) and Dictionnaire philosophique (1764). Voltaire didn't believe in the possibility of knowing the (nature of) rnind. He preferred John Locke's take on the nature of the mind. Locke contended that the nature of the mind was not open to our knowledge. if it could, there would be another question to answer: can there be a mind in the absence of the body (more precisely, the brain and the central nervous system)? 1 doubt it. Unless you believe in shoots and spirits, there seems to be no proof that the mind an sich exists!17. Furthermore the positing of the mind and the body as two ontologically distinct entities makes it difficult, if not impossible, to explain their interaction. Let us suppose that body and sou1 (mind) are like an automobile with its driver. Descartes would be right to Say that the automobile and the driver are two distinct entities and the automobile cannot operate without a driver. And it is the driver who decides in which direction the automobile should go. However the interaction between the automobile and its driver are not as mysterious as that between the body and the mind. My will (mind) can make my finger (body) move. This is an instance of the mind controlling the body. There seems to be, to the least, a 'causal' link between my will and my finger moving. It shows that the mind and the body are not independent from one another. After claiming that the mind is distinct from the body and failing to explain how body mind would interact, Descartes is trying to avoid the logical conclusion of his dualist position. This conclusion

17 It should be noted that the brain and the central nervous system are essential for consciousness which is closely associated with the mind. However, this doesn't mean that the brain and the central nervous system are the essence of the mind (consciousness). The question of whether the brain is the mind will be discussed in the next chapter. should be that there is no interaction between the mind and the body. Or there must be a link that allows interaction. But the question of the nature of that link would rise. That link has to be of a nature that allows interaction between a nonphysical entity and a physical entity. Instead, Descartes takes an untenable position by suggesting that the interaction between the mind and the body occurs through the pineal gland. And this would be a two-way psychophysical (causal) interaction. For example, raising onels am is an interaction from the mental to the physical. Perceiving the redness of a red rose is an interaction

£rom the physical to the mental. However the nature of these interactions seem to be a rnysteryle. It is undeniable that certain brain states are very often accompanied by certain mental states. For example, an excess of the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine is accompanied by schizophrenia; or a diminished noradrenaline activity is accompanied by depression. But nothing tells us that one causes the other. They could simply be correlated. And correlation is not cause. One way out of this trap would be suggesting that these interactions are brute facts

l8 Leibnitz and Malebranche rejected the possibility of psychological causal interaction in either direction. They argued that even though some mental phenomena are accompanied by some physical phenomena this constant conjunction never involves causal interactions. The two types of phenomena simply run in parallel according to Godls will. The problem is that, first, the claim that God exists has to be verified or successfully defended. Then it should be demonstrated how God imposes her or his will on phenomena. 34 that cannot be explained. But this would be an undefensible act of faith. In short, the question of how states of an extended substance (the body) could be affected by states of an unextended substance and/or the other way around remains unanswered.

Up to the 17th century many thinkers as well as ordinary people believed that the mind is clearly separated from worldly things. But Galileo's methods and discoveries could not be ignored. Ryle thinks that the scientific but also Descartes, a Christian, Still adhering to the grarmnar of mechanics, ...tried to avert disaster by describing minds in what was merely an obverse vocabulary. The workings of minds had to be described by the mere negatives of the specific descriptions given to bodies; they are not in space, they are not motions, they are not modifications of matter, they are not accessible to public observation. Minds are not bits of clockwork, they are just bits of not-clockwork (l949;p.20) .

Ryle goes further by ridiculing Cartesianism as the view that there is a ghost in the machine. He argues that viewing the mind as a substance or an object is a category mistake. He thinks that even though the word 'mind' is a noun it does not name an objectlg. Descartes seems to be confusing the ways we talk about physical entities and the ways we talk about minds. To have a mind is not to have a distinct and special sort of entity. It is simply to have certain capacities and dispositions.

19 In French, there is a difference between nom concret which refers to abjects and nom abstrait which refers to concepts. However the question of whether lresprit is a nom concret or a nom abstrait remains open. 35 Some 17th century philosophers rejected Descartes' division of a human being into mental and physical substances. Baruch Spinoza thought that both material and spiritual phenomena are distinct modes of a single substance. He considered himself to be a Cartesian. Unfortunately, his doctrine has been wrongly echoed by the contemporary "mind stuff" theory according to which the mind is nothing but a physical phenornenon. But there are phenomena that cannot be accounted for solely in physical terms. Consciousness is one of them.

Later on, J.O. de la Mettrie (1709-51) was more radical. In order to solve the problerns raised by the Cartesian dualism he opted to do away with the very concept of mind/soul. He argued that the concept of mind or sou1 was no more than an unnecessary religious bias. He also held that the concept of mind/soul was incompatible with the objective scientific view that humans were no more than machines. This position has been echoed, in contemporary philosophy of mind by the approach to the nature of mind known as: eliminative materialism. Advocates of this view argue that ordinary concepts (such as beliefs, desires, goals) do not represent correct categories of cognition, and cannot be reduced to neurophysiological acco~nts~~.Therefore this cornmonsense

20 1 don't think that there is a category of cognition that could be reduced to a neurophysiological account. The reason is: cognition involves meaning, and meaning psychological framework must be abandoned with the developrnent of neurosciences. J.O. de la Mettrie tried to explain the mind in mechanical terms, and elirninative materialists propose to do the same in neurophysiological tems2'. But many philosophers argue that the mind cannot be reduced to physical properties. One reason is: meaning cannot be accounted for in physical terms.

Meaning requires consciousness. And, it is still not clear how physical activities such as neuron firings could arnount to a meaningful mental phenomenon.

In his Lettres Philosophiques, voltairez2, after deriding

Cartesian doctrine, said that Locke had succeeded in avoiding the traps of rationalist metaphysics used by Descartes and his followers : Tant de raisonneurs ayant fait le roman de 1 'âme, un sage est venu qui en fait modestement 1 'histoire. Locke a développé à 1 'honune la raison humaine, comme un excellent anatomiste explique les ressorts du corps humain. (XIIIe lettres)

And D'Alembert added that Locke had reduced metaphysics to what

cannot be accounted for in physical tems. *' Eliminative materialists predict that eventually neurobiology will cannibalize psychology (and perhaps other human sciences).

2 2 Voltaire was also known and liked or disliked for his anti-religious views. This could explain why he derided Descartes1 (Christian) views. it should be: the experimental physics of the soul (p.147).

However Locke was as much a dualist as Descartes. He believed that the mind was as a "closet wholly shut from lightl' (in

Morris;1932;p.39). Therefore he didnlt concern himself with the nature of mind. However he believed in the existence of an entity that could be called mind though 'wholly shut from lightl. There is no way we can empirically verify that we or other people have minds. Introspection wouldn't help us find Our own rnind either.

Observation of others and/or introspection cannot help us determine whether or not we have soul or mind. We need to resort to inference and argumentation. David Hume puts it this way:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what 1 cal1 myself, 1 always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. 1 never can catch myself at any time without perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. ... If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, 1 must confess 1 can no longer reason with him. .... He may perhaps, perceive something simple and continuld, which he calls himself; tho' 1 am certain there is no such principle in me.

Hume's views imply that thinking is perceiving. Since perceiving is a conscious process, thinking must be a conscious process. If thinking is a conscious process, it can be described by discrete steps. This view joins that of Descartes and Hobbes 1 mentioned earlier. Hume might be right by saying that he "never can catch himself at any time without perception, and never can observe anything but the perception, But what else could he As Eisenberg thinks, "how can an eye see itself seeing?" 'The optically impaired' Hume is looking for his glasses while wearing them, he has nevertheless made a point here. He is not suggesting that introspection cannot reveal feelings or thoughts. He is expressing his doubt on the existence of an immaterial Cartesian mind which allegedly does the thinking or experiences the feelings. Here, the mind is seen by Hume as an abstract term referring to series of ideas.

William Barret thinks that the problem of the nature and/or the existence of the mind is mainly a modern invention. In his book titled Death of the Soul, he says that this problem is not found among ancient and medieval thinkers. Whatever their other aberrations, these older thinkers did not doubt that we lived in a world that was shared by our own and other rninds. But in this modern, scientific age of ours we feel compelled to raise such doubts out of a spirit of what we imagine to be theoretical exactness.(p.xii)

That is why 1 would contend that theories about the nature of the mind (or soul) are more the product of a particular socio- cultural environment than they are of persona1 idiosyncrasies. The soul has often been considered as an entity that could not have physical properties. The reason is: if the sou1 did have physical properties, then it would be subject to laws of physics, 39 and more importantly it would be perishable. Therefore it would be against, for example, Christian doctrines. So, it would not be far-fetched to contend that the sole of religious beliefs in attempt to understand the nature of what we cal1 the soul (or mind) was not a negligible one. Morris thinks that the appearance of the doctrine of mind as an imrnaterial substance "is a corollary of the religious development which gave a central metaphysical importance to the soul and its inner life"

(1932;p.21) . And, this may explain why, in the middle ages, discussions about knowledge and the soul were somewhat restricted to circles of theologians speculating on the afterlife.

The mind is very often postulated in order to explain behaviour.

But what is the rnind? 1 don't know if we can find the whole truth. The nature of the mind remains unknown despite relentless efforts. When we talk about the existence of the mind, it is still the mind postulating its own existence. But when we try to find the nature of the mind, it is the cognizing entity that is trying to cognize itself. And a circularity would result froni this kind of exercise. That that analyzes would be analyzing itself. If we postulate a homonculus (or sorne kind of executive) to break the vicious circle, we will have to postulate hornunculi ad infinitum. Obviously, this would not make sense. Mind, if such a 'thing' exists, would find it extremely difficult to find out what "it" really is. The concept of mind seems to Vary every time one or a combination of some factors changes. Some of these factors could be: the social environment, trends in the sciences and the technology available. For example, the science of mechanics was no sooner founded than a widespread ideology of mechanism followed in its wake. Man is a machine, so the lament goes. The molecules in nature blindly run according to the inalterable mechanical laws of nature; and as our molecules go, so do we. The human mind is a passive and helpless pawn pushed around by the forces of nature. Freedom is an illusion, And this lament was to rise to crescendo of pessimism during the nineteenth century. (Barret;p.xv; 1986)

About the current theories of mind, similar comments could apply. With the advent of cornputers, computational theories of mind started emerging. It can also be said that the advent of computing machines has led to theories such as machine state functionalism. This is a theory that contends that human mind can be understood as special instance of computing machines, and mental activity involves physical transformations from one computational state to another. But al1 the workings of a computing machine or any other mechanical device can be described in mathematical and/or physical tems whereas "...a person's thinking, feeling and purposive doing cannot be described solely in the idioms of physics, chemistry and physiology, therefore they must be described in counterpart idioms" (Ryle;1966,p.18). This could be said to be debatable in the light of recent findings in Neurophysiology. However neurophysiological (physical or objective) description of mental phenomena cannot account for meaning .

As Eisenberg puts it, "one cannot categorize mind in the same way as one categorizes inanimate objects such as metals, mass, or electricity. For mind is active and the basis of al1 knowledge. 'It' creates categories; ... To categorize lit' would be dependent, hence to freeze lit', to make lit' passive. This would not capture the mind that knows, the mind that organizes experience" (p.25;1992). It would be difficult to draw the line between the phenomenon observed (the mind) and the observer (the mind). It is using the mind for the purpose of investigating the mind. Any inquiry into the nature and the workings of the mind has a inherent subjective flavour. In The Limits of Reason, Eisenberg argues that this kind of inquiry is self-contradictory or incoherent.

Why do we want to know" the nature of the mind? Knowing the nature of the mind is not indispensable. Whether we know it or not, life goes on. As Gilbert Ryle says, "teachers and examiners, magistrates and critics, historians and novelists, confessors and non-commissioned officers, employers, employees and partners, parents, lovers, friends and enemies al1 know well enough how to settle their daily question about the qualities of character and intellect of the individual with whom they have to do" (Ryle; 42

1949; p.7). Al1 this without necessarily knowing the nature of the mind. However various notions of mind/soul have helped humans regulate and explain some types of behaviour. Now, they have helped scientists devise problem solving protocols. For example, the General Problem solver (GPS), an artificial intelligence project developed by Newell, Shaw, and Simon was capable of solving a variety of problems in chess, logic, and mathematics. The GPS uncovered a broad set of techniques that hurnans use in problem-solving. In experimental settings, these techniques could be obtained from human subjects through protocols or introspective reports. Thus, the GPS was viewed as providing a mode1 of human thinking and/or mind. However it doesnlt inform us on the nature of the mind, except that it has to be "physical symbol manipulator".

If an entity can move around whether it is in response to some perceptual contact with its environment or not, we can easily postulate that it has beliefs and desires. Therefore, it has a mind. This is one way of accounting for behaviour. But we donlt have to commit ourselves to the idea of an ontological mind. If we really want to speculate on the nature of mind, we can take an Aristotelian position which defines the mind as a set of capacities or potentialities. When, for example, we talk about a knife we refer not only to its characteristic "use" in the activity known as cutting but also to its capacity to cut. But, when talking about the mind the problem is more cornplex. Certainly, we can refer to its characteristic use in knowing, learning, analyzing, judging, willing and so forth, and/or its capacity to do al1 those activities. A knife that has never been used is still a knife by virtue of its form and its capacity to cut. But, 1 dontt think that this would be the case for the mind.

Compared to abstruse contemporary literature on the nature of mind, Lucretius' take is more refreshing and shows that the problem of the nature and/or the existence of the mind is not necessarily a modern invention. He said that: First, 1 maintain that the mind, which we often call the intellect, the seat of the guidance and control of life, is part of man, no less than hand or foot or eyes are parts of a whole living creature. There are some who argue that the sentience of the mind is not lodged in any particular part, but is a vital condition of the body, what the Greeks call hamony, which makes us live as sentient beings without having any locally determined mind. Just as good health may be said to belong to the healthy body without being any specific part of it, so they do not station the sentience of the mind in any specific part. (Lucretius;1983;p.99)

Lucretiusl take on the nature of the mind suggests that the tem 'minci' doesnlt necessarily refer to an entity, be it material or immaterial. Ryle also thinks that speculations over the (nature of) rnind involve a category mistake. He suggests that we fa11 not into the trap of thinking of the mind as an entity that has locations and events just as we might "...assume that there is a place called 'the university' apart and separate £rom buildings, roads, lawns, persons, and other physically specifiable entities". (in Gardner;1985;pm67) There is more to the 'universityr than buildings, roads, lawns, persons, and other physically specifiable entities. There are also programs and events. We cannot Say that in the 'university' physically specifiable entities are parallel to programs and events and control them or vice-versa. The 'university' cannot be reduced to a single category of either physically specifiable entities or events.

The view of the mind as an immaterial thinking entity parallel to the material (extended) body23 is a mixture of Greek philosophy and Christian credos. Richard Rorty argues that this "...concept of mind is the blur with which western intellectuals became obsessed when they finally gave up on the blur which was the theologiants concept of God. The ineffability of the mental serves the same cultural function as the ineffability of the divine.. ." . (in Gardner; l98S;p.72) Sometimes, this view which has accommodated religious beliefs cornes into opposition with the Bible's holistic view of a human being. The Hebrew word Nephesh (the soul) could be translated as the self, the human being (Gen

2,7;Ps 103,l). More precisely, it refers to a person in both his/her spiritual and physical nature.

2 3 but still controls it. 45 Sergio Moravia thinks that "Man can no longer be interpreted as homo duplex (despite the efforts by neo- and crypto-dualists): the 'mind' , of course, does not exist as an entity; and the 'bodyf is an extremely generic concept, itself derived from an out-dated brand of metaphysics (if anything, one should speak of the brain and the central nervous system) (lW5;p. 3) . I am not trying to suggest that the problem of the nature of the mind is a pseudo-problem. However 1 think that it is a product of a specific social and cultural elaboration. In short, 1 would Say that the term 'mind' is a symbol that refers to 'sornethingl that we could simply cal1 a human being, "considered individually and existentially as a person.

As Barret puts it, "in the three and half centuries since the modern science entered the world, we have added immeasurably to our knowledge of physical nature, in scope, depth, and subtlety. But our understanding of human consciousness in this tirne has become more fragmentary and bizarre, until at present we seem in danger of losing any intelligent grasp of the human mind alt~gether"*~(p-xvi). We tend to take a purely spectator view of the mind while losing sight of the fact that we are involved in the game. As Morris believed, a man/woman inquiring into the

24 On the nature of the mind, Richard Rorty has suggested that it is conceivable that the so-called mind might have none. nature of the mind is like a man/woman going outside his/her house and looking through the window to see if he/she is at home.

The concept of mind seems to refer to mental activities and mental states of a person. Mental activities are mainly the capacity to learn and understand, the capacity to rernember, to imagine, to create, and to have insight. And mental states are mainly states of consciousness and also sense of identityt5. Locke suggested that the identity of a person is determined by our idea of a person. And our idea of a person is that of a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and considers itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places. Mind seems to characterize a person. How could we talk about minds without referring to people? In short, it takes a person to have a mind. But 1 would not go as fax as Descartes who claimed that only humans had souls, and animals were more like automatat6. Because 1 don't know what the sou1 is.

2 5 1 wouldnlt attempt to define consciousness. Various definitions of consciousness tend to be tautological (for example, consciousness is awareness) . Sometimes definitions tend to reduce consciousness to objects of consciousness (for example, feelings, sensations, or thoughts). Locke equated consciousness with physical sensations and information they provide, whereas Leibnitz and Kant thought of consciousness as having a more central and active role.

26 This position was derided by Jean de La Fontaine, a 17th century French poet, in his Lettre à Mine de La Sabliere. As Diderot once said:

Mais de quelque manière que Iton conçoive ce qui pense en nous, il est constant que les fonctions en sont dépendantes de 1 'organisation, et de 1 :état actuel de notre corps pendant que nous vivons. ...Du moins n'avons-nous nulle idée immédiate de dépendance, drunion, ni de rapport entre ces deux choses, corps et pensée. Cette union est donc un fait que nous ne pouvons révoquer en doute, mais dont les détails nous sont absolument inconnus. (in Encyclopédie;l986;p. 236)

Unless we reduce it to Descartes' Cogito which is a conscious thinking thing, the mind seems to be elusive. The problem with he

Descartes' Cogito is that it doesnlt accommodate unconscious mental activities which supposedly account for creativity and intuition. The rnind, the soul, or whatever we cal1 "it' might exist, yet we have no way of establishing its existence. Furthermore, if the mind does exist, it would be affected while studying itself. But we need the concept of mind. The mind could be a fiction. It is nevertheless a heuristic device that gives a point of stability and/or reference for dealing with (human) behaviour. It can be an interpretive device that would help us, as subjects, cognize and talk about things in the world and develop problem-solving devices. But it doesnlt seem to enable us to cognize and talk about phenornena of the non-material realm such as feelings, decisions, mernories, etc. .

Not knowing the nature of the mind and/or not being able to solve the problem of mind-body dualism will not keep people from living 48 their lives. Teachers and examiners, magistrates and critics, historians and novelists, confessors and non-commissioned officers, employers, employees and partners, parents, lovers, friends and enemies al1 know well enough how to settle their daily question about the qualities of character and intellect of the individual with whom they have to do' (Ryle; 1949; p.7) . 1 doubt the mind-body problem will ever be solved. "We have trying for a long time to solve the mind-body problern. It has resisted our best efforts. The mystery persists. ...It is time to admit candidly that we cannot resolve the mystery" (McGinn in Lyons;1995;p.272). However the distinction between mind and body might disappear with the development of empirical sciences. Because it is more and more apparent that the mental realm is materially supported. The material support (the body) is a necessary condition. However it is not sufficient. This contention is based on the fact that our view of nature (of the mind) seems to be "shaped" by available technology. And from the standpoint of modern science the idea of the mind as an immaterial 'entity' is untenable. There remains the possibility that the mind could be emerging from a physiological state. This will be the topic of the next chapter. Could a brain have thoughts, illusions or pains? The senselessness of the supposition seems so obvious that 1 find it hard to take seriously. No experiment could establish this result for a brain. Why not? The fundamental reason is that a brain does not sufficiently resemble a human being. Norman Malcolm (1985)

In chapter 1, 1 said that "for an ontological mind there could be two primary categories of existence: the physical and the nonphysical. The two categories of existence give way to two major ontological alternatives on the nature of the mind. One option is that the mind is an immaterial substance, therefore, off limits to scientific inquiry. Because it cannot be described in physical and/or objective terms. The other option would be that the mind has some physical realityt' (p.23). Since the (Cartesian) attempt to describe the mind as an immaterial substance seems to raise more problerns than it solves (for example, the mind-body interaction), I propose, in this chapter, to examine the possibility of describing the mind in physical terms. In other words, it will be a discussion on whether the brain is the mind.

Descartes flirted with the idea of the mind being materially supported in a somewhat different fashion. In his 26 January 1640 letter to Father Mersenne, Descartes contended that: (The pineal) gland is the principal seat of the soul and the place where al1 thoughts originate. The reason from which I derive this belief is that 1 find no part in al1 the brain, Save this alone, which is not double. Now since we see only one thing with the two eyes, nor hear but one voice with the two ears, nor have but one thought at the same time, it must of necessity be that the different things that enter by the two eyes or the two ears must go to unite in some part of the body there to be considered by the soul. Now it is impossible to find any other suitable place in the whole head but this gland. Further, it is situated the most suitably possible for this purpose, to wit, in the middle between the cavities .

Descartes believed that mind was distinct from the body. But, more precisely, the mind was an extracorporeal entity expressed through the pineal gland in the brain. Descartes' assertion hasnlt really stood up to the empirical investigations but the discussion he started on the relation between the mind and the body (brain) still elicits much debate and continues to shape and/or influence current theoretical approaches to the understanding of the mind. By contending that the mind was an extracorporeal entity expressed through the pineal gland in the brain, Descartes, though not a materialist, somehow set the stage for subsequent rnaterialist descriptions of the mind. 51 Materialist description of the mind didn't start with Descartes. Ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the (seat of the) mind. But in the second century, the Roman physician Galen, was the first to contend that the brain is the locus of the mind. He "attacked the tenets of the philosopher Aristotle, who believed that the heart and not the brain was the centre for human thought and feelings. To prove his point, Galen carried out crude experiment showing that pressure applied to the brain can paralyze an animal while similar pressure on the heart had no ef fectw(Restak; l984;p 20). Ever since this view has been prevalent in Western science. Most probably it influenced Descartes who contended that the mind-body interaction is realized through the pineal gland in the brain. As said earlier, Descartes, by establishing a link between the mental and the physical, somehow set the stage for subsequent materialist descriptions of the mind. Contemporary cognitive scientists (for example, the Churchlands) neuroscientists believe that the brain is the mind; or the mind is what the brain does. Since the brain and its activities could be described in physical terms, the mind can be described in neurophysiological (physical) terms, and nothing else is needed. The assurnption is that mental phenomena are simply connections of neurons and/or patterns of nerve impulses in the brain. And the benefit of this materialist approach is: if the mechanisms of the mind are implemented solely by the brain, consequently the distinction between the mind and 52 the body is an illusion. Thus the mind can be equated with and/or reduced to the brain. Once the brain's operation is well understood, it can be replicated in the machine, and the implementation of 'true' artificial intelligence could be achieved. My argument is that since 'what the mind is' is unknown, and very little is known about the brain, the comparison (and/or the reduction) would not hold. Even if the workings of the brain were well understood, it would be impossible to compare it to anything since its configuration continually changes in response to the outside world through the senses. And the

(subjective) experience of the outside world cannot be described in physical ternis.

~aterialismis a doctrine that claims that every phenornenon is explainable in physical terms. Matter is the ultimate reality, and the mind and/or phenornena such as consciousness is an attribute or effect of matter. And such phenornena are caused by physiochemical changes in the nervous system. This doctrine is not new. Philosophical materialism could be traced back to the early Greek philosophers (Anaximenes, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Thales and others) who subscribed to a variant of materialism known as hylozoism (meaning that matter is intrinsically alive) for which matter and life are identical. Hylozoism is related to the doctrine of hylotheism, in which matter is held to be divine, or the existence of God is possible only through matter. In the

18th and 19th centuries, hylozoism had many advocates: scientists and naturalistically minded philosophers. But this rebirth of materialism was particularly motivated by a spirit of hostility toward the Church and Christian theological dogmas. One of the exponents of antireligious materialism, Julien Offroy de la Mettrie (1709-1751) wrote a book titled L'Homme-machine. Most likely influenced by Newton, Galileo, and Descartes' mechanistic conception of the universe he suggested that a human being is a machine thus doing away with the notion of an immaterial sou1/~nind~~.

Wagman thinks that "the philosophical intricacies of the mind- body problem were to some extent circumvented by a scientific paradigm in physiology and psychology, beginning with Albert von Haller (1708-77), in which coordinate relations were postulated between the nature of brain organization and the nature of mental processes. Experimental research in physiology and psychology sought to establish correlations between specific neural structures and specific psychological processes. The research constituted a cornmitment to an empirical psycho-physical parallelism" (1991;p.12). Psycho-physical parallelisrn is an

27 L'Homme-machine was ordered destroyed by the Dutch government, and 3.0. de La Mettrie fled to Prussia. 54 approach to the nature of the mind which postulated two separate, independent entities (body and mind) having perfectly correlated processes. Materialism has collapsed the two independent entities into one. In fact, the physical entity has cannibalized the non- physical entity, thus doing away with the mind-body problem.

The contemporary philosophical materialism has been influenced by both (the findings in) neurophysiology and the theory of evolution. However advocates of this doctrine (philosophical materialism) are no longer rnotivated by antitheistic sentiments but they strive to show that the mind and/or phenornena such as consciousness are the result of natural processes, and not the supernatural ones. In an increasingly secular world it is convenient and reassuring to believe that the mind can be accounted for by a materialist description, and that nothing else is needed. Richard Restak thinks that "the mind is nothing more than a term we employ to describe some of the functions of the brain. . . . The term mind is used in the same way as tems such as 'inflation', 'progressV -useful concepts about processes. One cannot locate inflation anywhere within a department of econornics. One can't travel to the United Nations to interview 'peacer. These terms aren't things; they are convenient terms for processes too complex to be described adequately in few words" (Restak;1984;p.343). This is a case of a category-mistake. Mind, whatever it is, is not a process. Even if it were; a process is a 55 continuous action or series of actions directed to some end. 1s there some end to the mind as a process? 1 donlt think so. If there is an end to the mind, we seem to be agnostic about. 1 can also add that: if there were, we would fa11 into some kind of determinism that would not accommodate imagination, intuition, or creativity. Besides the terms 'inflation1 and 'peacel donlt refer to processes but they refer to states of things that could be llocated' in time. The mind would be "a state of thingsw only if we subscribe to rnaterialist approach.

Daniel Dennett says clearly that: "what we want, in the end, is a materialistic theory of mind as the brain" (Dennett; 1984; p. 1453-54). This sounds like a attempt to put the mind in a box or to turn whatever it is into a physical object in order to study it. And "the bet is that someday people will formulate type-type identity staternents such as 'Beliefs are just xzqry firings at velocity v and r in sector 23041V' (Flanagan; 1991; 218). But this kind of description would have to wait for a more mature science of the bxain. Paul Churchland (1979) predicts an imminent genuine 'intellectual revolution' that would bring a new scientific 'theory of man1. This new theory would be a neurophysiological interpretation of the hurnan being. But Churchland doesn't specify how this revolution would corne about. Renowned neuroscientists, such as Wilder Penfield, John Eccles,

Roger Sperry, or Karl Pribam have given up hope that an understanding of the brain would lead to an explanation of the mind. Because brainls operations are still largely incomprehensible. Penfield once conceded that he has come "to takè seriously, even to believe that the consciousness of man, the mind, is something not to be reduced to brain mechanisms" (Restak;l984;p.Mg) .

Sometimes materialists take a stand that seems to be doctrinal or ideological. For example, David K. Lewis argues that "rnaterialists mut accept the identity theory as a matter of fact: every mental experience is identical with some physical stateW(Lewis; 1966; p. 63jZ8. This position gets close to Spinoza's position. However, the difference is that: Spinoza doesnlt affirm a fundamental materialism. The identity theory, one of many materialist approaches to the nature of the mind, claims that the states of the brain are identical with the states of the mind. Identity theorists are doing what philosophers of mind cal1 'an ontological reduction of Cartesian substance to physical substance1, and they are trying to give a 'scientific' reinterpretation to the concept of mind. David Armstrong, one of

28 If 1 define myself as a materialist, then I must accept that every mental state is identical with some physical (neurophysiological) state. If 1 don't define myself as a materialist, then 1 may not accept that every mental state is identical with some physical (neurophysiological) state. But this has nothing to do with what the mind is. identity theorists, thinks that "...we can give a complete accour~t~~of man in purely physico-chemical terms (Armstrong,1965 in Borst; 1983;p.67). This contention is purely speculative. Armstrong doesnft explain how a physico-chemical account of a mental state is possible. He simply assumes that the brain is the mind; or that fmind' and 'brain' refer to the same thing. The reason is: if two logically independent terms (or concepts) exist, this doesnlt necessarily imply that there are two independent ontological entities as well. The (ontological) existence of the mind cannot be derived from the simple fact that the mind is a logically independent concept. For example, water and H,O are two distinct terms referring to same object. But water is no different from H,O. Identity theorists argue that it is illegitimate to jump from the concept of logical independence to that of ontological existence. Since mind and brain are two distinct terms, it doesn't follow that they are two different ontological entities. This smart move helps do away with the (concept of) mind, thus equating mental states to physical states. However it can be used only against Cartesian d~alisrn~~. It also opens the possibility and legitimacy of a monistic- physicalistic theory which would reduce the mind to a physicai

'O This reasoning is of no use against a theory that doesnlt accommodate the idea of the mind as an immaterial substance. 58 object: the brain. But the same reasoning could be used the other way around. Mind and brain are two distinct terms, they could be referring to two different ontological entities. Water and salt are two different terms/concepts, they also refer to two different objects. Furthermore I could argue that if there is a statement that is true of the brain and not true of the mind, or if there is statement that is true of the mind and not true of the brain, then it would follow that the brain and the mind do not refer to the same thing3'. If 'braint and 'mindm do not refer to the same thing then the brain is not the mind.

If al1 mental states can be reduced to neurophysiological processes (as the identity theory claims), then sensation, for example, could be easily reduced to, and identified with a physical state. The problem is: it will be difficult to locate spatially a mental state or identify it with a particular neurophysiological process. For example, the process of experiencing pain starts in the vast network of free nerve

3 1 Furthemore, not any (kind of) assertion could be made indifferently of both the brain and the mind without sounding absurd. If X is said to have a dirty mind, it doesnvt mean or entai1 that the brain is dirty. Moral predicate cannot be applied to a physical object. I would not quarrel with those who might argue that human beings are physical objects. However I would suggest that they keep in mind the fact that moral predicate can be applied only to persons or group of persons supposedly responsible before the law and/or the society . endings interlaced throughout the surface of the skin. A chemical is released in the surrounding area, and an impulse (pain

'message') is carried along nerve fibers. Once in the spinal cord, the impulse is sent to the thalamus, in the brain. This is quite a journey. It shows that it takes more than the brain to experience pain32. And a sensation cannot be limited to a brain state. Since the process of experiencing involves many parts of the body why reduce it to the body? Instead of saying arbitrarily that mental states are brain states, we can (arbitrarily) Say that mental states are thalamus states or spinal cord states. Besides a neurophysiological account of, for example, a sensation would simply be a third person account. It would simply be an account of discrete steps of how, for example, a sensation cornes

into being. A third person (objective) and/or neurophysiological account of a particular mental state would not account for some of the first person features of that mental state. For example, subjectivity is one of the first person features. To illustrate this, let us consider a problem that emerges from three obvious facts of life:

'Tact 1 is the fact that when, for example, I bite rny tongue 1

32 Searle (1992) argues that mental states can be subject to causal reduction but not to ontological reduction. The problem with this approach is that causal relations between different parts of the brain and the central nervous system seem to be more than questionable. They are confused and confusing. experience the subjective feeling of pain ... This experience exists for me alone; and were I try to tell you what it is like, 1 could do so only in the vaguest and most metaphorical of ways. My felt pain has an associated time (right now), an associated place (my tongue), an intensity (mild), and an a£fective tone (unpleasant), but in most other respects it seems beyond the scope of physical description. Indeed my pain, 1 would Say, is no part of the objective world, the world of physical material. In short it can hardly count as a physical event. Fact 2 is the fact that at the same time as I bite my tongue there are related brain processes occurring in my brain. These processes comprise the activity of nerve cells. In principle (though not of course in practice) they could be observed by an independent scientist with access to the interior of head; and were he to try to tell another scientist what my brain-based pain consists in, he would find the objective language of physics and chemistry entirely sufficient for his purpose. For him my brain- based pain would seem to belong nowhere else than in the world of physical material. In short it is nothing other than a physical event . Fact 3 is the fact that, so far as we know, Fact 1 wholly depends on Fact 2. In other words the subjective feeling is brought about by the brain processes (whatever 'brought about by' means).

The problem is to explain how and why and to what end this dependence of non-physical mind on the physical brain has come 61 aboutw(Humphrey; 1992;~. 3-4) . In short, Fact 2 is a necessary but not sufficient condition of

Fact 1. A sensation, such as pain, is physiologically supported, but it has also some first person features. Despite their neurophysiological underpinning, mental states are nevertheless subjective. Their subjectivity is, sometimes, shaped by culture and the environment in which the subject lives. A sensation I experience as painful could be delectable for someone else, and painful and delectable for someone else. What is music for X could be just plain noise for Y. According to Diana Deutsch, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego, people don't al1 hear music in precisely the same way. She thinks that our perception of certain sound patterns depends on our native language and whether we are right- or left-handed. She daims that even our dialect matters. For example, people who grew up in California tend to hear certain sound patterns quite differently £rom those who grew up in ~ngland'~.This lends support to my contention that social interactions (environment) is a factor in our conception and perception of the world. Because if, for example, the perception of a particular sound

33 In an experiment with subjects from various cultural background, Deutsch found out that by pairing different musical tones they become 'ambiguous'. And those 'ambiguous' tones are, for example, perceived as descending by Californians, whereas Britons heard them as ascending . (Scientific American; November 96) 62 pattern can be reduced to a 'dancer of neurons, how would the difference in perception of the same sound pattern be accounted for? It could be suggested that parts of the brain involved in music perception are not the same, for example, for right-handers and left-handers, or for Californians and Britons. In this case, if hearing a particular sound pattern is just, to paraphsase

Flanagàn, "xzqry firings at velocity v and r in sector 2304", we would have to explain why the sarne sound pattern uses different parts of the brain in different subjects. We would also have to explain why the same sound pattern is perceived differently by different subjects. If every time we have the output R for the input S, we can conjecture that the processing mechanisrn is the same. But if we have, for the same input, different outputs in different subj ects, we can assume that the processing mechanisms are not similar in al1 subjects. This assurnption would exclude uniformity of processing mechanisms, and leaves some room for subjectivity. However it allows an interpretation of the mind/brain as a 'black box'.

The description of mental phenornena in physical terms seems to be problematic. There are two reasons: it is impossible to determine which parts of the brain are involved in a particular mental phenornenon, and a description in physical terms cannot account for subjectivity.

Even if scientists could explain (in physical terms) exactly what a mental phenornenon is there still is a problern: "Suppose that Mary, a neuroscientist in the 23rd century, is the world's leading expert on the brain processes for color vision. But Mary has lived her whole life in a black-and- white room has never seen any other colors. She knows everything there is to know about physical processes in the brain -its biology, structure and function. This understanding enables her to grasp everything there is to know about easy problems: how the brain discriminates stimuli, integrates information and produces verbal reports. From her knowledge of color vision, she knows the way color names correspond with wavelengths on the light spectrum. But there is still something crucial about color vision that Mary doesnlt know: what it is like to experience a color such as redV1(Jackson in Chalmers; 1995, p. 82) .

Physical correlates of the color such as red constitute simply a description of a certain physical reality. "Mary doesn't know: what it is like to experience a color such as red" means that (subjective) experience cannot arise sirnply from the knowledge of the physical correlates and the brain processes to which they are related. Physical and functional description cannot account for qualia or intrinsic qualitative characteristics of sensory experiences. These intrinsic qualitative characteristics of sensory very often Vary from one subject to another. For example, in a case of spectrum inversion, one subjectls visual experience of red is qualitatively 'similaru to another subjectls visual experience of green. There seems to be no way a particular physical and functional description can account for inverted qualia. Where an Inuit identifies ten different types of snowflakes, rny knowledge of vision and/or the physical correlates 64 of snowflakes would be of no help in inducing the same conscious experience. 'A chiliogon' means 'one thousand-sided plane figure', is a proposition which 1 have no difficulty understanding. However, the concept itself doesn't give me a picture of a one thousand-sided plane figure. The concept 'chiliogon' is (epistemo)logically and linguistically different £rom the percept or the phenomenal experience of 'chiliogon'. In short, conscious experience cannot simply be deduced from physical and functional description of the brain to which it is related. My contention is that the biological make-up as well as social interactions in a particular environment contribute to our conception and perception of 'things'". Blindness and/or deafness can affect conception and/or perception of things. So does the culture in which a one is imrnersed.

Saying that the mind is the brain (or mental states are brain states) doesn't seem to mean anything. Compared to Our predecessors, we can Say that today much is known about the brain and much can be said about the mind. However the concept of mind, and that of Ibrain state' seem both to be equally fuzzy. 1 don't see how one can define the workings or the 'state of the brain' since little is known about its operations. Furthemore it is difficult to understand the workings of the brain since it

" This idea will be discussed in the last chapter. 65 doesn't seem to have been built with specific purposes or principles of design in mind. And understanding the anatomy of the brain is not likely to give us the understanding of how meaning arises (in the mind). Empirical investigations show that the brain is, most likely, a product of a very complex evolution process spread over millions of years. In short, before arguing whether the identity theory is right or wrong, we have to know what the rnind is, and what a 'state of the brain' is. Afterwards, we can try to establish a relation of identity between the mind and the 'states of the brainl.

John von Neumann once remarked that the two most outstanding problems scisntists are confronted with are: weather prediction and brain operations. Heinz Pagels also thinks that the brain, more than the weather, is of 'unsimulatable complexity'. He says that : Today we have a much better grasp on the complexity of weather -we understand the main equations and know that it is an unsimulatable system. The brain, however, remains an enigma. Scientists have attempted to find a reliably accurate set of mathematical equations that describe the essential features of the neuronal connections and their operation, But my guess is that even if such equations are found, the brain's complexity will turn out to be another example of unsimulatable complexity. If this is so, then in spite of the fact that at some future time the biophysical law for the brain may be known precisely, the simplest system that simulates a brain's operation is that brain itself. If these ideas are right, then there is a 'complexity barrier' that lies between our instantaneous knowledge of the state of the neuronal network and our knowledge of its future development. The brain, and hence the mind, is another example of unsimulatable complexity . (1989;p.227)

1 would go further than Pagels: it is not a matter of complexity but it is a matter of impossibility. If the 'state of the braint could be simulated or modelled at one point in time, it would be possible to predict future 'states of the brain'. However this would mean that, from a particular neurophysiological configuration in or of the brain we can predict the subject will think at a particular moment in the future. Thus whatever we think and/or do is predetermined3'. 1 don't see how this could be true. Furthemore this raises the problem of free will. For example, a recent research has shown that eating behaviour depends mainly on a fine balance in the activity of cholinergie, noradrenaline, and serotoninergic pathways. But it is not that chernical (im)balance that would account for my craving for

35 A UCLA neuroscientist, Ben Libet, has devised an experiment that shows that the motor cortex is activated one-half second before the person becomes aware of their decision to do so. But he conceded that his experiment is not capable of long-term detailed predictions. However 1 don't think that this indicates or proves predetermination. Because there is a time delay between the time the subject decides (or becomes aware of their decision) to move, for example a limb, and the time she/he lets the experimenter know their decision. If the motor cortex is activated before the subject decides, then the subject is not deciding: he/she is just registering a decision made by the motor cortex. And this experiment seems to have another shortcoming: its predictions apply only to motor activities. 67 perogies at a particular moment in the future. The same chemical (im)balance cannot make me feel like having a Papua-New Guinean dish which I have never heard of (nor tried). 1 have, in front of me, a keyboard with 110 different keys. No one or nothing can convince me that my decision to press a particular key (or not to press any) is predetermined (or can be predicted). 1 don't see how any future knowledge of the brain's operations would change this.

In order to study the brain, scientists have used two approaches. One approach is to study brain function after parts of the brain have been damaged. Functions that disappear or that are no longer normal after injury to a specific region of the brain can often be associated with the damaged areas. If, for example, the left temporal lobe is removed, comprehension of speech is impaired. If the right temporal lobe is removed, some objects cannot be recognized. Or, as Christine Temple says, neurological "patients may have a lobectomy, where one section of the brain is cut, or, in extreme cases, a hemispherectomy, in which almost half of the brain is removed. ...The surgical procedures are rare operations of last resort, but provide new information about localization of brain function" (1993;~.31) .

The second approach is to study the brain processing of stimuli 68 and its responses to direct stimulation or to stimulation of various sense organs. "These can be based on blood flow, glucose uptake or the pattern of electrical activity generated by the brainW(Temple;l993;p.33). In the first approach, for example, if the right temporal lobe of a tennis player is damaged, he or she would have difficulty recognizing the movement, color and shape of a tennis ball. But the movement, color and shape of that tennis ball are processed in different cortical visual centers.

And the separation of these information streams starts in the retina which is not part of the brain. This shows that the perception cannot be reduced to a process in the brain since the retina, although connected to the brain by nerves, is not part of the brain. And it raises a yet unanswerable question of where the information is reassembled. Another problem with the first approach is that interpreting the collected data can be, at best, very difficult since patients have different medical histories, and their brains don't have the exact same shape. A key (and suspicious) assumption in the first approach is that, if the 'quantity' of brain decreases (for example, damages caused by accident or surgery), so will the mental competence. In other words, mental competence is directly proportional with the 'quantity' of brain. Logically, this approach leads to the link between mental capacity or intelligence and the size of the brain. However the size of the brain is not an indicator of degree of intelligence. A mentally impaired person may have a much larges brain than that of a genius. The size doesn't seem to be an important factor. If it were, elephants and whales would be more intelligent than any other living organisms. Some psychometrists argue that it is the brain-body mass ratio that determines the level of intelligence. But the brain of the African elephant-nose fish represents 3.1 percent of its body mass while the hurnan brain is around 2.3 percent of the human body mass. The human brain uses 20 percent of the oxygen the body consumes. Other vertebrates' oxygen consumption ranges between 2 and 8 percent. However the African elephant-nose fish consumes 60 percent of the oxygen its body uses. Unless one believes that intelligence is directly proportional with the amount of energy the brain consumes, this doesn't suggest that the African elephant-nose fish is more intelligent than a human being. Besides, mental cornpetence of a fish cannot be compared with that of a human being. Fish and people don't face exactly same problems. Although, level of intelligence seems to be correlated with the number and type of functioning neurons and how they are structurally connected with one another, what is really meant by intelligence is not ~lear~~.

The second approach is also limited. It studies only one aspect

36 This question will be further discussed in the next chapter . 70 of mental activity: brain responses to stimuli. Moreover, this approach presupposes that brain responses to stimuli are al1 that is to mental activity. 1 don't see why mental activity would be reducible only to brain responses to stimuli. There is no reason why mental activity should not be reducible to the thalamus or the spinal cord responses to stimuli. Mental activity is very often interpreted as brain responses to stimuli because, since the Roman physician Galen, it is assumed that thoughts are in the brain. This asswnption is not true. It is undeniable that brain (activity) participates in mental activity. But so does the spinal cord, it synthesizes and transmits impulses. Even the heart plays a major role, it pumps blood which carries oxygen and glucose essential to brain activity3'.

That the brain (and/or its activity) is the mind could simply be an acceptable hypothesis. Because it seems difficult to deny the fact that mental states are (materially) supported by brain (and other physiological) states. Research efforts have shown correlation between mental activities and patterns of nerve impulses. Tt seems more likely that the mind emerges from activities of al1 the brain regions, nervous systems, senses, and even blood pressure! It is the 100 billions (or more) neurons and

3 7 Ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the locus of mental activity. other cells linked in networks that give rise to consciousness, intelligence, emotion, memory and creativity. However researchers at Erasmus University Medical School in the Netherlands have found a correlation between systolic blood pressure and cognitive

~kills~~.1 might a contend that in order to have mental activity, the brain is essential but it is not sufficient. The mind seems to represent the capacity to organize information (thinking) as well as organized information itself (memories). Classical physics as well as quantum physics show that transmission and/or transformation of information implies, at least, a transmission and/or transformation of energy. Thus transmission and transformation of information (energy) requires a material support. In short, the mind cannot exist without the brain (body).

What is mind? Mind is often equated with consciousness, a subjective sense of self-awareness. A vigilant inner core that does the sensing and moving is a powerful metaphor, but there is no a priori reason to assign a particular locus to consciousness or even assume that such global awareness exists as a physiologically unified entity. Moreover, there is more to mind than consciousness or the cerebral cortex. Urges, moods, desires and subconscious forms of learning are mental phenornena in the broad view. We are not zombies. Affect depends on the function of neurons in the same manner as does conscious thought (Fischbach;1992;p.48).

38 High blood pressure left untreated seems to cause memory loss. 72 It is difficult to ignore the correlation between mental activity and neuron (brain cell) activity. It has already been established that the brain functions by complex neuronal circuit. Communication between neurons is both electrical and chemical. The 'message' is electrically and/or chemically transmitted from the dendrites of a neuron, through its soma, and out its axon to the dendrites of another neuron. Despite Descartes1 assertion that the mind is distinct and independent from the body, malfunction in the production, breakdown, and cellular activity of neurotransmitters in the limbic system may cause certain psychiatric States. Certain brain chemical imbalances are associated with mental disorders (Le. schizophrenia, depression). Imbalance or depletion of such neurotransmitters as dopamine can affect mood and thinking. It can also create difficulties in the initiation and control of movements.

In the Sixth Meditation Descartes said: "1 am truly distinct from my body, and... 1 can exist without it". This could be challenged by PET scanners which show that thought is a brain process. But PET scanners would have to be able to detect a non-physical mind and come up ernpty-handed for them to seriously challenge this Cartesian claim. Furthemore Descartes could fight back by saying: this could be a work of an evil geni~s~~.Or there could simply be a correlation between patterns of brain activity and, for example, one's thinking. No link could be established between a PET scan and one's thinking. For this link to be established, patterns of brain's activity must be capable of revealing the content of a thought. While a subject is listening to the music it is passible to observe the patterns of glucose use with a PET scanner. But these patterns would not tell us whether the music the subject is listening to is Bach's Toccata and Fugue or its transcription for orchestra by Stokowski. Besides the patterns that PET scanners show can be incomplete. "...During a delayed- choice task, PET scans are too slow to distinguish between the neural activity pattern of a target being held in mînd and the pattern that follow a few seconds later when the target is recognized" (Beardley;1997; p. 80) . Furthemore "if we imagine each neuron as a light bulb, a motion picture of the brain in operation would show an array of billions of lights flashing on and off in a bewildering variety of patterns. This picture would look much the same as a Time Square message board, consisting of many rows of individual flashing lights that, taken together, form a recognizable pattern. The problem is that, at present we haven't the foggiest idea of how to interpret these

3 9 Such a response would be anachronistic and hardly convincing since not that many people believe in evil geniuses . 74 patterns" (Casti;l99S;p. 158) . We may not be capable of interpreting correctly these patterns. I donlt see how meaning could extracted from flashing lights. But U.T. Place thinks that ll(t)here is nothing that the introspecting subject says about his conscious experiences which is inconsistent with anything the physiologist might want to Say about the brain processes which cause him to describe the environment and his consciousness of that environment in the way he does" (in Lyons;1995;p.l15). Place is suggesting the difference between mental states and brain (physical) states resides in the mode of description. In other words, by observing a subjectls brain processes a physiological psychologist can read and understand the mental content of a subject. The assumption here is that: meaning can be accounted for in neurophysiological terms. 1 donlt think it is possible to know the content of a thought by observing chemical exchanges in the brain. Thinking involves subjectivity which cannot be described in neurophysiological terms. Furthemore our understanding of brain patterns depends on the technology being used, and Our brainls organization. A case of inverted spectrum could illustrate the fact that the sarne sense data (and presumably the same brain or neurophysiological state could yield two different subjective experiences.

Paradoxically, Restak concludes that the organization of our brain places limitations on what we cm and cannot know by reason or perception. He said: on the basis of Our brain's organization, we are able to perceive certain aspects of 'reality' while we remain oblivious to others. Errors inevitably creep in that are as much products of our brain as they are anything in the external world. For this reason 1 am not confident that we will ever be completely successful in 'making up our minds' on the question '1s the mind the brain?I. (Restak; 1984;p.344)

The brain functions continually, it stops only at death. A snapshot or measurement taken at one specific moment cannot give a full account of the brain activity. Besides, one particular task (for example, pattern recognition) can be carried out via multiple and varying neuronal channels. This variability would make it difficult, if not impossible, for a neuroscientist to tell which pattern is being recognized by a subject.

In an effort to present the other side of Imind as brain' argument, Restak talks about Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon, who "became less certain that the studÿ of the brain, a field in which he had done pioneering work earlier in his career, would ever lead to an understanding of the mind1'(1984;p.347). Penfield's views are shared by many neuroscientists. In The Self and Its Brain, John Eccles, a Nobel Prize winner, and Karl Popper take a dualist approach by arguing that mind and brain are two distinct entities. The mind and the brain are two categorically distinct entities. The mind, as a postulated 'entity' is in the 76 realm of concepts, and the brain is in the realm of material objects- They are different logical types, they cannot be compared.

In order to avoid the dilemma of explaining the relationship between the mind and the brain, materialists tend to conflate the characteristics of the brain and that of the Nnd in some hybrid organ that could be called mind/brain. The materialists' mind/brain has non-physical characteristics while being a physical object. And the inquiry into the nature and/or the workings of the rnind/brain would be much easier since it has physical properties. Because of these physical properties, we could even substitute the word "mindn with the word "brainw or vice versa. But, this is just conjuring away the problem. The mind with its real or postulated nonphysical characteristics cannot be reduced to 'somethingl that could be studied within the parameters of objectivity. Trying to study real or postulated nonphysical characteristics within parameters of objectivity would be a category mistake in either case. For example a mental state such as shame cannot be described and/or reconstructed in physical terms. And neither can a postulated mental state such as courage. It is undeniable that having the brain is a necessary condition or essential to having a mind. But, this doesn't mean that the mind is the brain. Besides, if the mind is nothing more than the brain why should we bother talking about the mind (with 77 al1 its mysterious and elusive aspects)? After the discovery of oxygen, chemists abandoned the idea of phlogiston which was supposedly produced duxing combustion. Like chemists who abandoned the idea of phlogiston, materialists should also abandon the idea of mind.

Our current understanding of human neurophysiology tends to suggest that a well-functioning brain is the material seat and/or support of the mind (or mental activity) . Having a well- functioning brain is a necessary condition to having a mind, but it is not a sufficient condition. It is undeniable that there is a correlation between some mental states and some brain

(neurophysiological) states. And mental states are supported by neurophysiological states. However I donlt think that mental states, capacities and properties cannot be reduced to neurophysiological capacities, states or properties. As Ryle puts it: "Physicists may one day have found the answers to al1 physical questions, but not al1 questions are physical' (1949; p.161). Could Hitler's hatred or Einstein's genius be reduced to processes in the brain? Science proceeds by laborious accumulation of details; but art reaches its goal at once through intuition. Arthur Schopenhauer

CBAPTER THREE

Earlier 1 contended that Our socio-cultural environment seems to shape Our Weltanschauung or the way(s) we see the world. As Martin Gardner thinks, proponents of artificial intelligence, stimulated by science fiction read in their youth are convinced that the hurnan mind is simply 'a computer made of meat' (in Penrose;l989;p.xiii). Behind this way of looking at things "lay the following view of the way the mind works: Rational (logical) thought is a kind of mental calculation that follows certain prescribed rules, in many ways not unlike arithmetic, Plato thought this, as did Leibnitz and Boole" (Devlin;1997;p.l). Asserting that the human mind is simply 'a computer made of meatr is somewhat speculative because what the mind is is still an open question. However we can dig out the assumptions underlying this assertion. In this assertion it is assumed that mental activity can be encoded in numbers and/or symbols. The second assumption 79 is that not only human intelligence can te equated with machines' 'intelligence' but cognitive processes in both humans and machines are similar. In other words, there is no difference in the way humans think, corne to know something and/or solve problerns, and computers' performance. It is also assumed that intelligence has a physical reality, or it is related to and/or produced by some physical entity. Therefore intelligence is describable in physical terms. Moreover it is measurable. Thus "a fair number of researchers in artificial intelligence believe ... that by designing the right programs with the right inputs and outputs, they are literally creating mindsn (Searle;1990;p.26) which is essential to having intelligence.

Herbert Simon argues that when we give people tasks; on the basis of performance in a task we consider that some thought has taken place in reaching a solution to a problem. Similarly, we can give computers the same task; then, it would seem to me, that it is only some kind of vulgar prejudice if we refuse the accolade of intelligence to the computer (1980, p.13). In Simon's approach, computer could be said to be intelligent on the basis of 'performance'. However, in humans, absence of performance doesn't necessarily imply absence of thought and/or intelligence. Obviously Simon asserts that artificial intelligence is, at least, comparable to hurnan intelligence. Before making such a comparison we need to know 'what it means to be a human being', and 'what it means to be a cornputer'. Finding 80 out what a computer is would not be a problem. However 'what a human being isf involves subjectivity or first-person experience which is difficult to describe. But we can circumvent this problem by taking the discussion on artificial intelligentsia's one and only turf which is problem-solving. Computers cannot do everything that humans do (for example, daydreaming) except problem-solving. So, if we want to answer the question of whether computers can do things that humans do, we can only discuss the ways humans and machines solve problem. By saying that 'the accolade of intelligence' should be given to computers on the basis of their performance, Simon reduces intelligence to the ability to solve a problem. However 1 intend to illustrate that human problem solving capabilities are not necessarily similar to those of machines. Artificial intelligence scientists see problem solving as the paradigm of intelligence. This contention is based on two assumptions: (1) the human brain is an information- processing system, and (2) the brain solves problems by creating a symbolic representation of the problem (Langley, Simon, Bradshaw, and Zytkow, 1987). 1 will argue that even if computers can solve some particulars problems, (1) they use only deductive reasoning to solve those problems. And (2) Computers are not aware of the fact that they are solving problem. The discussion will rely on creativity, intuition, imagination and, also, on the concept of predication (of meaning) to help highlight the basic differences between human reasoning and the kind of reasoning under simulation by artificial intelligence artifacts.

From the hypothesis that "a necessary and sufficient condition for a system to exhibit intelligence is that it be a symbol system, that it have symbol manipulating capabilities" (Simon;1981,p.19), Simon argues that ",..any physical symbol system can be organized further to exhibit general intelligence"

(Newell & Simon; 1981; p.41) . Simon's daim corroborates my contention that Artificial Intelligence presupposes an ontological (objective/physical) mind. But, as stated in chapter 2, my position is that the mind (and/or intelligence) cannot be reduced to the brain. However 1 will assume that the brain is the mind just for a pragmatic and/or heuristic reason. Because if the mind is seen as a physical entity that can be replicated or, at least, simulated, then the discussion on artificial intelligence would be possible.

Frorn the assumption that 'mental activity can be encoded into numbers and/or symbols', Artificial Intelligence scientists hypothesized that at a certain level of abstraction there is a similarity between the ways the human mind/brain and the computer function40. Because, according to a central tradition in the

4 O This, despite the fact that the brain and the cornputer are physically (structure and mechanism) different. Western philosophy (rationalism), "thinking (intellection) essentially is rational manipulation of mental symbols (viz., ideas)" (Haugeland;1885;pe4). And the assumption that 'mental activity can be encoded into numbers and/or symbols' could be traced back to Galileo who held that "nature is written in mathematical characters" (i. e., sizes, shapes, and motions) . Descartes who is "perhaps the prototypical philosophical antecedent of cognitive sciencew (Gardner;1985;p.50) assumed that understanding consisted of forming and manipulating representations or symbols (Dreyfus 1988). He also contended that thinking was essentially conscious. In his Fourth Set of Replies, he said "that there can be nothing in the mind, in so far as it is a thinking thing, of which it is not aware, this seems to (him) to be self-evident" (Cottingham; 1984;p.171). Consequently, thinking (and action) can be described in discrete steps. Descartes proposed one of the first 'information-processingr device. (His) diagram showed how visual sensations are conveyed, through the retinas, along nerve filaments, into the brain, with signals from the two eyes being reinverted and fused into a single image on the pineal gland. There, at an all- crucial juncture, the mind (or soul) could interact with the body, yielding a cornplete representation of external reality (Gardner;l98S;p. 51) .

Thomas Hobbes rejected Descartes's division of a human being into mental and physical substances. He contended that everything is material or physical. "Hence it may be that the thing that thinks is the subject to which mind, reason or intellect belong; and this subject may thus be something corporeal" (Cottingham;l984;p.l22). He also said that "when a man reasoneth, he does nothing else but a sum total, form addition of parcels; or conceive a remainder, from substraction of one sum £rom another". Hobbes1 contention somehow laid the foundation of what was going to be called Artificial Intelligence. He hypothesized that (1) the thing that thinks may be corporeal, (2) reasoning is addition and substraction of parcels. Thus, thinking is described as real physical manipulations of real physical symbols.

Haugeland thinks that by contending that: "by ratiocination, 1 mean compu ta tion" , Hobbes prophetically launched Artif icial Intelligence, and conveyed two basic ideas. First, thinking is 'mental discoursel; that is thinking consists of symbolic opera tions, just like talking out loud or calculating with pen and paper -except, of course, that it is conducted internally. Second, thinking is at its clearest and most rational when it follows methodical rules -1ike accountants following the exact rules for numerical calculation (1985;p.23).

Here Hobbes's view on rational thinking and that of Descartes converge: thinking is essentially conscious, and it can be described in discrete steps. This is a key assumption that contributed to the development of artificial intelligence. However this position cannot accommodate other ways of solving problems such as intuition and/or creativity. Like his rationalist predecessors, Leibnitz asserted that "al1 84 theory could benefit £rom construal in the forxn of mathematics. The benefits were clarity, precision, explicitness of detail, and logical consistency" (Wagman;l99l;p.9). He tried to use symbols and logic in al1 areas of knowledge and human communication, and developed logical calculus to which much of thought and language could be reduced (and artificial intelligence would not be possible without this) . He went further by actually describing how a thinking machine could work41.

Using Newtonian language of mechanics, David Hume, an empiricist, set out to: "discover ... the secrets springs and principles by which the human mind is actuated in its operation" (Haugeland;1985;p.42). But some contemporary thinkers went further. For example, J.J. Smart claims that "conscious experiences are simply brain processes". And "if consciousness is a brain process, then presumably it could also be an electronic pro ces^^^^^ (in Moravio;1995;p.85). Smart fails to justify how consciousness could jump from being a brain process to becoming an electronic process. He assumes that, like everything that is physical, the mind/brain (the locus of consciousness) could be

4 1 Mindful of the Church, he avoids discussing the possibility of a thinking machine having a soul.

42 However this claim did not prelude the advent of cornputers. It seems to be a result of the computer culture. 85 described in synbolic/rnathematical terms, and simulated or replicated electronically. But would an electronic mind/brain 'generate' consciousness? There is no clear answer. However it is believed in Artificial Intelligence circles that, at least, "...any physical symbol system can be organized further to exhibit general intelligencen (Newell & Simon; 1981; p.41). Because at a certain level of abstraction the hurnan brain and an appropriately programmed computer could be considered as two different instantiations of a single species of a device that generated intelligent behaviour by manipulating symbols by means of formal rules. With the right program or coded strings of command that guide the events happening in the computer, it might be possible to produce a machine that would be behaviorally indistinguishable from a conscious person. But that machine would not have the first person qualitative experiences such as "what it is like to be a bat or a humant' experience that define conscious beings. For example, humans cannot conceive echolocatory experiences of bats.

Before trumpeting that intelligence can be replicated in machines, we should know, at least, what intelligence is or what makes us consider a person intelligent. Some artifacts are considered intelligent when they mimic and, sometimes, surpass human performance in one area of knowledge or another. For example, the psychologist George Miller once claimed that he was 86 "very optimistic about the about the eventual outcome of the work on the machine solution of intellectual problems. Within Our lifetime machines may surpass us in general intelligence" (Weizenbaum;l976;p.205). The first question is: what is general intelligence? How could it be translated into rules and principles that are encodable so that machines could use them?

Simon (1981) argues that intelligence could be attributed to any entity that displays problem-solving capabilities. He argues that the fact that a computer is capable of solving a problem means that it is intelligent. On the basis of cornputer's performance, it is possible to infer that some thinking has been taking place. In other words, if there is external behaviour X, then thinking is taking place. However, if external behaviour X is a sufficient condition to thinking taking place, it is not necessarily a necessary ~ondition'~.1 would argue, tautologically, that a cognitive system is, by definition, a system that is capable of cognition. And cognition can be defined as any instance of a mental operation and/or state that has an intrinsic intentionality. And, intentionality is a property attributed to

43 People dontt always frown or gesticulate when they are thinking. Cogitation doesn't always brings about gesticulation. 87 any mental state that is representative or 'about1 something". Searle (1992) argues that intentionality is a unique 'phenomenon that humans and certain other animals have as a part of their biological nature'45. There is little risk in saying that human beings are usually cognitive systems. However, if we agree with Searle, a non-biological system cannot have intrinsic intentionality. But, according to Dennett, the status of

cognitive system can be extended to non-biological systems. A (non-biological) system can be treated as an intentional system whenever treated as if it had cognitive features such as beliefs,

goals and motives. Thus we can claim that computers are cognitive systems by ascribing to thern beliefs, goals and motives. However

they would not be intrinsically intentional.

Modern computing machines can display some abilities usually attributed to human beings. Today, computers are capable of "seeing", "hearing", "sensing", "knowledge acquisition", "talking", "decision making", "reasoning", "predicting", etc. But, there is no intrinsic intentionality in computer "thought".

To use Dennett's language, intentionality is always derived or 'as if' in computer performance. However Searle (1984) thinks

44 This regardless of whether or not that something exists (for example, phobia, fear of ghosts, etc...).

4 5 However, this position is very often challenged by different physicalist theories. 88 that the mind has four features: intentionality, consciousness, subjectivity, and mental causation. And, he thinks that any satisfactory theory of the mind must account for al1 four features. Consequently an artifact cannot have intentionality. Furthermore, just the observable performance of these abilities is not sufficient to establish the relation of analogy between human faculties and computer's "abilities". Computers could be said to be rational systems because their working is based exclusively deductive reasoning. But humans are capable of more than deductive reasoning. Humans are not only rational systems, but they are also intentional systems which computers are not. As Fodor suggests: "...the rational systems are a species of the intentional ones rather than the other way around' (Fodor;1990, p. 8). Computers are "as-if" rational systems. Not al1 llaç-if 11 rational systems could be said to be intelligent. Could a slide said to be intelligent? 1 don't think so. So, when can we Say that an "as-if" rational system is intelligent? Simon thinks that "simple capabilities ...for handling patterns, the ability to read patterns from outside, to write patterns, to store patterns, to build up complex patterns from simple patterns, and to make cornparisons between patterns ... provide the necessary and sufficient condition that a system be intelligent" (Simon;l981;p.13). Intelligence seems to be contextual and goal- oriented. The abilities needed to solve an equation is not necessarily the ones useful in hunting antelopes. Obviously these 89 different intelligences cannot be compared. The determinant for intelligence seems to Vary with context. Richard Feynman or Steven Hawking are considered as very

intelligent people. 1 dontt think that, individually or as a tearn, they could beat the chess playing computer Deep Blue at chess. But Gary Kasparov cm. Does this mean that Kasparov is more intelligent than Feynman and Hawking? The answer will be yes if we reason as a computing machine and equate the capacity to win a chess game with high intelligence. Because the straightforward logic of machine would be: If Deep Blue can beat (or is more intelligent than) Feynman and Hawking; and Kasparov can beat (or is more intelligent than) Deep Blue. Therefore Kasparov can beat (or is more intelligent than) Feynman and Hawking. However there cannot be a comparison. Deep Blue is sirnply a chess playing computer incapable of doing wordprocessing. Kasparov performs at his best while playing chess. Feynman and Hawking excel as physicists. Even if we restrict the comparison to chess playing. Deep Blue could beat Gary Kasparov. But this would be simply because of its ability to compute hundreds of thousands of moves in microseconds. However, for Deep Blue to do straightforward wordprocessing, its operating system has to be changed before perforrning any task for which it was not designed. Kasparov doesn't have to change his brain in order to do wordprocessing. Computer performance is based on symbol manipulation. But symbol manipulation alone would not yield meaning. Alfred Tarski studied formal languages of mathematics in order to analyze how formulas can refer to mathematical objects and how these references can yield meaning. Keith Devlin thinks that Tarski's studies has one important consequence: "... it enables you to analyze and perhaps manipulate symbolic formulas, free of any constraints as to their meaning" (lgW;p.89). But, in many situations, the meaning of a word and/or a sentence and/or a group of sentences arises £rom whatever it is that a word and/or a sentence and/or a group of sentences refer to. It is contextual. For example, saying that:

"green ideas sleep fu~iously~~'~is grammatically correct but it is meaningless. Anybody in their "right mind" would acknowledge that it doesnlt make sense. Grammar check prograrns are of no help. Computer systems can check grammar rules but they cannot check the meaningfulness of a sentence. But the brain is, first of all, an organ heavily dependent on meaning and context. Even at the level of primary sensation, a filtering process is constantly sorting out what seems to be important at the moment. For instance, out of the background of dozens of simultaneous cocktail conversations, we focus on one exchange simply on the basis of our interest in one of the speakers or the subject under discussion. This selection has nothing to do with linear processing. It concerns the meaning that one conversation has for us compared to others (Restak;1984;p.358).

General Problem Solver tried to highlight set of techniques used

46 This example was given by Noam Chomsky. 91 by hurnans in problem solving. These techniques were obtained from subjects through protocols which are introspective reports issued by subjects in experimental settings, typically problem solving situations. For example, a subject trying to solve a particular problem may be asked to "think out loud" while working on the problem; alternatively, after the solution is obtained, a retrospective report may be provided. These reports, or protocols, provide data for theorizing about cognitive processes and strategies -theorizing that may be validated (or falsified) through implementation in computer systems. This is an example of what cognitive scientists cal1 problem reduction. It is an approach that decomposes a problem into a group of smaller subproblems to which algorithrns can be applied. But humans sometirnes solve problems by chunking an organization of information into groups or chunks (which may themselves consist of smaller chunks). Normally, for example, one does not hear speech as consisting of individual words; instead, the words are chunked into larges unit (such as phrases). In many instances, chunking can be developed through practice. For example, experienced chess players, unlike beginners, see chess pieces as organized into meaningful configurations, and can often recreate a board's pattern of pieces from memory. From a meaningful configuration, an experienced chess player can develop a strategy or can 'seer a breakthrough. A chess playing computer simply evaluates an extremely large number of different positions/moves and chooses the one with the highest probability to lead to one of the winning patterns in its database. Cornputers have another advantage: they are not as sensitive as humans are to external conditions. Like computer components, neurons (brain cells) have specific physical and chernical properties. However, not only are they vulnerable to physico-chemical changes but neurons are also sensitive to 'non-physicall changes such as moods. They are alive but cornputer components are not. Two neurons are never exactly alike, they have variable sensitivity to neurochemicals. But computer cornponents are al1 alike, they generally respond in an on-off manner. A computers canlt generally perform at less than its best. At any specific moment, if given proper instructions, computers can perform to the maximum. However the human mind can engage in a conscious mental process of evoking events, ideas or images of objects, relations, attributes, or processes never experienced or perceived before. And, sometirnes that is when the human mind performs at its best when it is idling or daydreaming. But, computers donlt daydrearn, they donvt idle at a bare percentage of their efficiency. They are whimsical. They do poorly understanding puns or joke. They also don't become inspired, donlt give up in discouragement, dontt suggest better uses for their time. There has never been a computer capable of radically reprogramming itself. This can be accomplished by changing the cornputer's program, but someone with a brain has to do this (Restak;1984;p.360) .

Thus the capacity of self-reorganization represents a major 93 difference between brains and machines. If we consider the effects of destroying some part of the brain. The result would not necessarily be simply a physical damage with a total loss of some mental capacities but rather an interna1 reorganization of the remaining brain tissue. Moreover, "the same thing winds up being done in a different way, although in the process behavioral sequences may appear that were previously 'suppressedl:primitive reflexes, emotional responses, and so on. This reorganization is internally controlled and proceeds fairly automaticallyw (Restak;l984;p.360) .

After working with subjects suffering from aphasia and acalculia, Laurent Cohen and Stanislas Dehaene observe that while doing arithmetics humans approximate numbers before calculating. They argue that:

ce système, contrairement aux deux autres (verbal et visuel), manipule non pas des symboles ('sept ' ou '7 ') mais des quantités approximatives. ...Notre système analogique de calcul va transformer immédiatement 1es nombres en grandeurs physiques, en leur associant une longueur (mentale) qui sera traitée sur une ligne numérique. A partir de là, une addition entre deux nombres prendra la forme de deux segments sur la ligne mis bout à bout, une comparaison entre deux nombres sera représentée par deux segments mis côte à côte. L 'avantage d'un tel système travaillant en parallèle avec les deux autres, c'est d'être bien plus rapide. Son inconvénient, c'est qu'il est moins précis (Ikonicoff;1995;p. 61 -62) .

Obviously, using cornparison, approximation, and mental representation to solve a problem involves information processing. It shows that a Homo cogitans cannot be reduced to an information processor. Thinking can involve processing information but it cannot be reduced to information processing. Machine information processing is rnere symbol manipulation. "The only thing that a digital computer can do is manipulate symbols in accordance with a set of precisely defined rules stipulated in advance. To the human user looking on, it might seem that those

symbols mean something or refer to something in the world, but, like beauty, that meaning or reference is in the eye of the beholder and not in the computer" (Devlin;l997;p. 155) . In hurnan thinking, semantics is always involved. Furthemore, a theory that views the mind as an information processor would always corne in a behaviouristic flavour. The input is the stimulus, and the output is, obviously, the response. As a consequence, it has some shortcomings found in behaviourism. For example, thinking to oneself is a case of pure cognitive activity in which there could be no observable behaviour.

The clah that 'the mind is an information-processor' rests squarely on a category mistake. There is a misunderstanding of the natures of the things being talked about. Human beings think, computing machines cornpute. Only in metaphorical sense that 95 mental properties can be attributed to computing machines4'. According to Gilbert Ryle, the test for category differences depends on whether replacement of one expression for another in the same sentence results in a type of unintelligibility that he calls 'abs~rdity"~.It will be absurd to Say that 1 compute that you are right. Whenever we Say '1 think' the semantics is always involved, and so is the belief factor. Both the semantics and the belief factor are non-existent in computing machines.

The semantics and the belief factor imply consciousness and/or self-awareness. But computing machines do not have consciousness. Neither do they have self-awareness. For humans, consciousness and/or the self-awareness cornes with the ability to represent objects of knowledge which they can voluntarily retrieve. And the ability to represent objects (not as symbols) is essential to the process of imagination. As said earlier, imagination, 'a conscious mental process of evoking events, ideas or images of

' Computing machines cannot have any mental property. There is only one case in which computing machines could be thought as having mental properties. 'Dennett argues that a system may be treated as an intentional system (with cognitive features such as motives and beliefs) whenever treating it as if it had those cognitive features is explanatorily and predictively useful -whether or not that system is biological'. (Dunlop and Fetzer; 1993, p. 67) This absurdity reflects the prejudices of our languages. 96 obj ects, relations, attributes, or processes never experienced or perceived before' is a non-linear approach to problem solving. But cognitive scientists argue that there is no such a thing as consciousness (and/or qualitative experience) so that they can daim that humans equal machines. Moreover, since the difference between two human subjects or between a human and a machine cannot be determined then there is no difference. Dennett sees no difference between "any machine and any human experiencer. ...There is no such sort of difference, ...... There just seems to bew (Dennett; l99l;p. 375) .

If there is no difference between any machine and any human experiencer, then al1 human attributes can be ascribed to a machine. Thus machines could be said to be capable of thinking. Penrose disagrees:

The question of whether a mechanical device could ever be said to think -perhaps even to experience feelings, or to have a mind- is not a new one. But it has been given new impetus, even an urgency, by the advent of modern cornputer technology. .... What does it mean to experience or to feel? What is a mind? Do minds really exists? Assuming that they do, to what extent are mind functionally dependent upon physical structures with which they are associated? Might minds be able to exist quite independently of such structures? Or are they simply the functionings of (appropriate kinds of such structures? In any case, is it necessary that the relevant structures be biological in nature (brains), or might minds equally well be associated with pieces of electronic equipment? Are minds subjects to the laws of physics? (1989,p.4) .

If minds are subjects to laws of classical physics, then any 97 mental phenornenon could described in physical terms. Furthemore mental states such as beliefs and desires could be anticipated. Fear and anxiety could be turned off at will. Courage could be induced. This would raise some questions: how would we explain the fact that these mental/physical states are very often triggered by external events that have no physical connection with our body? How could we abstract, encode and program, for example, courage?

Voltaire once commented that any army composed of rational men would always simply run away. For a rational being (entity), it doesn't take courage to assent to the proposition "1+1=2". Wowever it takes thymos (courage) to fight an enemy that seems stronger. Whether apocryphal or not, the story of David and Goliath illustrates an aspect of human problem solving capability that is not to be found in computers: courage. Sometimes, the survival instinct could be stronger than the reason. Psychologist Reuven Bar-On links intelligence to feelings. He defines what he calls 'emotional intelligence' as "capabilities, cornpetencies, skills that influence one's ability to succeed in coping with environmental dernands and pressure and directly affect one's overall psychological well-being"

(Mirsky;SA, O4/1997;p.S5) .

Damasio suggests that feelings are a powerful influence on reason. "Reason does seem to depend on specific brain systems, some of which happen to process feelings. Thus there may be a connecting trail, in anatomical and functional terms, from reason to feelings to body' (1994;p.245). While he acknowledges that allowing the emotions to interfere with our reasoning can lead to irrational behaviour, Damasio presents evidence to show that a complete absence of emotion can likewise lead to irrational behaviour. He argues that ...while biological drives and emotion may give rise to irrationality in some circumstances, they are indispensable in others. Biological drives and the automated sornatic marker mechanism that relies on them are essential for sorne rational behaviours, especially in the persona1 and social domains, although they can be pernicious to rational decision-making in certain circumstances by creating an overriding bias against objective facts or even by interfering with support rnechanisrns of decision making such as working mernory (1994;p.192).

Despite the success of Artificial Intelligence in some areas, it will be impossible to create machines that have biological drives and emotion that are essential for some rational behaviours. Besides, "humans beings are not always or only intelligent. There is stupidity in the world, artificial and otherwise" (Rychlak; l99l;p. 14) . It is true that there are artificial intelligence devices that can make logical decisions, even understand spoken language. But as Jonathan S~haeffer'~puts it:

49 University of Alberta scientist who programmed Chinook, the computer that defeated Marion Tinsley the world checkers champion. "what we have done is create idiot savants that are only good at

one thing. We havenlt created intelligence, just the illusion of intelligence". How do we create that (illusion of intelligence? Simon daims that a resolution of an algebra problem is ''simply a sequence of recognitions". And, to 'create' intelligence, cornputer systems called 'expert systemsr are based on pattern recognition and/or discrimination problem solving approach. Pattern recognition is important in human expertise. But, everyday real-world thinking is usually done with comon-sense (which is contextual) understanding in the background. That is

why, 1 would Say, a description of human action into encodable and discrete elements is doomed to failure.

A description of human action into encodable and discrete

elements would mean that if, for example, 1 am playing tennis 1

have to be aware of every rnove 1 make besides processing the information on the ball, the wind, and my opponent's moves. Consequently, I would have difficulty coordinating my moves. Lewis Thomas observes that Working a typewriter by touch, like riding a bicycle or strolling on a path, is best done by not giving it a thought. Once you do, your fingers fumble and hit the wrong keys. To do things involving practiced skills, you need to turn loose the systemç of muscles and nerves responsible for each manoeuvre, place them on their own, stay out of it. There is no real loss of authority in this, since you get to decide whether to do the thing or not, and you can intervene and embellish the technique any time you like; if you want to ride a bicycle backward, or walk with an eccentric loping gait giving a little skip every fourth step, whistling at the sarne time, you can do that. But if you concentrate your attention on the details, keeping in touch with each muscle, thrusting yourself into a free fa11 with each step and catching yourself at the last moment by sticking out the other foot in tirne to break the fall, you will end up irnmobilized, vibrating with fatigue (1978;~.64 i .

1 donlt see how, after doing these types of exercise, we can came up with protocols encodable that would help build a robot capable of doing the same things.

Newell and Simon showed that a computer could solve a class of problems with the general heuristic search principle known as means-ends analysis. It uses any available operation that reduces the distance between the description of the curent situation and the description of the goal. This heuristic technique was abstracted and incorporated into the cornputer program GPS. It was based on protocols or human reports made after having solved a particular problem. But not al1 heuristics can be translated into algorithms. Heuristics are rules of thumb that may lead to a solution of a particular problem, but they do not guarantee a solution. They are plausible ways of approaching a specific problem. However an algorithm or effective procedure is a completely reliable procedure that can be carried out orderly in a finite number of discrete steps. Sometimes, the human mind solves problems in a non-linear way not describable in discrete steps. Roger Penrose (1989) thinks that "the human rnind excels over artificial intelligence because its creativity and complexity rests on the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics phenomena at the most basic level of the brain, whereas artificial intelligence is confined to the boundaries of classical mechanics and is thus barred from the discovery of proofs of elegant mathematical truths such as Godel's theorem" (Wagman;l99l;p.l6). However I do not agree with Penrose on the fact that his approach is obviously physicalist. He assumes that the mind is the brain. This assumption restricts creativity within the limits of a brain driven-by quantum mechanics despite the fact that Penrose believes that the creative mind is nonalgorithmic, nonfixed, nondeterministic, and probabilistic. Antonio Damasio says that it is interesting to observe that some insightful mathematicians and physicists describe their thinking as dominated by images. Often the images are visual, and they even can be somatosensory. ...Benoit Mandelbrot, whose liie work is fractal geometry, says he always thinks in images. He relates that the physicist Richard Feynman was not fond of looking at an equation without looking at the illustration that went with it (and note that both equation and illustration were images, in fact) (1995;p.107).

Haugeland thinks that it is wrong to think that cornputer cannot be creative. He argues that if 5..there were a 'careful specification' of al1 relevant processes in our brains (laws of neuropsychology, or something like that), it would be equally easy to Say: 'We -or rather our brain parts- always act only as specified.' But obviously, no such fact could show that we are never creative or free -and the corresponding claim about cornputers is no more telling" (1985;p.g). Haugelandls argument corroborates my earlier contention (chapter 2) that the mind has to be equated with the brain before comparing it with the computer. That the brain is the mind or the mind is the brain is, at bestl a premature conclusion. As argued in chapter 2, the existence of laws of neuropsychology that would encompass and describe al1 mental phenomena (including subjective experience) seems highly improbable.

Minsky also objects I1to the idea that, just because we canlt explain it now, then no one ever could imagine how creativity works . ... 1 don't believe that there is anything basically different in any a genius, except for having an unusual combination of abilities, none very special by itself. ...why canlt Iordinary, common sense' -when better balanced and more fiercely motivated -make anyone a genius. ...creative people must have unconscious administrative skills that knit the many things they know together. ... Thus, first rank 'creativity' could be just the consequence of little childhood accidents (Minsky;1982;p,l-2).

The problem is: how could these lunconscious administrative skillst be translated into intelligible and encodable propositions that a machine could utilize in order to be creative? Furthemore what is common sense? 1s it encodable? Weizenbaum (1976) observed that a poztion of the information the hurnan 'processesr is kinesthetic, that it is 'stored' in his muscles and joints. Everyday know-how doesnlt consist of procedural rules; but it is knowing what to do in various situations. And the formulation of a theory of comrnon sense has turned out to be harder than expected. Common sense knowledge is often brought to bear on the experiences of daily life. And some of such knowledge is culturally dependent: for example, speaking with a click like the Xhosas of South Africa. This kind of knowledge cannot be represented in a cornputer system because it cannot be reduced to a series of encodable rules.

Sornetimes we solve problems by intuition. Damasio thinks of intuition as 'the mysterious mechaniçm by which we arrive at the solution if a problem without reasoning toward it' (1994;pm188). In other words, intuition is a form of knowledge or cognition independent of experience or reason. The concept of intuition is well illustrated by the mathematical idea of an axiom which is a self-evident proposition that requires no proof. But Simon thinks that "a simple recognition capacity ..., a little encyclopedia with an appropriate index can account for a great deal of human intelligent action, and can account also for a lot for what we cal1 intuition" (1981;p.l6). He asserts that When you ask an expert a question and he is able to answer in a moment or two, and you Say, 'Well, how did you know that?' the usual reply would be 'Well, 1 guess it was just my intuition or my experience'. There is no reason to suppose that we have any awareness of the process that leads from recognition to the accessing of the information which that recognition makes availablen (Simon;1981;~. 16) .

However pattern recognition cannot account for creativity. Weizenbaum thinks that "the history of man's creativity is filled with stories of artists and scientists who after working hard and long on some difficult problem, consciously decide to 'forget' it, ... After some time, often with great suddenness and totally unexpectedly, the solution to their problem announces itself to them in almost complete f orm" (Weizenbaum;lW6;p. 215) .

A cornputer cannot 'forget' a problem and, later on, unexpectedly

corne up with a solution. A cornputing machine cannot, as a human, 'forget' a problem because it is not a cognitive system. Only an entity that is capable of knowing, perceiving, desiring, etc can be considered as a cognitive system. But artificial systems such as computers -even sophisticated ones called expert sytems- are simply information processors and symbols manipulators, they are not cognitive systems. The ability to manipulate symbols doesnft imply perception, cognition, understanding, etc... Cash registers and remote controls are information processors without being cognitive systems. The only way a cornputer or any other piece of machinery could be said to be cognitive systems is by ascribing it some kind of intentionality. Since this intentionality is ascribed it cannot be intrinsic. It would be a "derived"

intentionality or what Dennett calls "as-if" intentionality. Cornputers are rational systems using exclusively deductive reasoning. But humans are capable of deductive, inductive reasoning, intuition, and more. Moreover humans are not only rational systems, they are also intentional systems which computers are not.

An expert system proves mathematical theorem, picks investrnent stocks, gives a diagnosis, or produces weather forecasts because it has been devised to do so. But this doesnft mean that an expert system is a cognitive/intentional system as any human being. Furthermore there are some demonstrations that a computer system cannot carry out. For example, Godel's theorem shows that in any sufficiently powerful logical system statements can be formulated which can neither be proved nos disproved within the system, unless possibly the system itself is inconsistent.

When solving a problem in arithmetic or algebra, a human being and a computer arrive at the answer roughly in the same way. But "the distinction between mind and machine is clearer when it cornes to playing chess. Considerable effort has been put into the development of computer programs that play chess... . However, they achieve their success not by adopting any clever strategies, but by essentially brute force methods" (Devlin;1997;~. 146) . Chess playing machines simply evaluate billions of positions before selecting the one that offers greater chance of success. Adriaan de Groot, a Dutch chess grand master, finds that even grand masters do not generate a 'tree' of more than fifty or seventy-five positions before choosing a move. He also thinks that the size of the 'treel is not proportional to the player's strength. Further studies made by de Groot, show that a grand master almost never will look at more than 100 possibilities before selecting a move. And that ...mediocre players, when they are playing sexiously, also look at about a maximum of about 100 possibilities before they make a move. The difference is that the grand master looks at the important possibilities and the tyros look at the irrelevant possibilities, and that's really the only way in which you can distinguish the thinking that they are doing when they are selecting a move. The processes are exactly the same (Simon;l98l;p. 15) .

Thus good chess playing doesnft simply consist of 'numbers crunching'. It requires the ability to Iseer meaningful configurations that could lead to a breakthrough. 1 believe that a good chess player could have a hunch in the first five seconds. And he would spend the rest of the tirne testing if it will make a good move. The machine looks at far more possibilities. This fact increases the chance of selecting the best move. In fact, the machine is no better than a mediocre player since it looks even at irrelevant possibilities. A good chess player seems ta have unusual abilities in visual imagery. Simon thinks that "a chess master has a long experience of wasted youth, of looking at chess boards, and in the course of looking at hundreds and thousands of chess boards, the master has learned to recognize al1 sorts of familiar friends. The master does not see that board as twenty- five pieces, he sees it as four or five or six clusters, each of which cluster is a familiar friend" (1981;p.15). These clusters or patterns seem to have meaning. They corne with a lot of information on what to do about such patterns.

For example, Deep Blue doesn't think, it evaluates billions of chess positions. On the other hand, the human rnind looks ahead only few moves. This suggests an analogy: When it was discovered that Ben Johnson was aided by steroids, he was banned from world amateur track events and stripped of the Olympic gold medal he had been given. A similar fate would befall any chess player who was caught receiving advice frorn a computer during a game. What, then to think of Deep Blue, which in the sprinting analogy would be 100 per cent steroids? The computer does not play chess, it only sirnulates playing chess. If a human did some of the things which the computer simulates (such as looking up the next move in a book), the human would again be banned" (Berry;1997) .

Moreover a machine doesn't lose concentration. And since the "tree" of possibility created by hypothetical moves increases very quickly, Deep Blue has one advantage: it could search through 200 million positions in a second. It "looks" at the chess board for positions that it recognizes and numerically rates them. After weighing al1 the factors according to its chess 108 knowledgeS0, Deep Blue can choose the move or position with the highest rate. However "...al1 computers chess programs to date suffer from a generic flaw: a vacuum when it cornes strategizing. When there is nothing really happening in the game, it floundersn (Powell&Stone;l997,p.56). That is, depending on the situation, Deep Blue (or any other computer chess program) could be

"smarter" than a human or it could be very clumsy. A human player would try to force the game on his/her own turf, He or she would create situations in which the computer would not "understand" his/her positions. Kasparov could not examine Deep Blue's previous games. Whereas Deep Blue was "trained" with patterns from Kasparov's games. Deep Blue could even consult chess manuals during the games* In fact, it was not Deep Blue that won the match. But it was triumph for human creativity.

Sometimes creativity can involve novel combinations or transformation of familiar ideas. In this case, creativity can be described or modelled in computational terms. A computer program called EMI (Experirnents in Musical Intelligence) invented by David Cope of the University of California at Santa Cruz is capable of scanning pieces by a famous composer, automatically distil their essence (most common patterns), and "createtla piece that could easily be attributed to the composer by a casual

50 It can also consult chess manuals in its database. 109 listener (Scientific American;Ol/98). However human creativity cannot be reduced to pattern recognition and transformation. Very often music seems to spring from emotion and experience. EMI has no emotion, no mernories. It simply sifts through past pieces by a particular composer for characteristic patterns of melodies, harmonies and rhythms and then recombine them into something that could be attributed to that composer. EMI could not have been able to 'create' Mozart's music if Mozart had not existed. EMI did not create Mozart's music, it simply recombines patterns in novel ways.

But creativity could be described as an ability to recombine past patterns or ideas only if it cm be proved that these ideas or patterns have arisen in the creator's culture or some other culture with which they have had contact. One way out would be adhering to the platonic view of an immortal sou1 that remembers things from past lives. In either case, it has to be explained how, in the beginning, a particular idea came about. Artists and scientists often do not know how their original ideas corne about. They usually mention intuition. The biologist and physicist Leo Szilard argued that: "the creative scientist has much in common with the artist and poet. Logical thinking and an analytical ability are necessary attributes to a scientist, but they are far from sufficient for creative work. Those insights in science that have led to a breakthrough were not logically derived from preexisting knowledge" (in Damasio;1994;p.189). But views differ on the nature of creativity. Jonas Salk thinks that creativity rests on a "merging of intuition and reason" (in Damasio;1994;p.189). Einstein referring to his great insights into the laws of physics, said that 'to these elementary laws there lead no logical path, but only intuition, supported by being sympathetically in touch with experience8' (in Devlin; l997;p. 178) . Experience is, as in chess playing, the ability to 'seeV meaningful configurations.

However a computing machine does not predicate meaning. It "knows" what is the case but doesn't have an inkling of what is not the case. Things have to match up perfectly or it will not proceed with the calculation. Rychlak thinks that ...through the study of predication we will acquire a deeper understanding of the human being. ...The role of error, of learning what was not taught, or presuming what was not intended, is clearly an aspect of human behaviour. An understanding of predication and opposition permits the social scientist to paint a richer picture of what it means to be a human being, one that connects more directly with socio-cultural outlooks such as we find in law, religion, and art. Al1 such evaluative endeavors cry out for a depiction of the human being as one who predicates rathex than simply mediates experience (l99l;p.14) .

1 believe that the hurnan mind is distinct £rom computer programs that simply process information without understanding. As Penrose argues: ".,.if the human brain is a computer ... and is therefore dependent on algorithms, how is it that the human brain of a 111 mathematician constructs mathematical conjectures and mathematical proofs that involve non-computable numbers, and yet the algorithms of universal Turing machines hold only for computable numbers" (Wagman;l99l;p.l6). However from the point of view of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, could be considered sirnply as a useful methodology that helps make theories of cognition explicit, detailed, and precise. The same methodology could help devise a theory of cognitive performance or an algorithm that can be written in a programming language. After laboxatory experimental trials and revisions, the prograrn could be essential to the production of an artifact that can effectively perform particular "cognitive" task. As Weizenbaum puts it: "...however much intelligence computers may attain, now or in the future, theirs must always be an intelligence alien to genuine human problems and concerns" (1976;~.213)

Intelligence is not an appropriate adjective for a computer. Semantics and belief factor are nonexistent in machines. Human behaviour implies consciousness. Can a machixe be conscious? Consciousness is a necessary condition to a successful emulation of human behaviour. But just behaviour is not sufficient to prove the presence of intelligence. Even if machines can do what humans can do, they cannot be what humans are. They don't know what it is like ta be a human. Machines dontt belong to the category of things alive (conscious). Conceiving a machine as conscious would be paradoxical. There are human abilities that cannot be simulated in cornputing machines. For exarnple, humans "are capable of listening with the third ear, of sensing living truth that is truth beyond any standards of provability. It is that kind of understanding, and the kind of intelligence that is derived from it, which 1 claim is beyond the abilities of computers to simulate" (Weizenbaum;l976;p- 222) . Descartes foresaw artificial intelligence. But he also anticipated its limits. He mused that For we can well imagine a machine so made that it utters words and even, in a few cases, words pertaining specifically to some actions that affect it physically. For instance, if you touch one in a certain place, it might ask what you want to Say, while you touch it in another, it might cry out that you are hurting it, and so on. However, no such machine could ever arrange its words in various different ways so as to respond to the sense of whatever is said in its presence -as even the dullest people can do (in Haugeland;l98S;p.35).

What does make a human or, more precisely, a person able 'to respond to the sense of whatever is said in his/her presence'? In order to properly respond to whatever is said, one has to make sense of whatever is said. To make sense of whatever is said, one needs an appropriate general background knowledge that would help him/her understand what is said. The King of Siam thought he could not reason with Europeans because they believed that ice existed. The King of Siam's general background knowledge could not accommodate the notion of ice. And general background 113 knowledge can be acquired through experience and social interaction. The frightening part about heredity and environment is that ...parents provide bath." (Author unknown)

How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb? One. But only if, deep down, the lightbulb is willing to change.

(Anonymous)

What is it exactly about this sequence of sentences that makes it a 'jokel?How much intelligence does one need in order to recognize the quotation as a joke, to be amused by it, and to explain why it is amusing? Could a computer 'understand' or identify this sequence of sentences as a joke and be amused by it? A computer could lget' this joke only if it is progranuned to recognize 'the parameters' (if such a thing exists) of sequences of sentences that qualify jokes. But I have difficulty believing that a computer would be amused by a joke. And a human being would have to have a certain cultural background in order to recognize the quotation as a joke, to be amused by it, and to explain why it is amusing.

As argued in the last chapter, humans are more than information processors. More importantly, they are social beings. In different places, humans have different ways of doing things, solving problems, and perceiving the world. Again, as said in chapter 2, despite their neurophysiological underpinning, our perceptions, our ways of doing things and/or solving problems, in short, our mental states are nevertheless subjective. Subjectivity is, somehow, shaped by culture and the environment in which the subject lives.

In this chapter, with artificial intelligence as backdrop, the discussion will be on the role of 'nature' (the human biological organism) and culture (sets of shared values) or social interaction in the creation/formation of human mind or cognitive development. Because, having a human body (biological organisrn) and social interaction seem to be essential to the formation of the mind or the development of human intelligence.

I start with the assumption that nature combined with culture create the human mind. Aristotle once said that: Man is a social animal. In Aristotlevs definition the two aspects of a human 116 being or a person are highlighted: the animal or biological and the social, the moral and the political. These are not two separate or independent entities, they interact.

"The biological environment is the necessary world in and through which a biological organization lives and with which it interacts. If -- as is the case with humans -- social and cultural influences are part of the common environment, then knowing in humans can never develop humanly without the social and cultural environment" (Furth;1973;p.16). The story of the Wild Child of Aveyron illustrates the importance of social interaction. In 1799, a twelve or thirteen-year old boy who had been wandering for an unknown time was 'captured' in the forests of Aveyron in southern France. Like other children who have grown up without human contact, he behaved in 'strange' ways and could not speak. How could he speak or behave 'properly' without having contact with other people? He did not subscribe to the shared values of the society at large. The psychiarist Phillipe Pinet concluded that Victor (the Wild Boy) was crazy. However Jean-Marc Itard, a young doctor to whom Victor had been turned over, concluded that the Victor's 'strange' behaviour and inability to speak could be attributed to the lack of social interaction.

In human beings, supposedly, it is the mind that thinks, reasons, feels, judges, etc.. 1 guess none of these operations is possible if there is no external world. Even Descartes needed the external world in order to launch the process that led him to his famous

'Cogito ergo sum'. To illustrate the importance of the external world. Let us take an example of an activity that cornputers are not capable of and that neither requises, apparently, a direct outside input nor involves the will. And this activity that could be said to be (purely) neurophysiological is: drearning. Dreaming is a mode of consciousness. It is a state in which, I would Say, the mind is at the mercy of the neurophysiology5'. In principle, dreaming can be induced neurophysiologically. In other words, it is possible to get someone to dream by altering their neurophysiological con£iguration (Le. taking some hallucinatory drug). So, it is possible to infer that a mode of consciousness can be "represented" neurophysiologically. I am talking about neurophysiological states but not about their "content". As 1 said earlier, dreaming could be induced. But, 1 don't think that it is possible to neurophysiologically get someone to have a particular dream. Bringing the "content" or "object" of dreams in the picture raises the question of meaning. It seems highly improbable to corne up with a neurophysiological account of

However I don't know if neurophysiologically speaking there is a difference between dreaming and being fully awake. 1 acknowledge that someone could be awake and be dreaming. But, it cannot be said that the subject dreaming is fully awake unless the word "dreaming" is used metaphorically. 118 meaning. If it were possible to account for meaning in physical (Le. neurophysiological tenns), it would be possible get someone to dream a particular dream. Thus, it would possible, at least in principle, to 'create' some artificial intelligence device that could have a particular meaningful dream. Then machines would no longer be just symbol manipulators because their operation would capable of yielding meaning. And that would mean that they have consciousness. In short, they would no longer be machines. But we are not there yet!

Searle (1984) and many other thinkers have argued that one of the basic differences between humans and computers is that human mental activity yields meaning, whereas computers are simply symbol manipulators. But where does meaning corne £rom? Stephen Toulmin thinks that in Lev Vygotskyls view the problem of meaning 'cannot be convincingly dealt with by focusing either on our genetic inheritance and innate capacities alone or on the influence of external, environmental factors alone"(Toulmin;l978; p.3). Even if the roots of intelligence are bi~logical~~,those of meaning can only be socio-cultural. Both the biological and the socio-cultural are needed to create the human mind. Though highly improbable, a biological organism can, in principle, be artificially engineered. However the socio-cultural aspect can

- -

" As both Piaget and Vygotsky think. 119 only be negotiated with the outside world. Computers (and other electromechanical devices that emulate human mind) can manipulate symbols as humans do. Up to a certain extent (for example, in the case of problem-solving), it is possible to Say that computers and other electromechanical devices can "think". However, no meaning cornes out of computers and other electromechanical devices'"thinkingw. It is the human mind with its cultural background that attributes meaning to the results of manipulation of symbols by computers and other "intelligent" devices.

In a way, "...to disregard the social or cultural context of our mental lives is to misrepresent the very nature of the mind itself, for the mind is an essentially social phenornenon"

(Bakhurst 1993, p.3). Vygotskyps views suggest that the hurnan mind is a social phenomenon. Piaget seems to share the same views. In Wertsch's view, both Piaget and Vygotsky put the socialized individual at the end of cognitive development. However, my first impression is that Piaget has a tendency to underestimate the role of social communication. In his work, the role of social factors in cognitive development is very often implicit. But, Furth argues that "Piaget doesn't study man in a biological vacuum. Man is a living organization which in spite of, or rather because of, his inherent structure and self- regulation is in no way self-sufficient. The environment is not an added luxury or some item dispensable to an essentially autonomous structure 53" (~urth;1973;~. 16) .

Both Piaget and Vygotsky agree that intelligence has biological roots. This cannot be disputed unless one believes in spiritual beings. Piaget sees intelligence more as an extension or an outgrowth of biological organization. This approach has an epiphenomenalist Elavour that undermines the interactionist thesis. Unlike Piaget and despite the fact that he acknowledges that intelligence has biological roots, Vygotsky searches for the beginning of cognitive development in the social life. He thinks that cognitive development is inseparable from socio-cultural activities.

Jerome Bruner also argues that in order "to understand man you must understand how his experience and his acts are shaped by his intentional states... The form of these intentional states is realized only through participation in the symbolic systems of the culture. Indeed, the very shape of our lives -the rough and perpetually changing draft of our autobiography that we carry in our minds- is understandable to ourselves and to others only by virtue of those cultural systems of interpretation" (Bruner, in

Gardner; lW5;p. 37) . Bruner' s view suggests that our mind is not a

" My italics. 121 finished product. It is a 'rough and perpetually changing" draft. And changes are induced by social interaction. For example, the simple fact of being left or right handed (this could be cultural!)54 can affect the way a subject perceives music (see chapter 2).

As 1 said earlier, Piaget and Vygotsky seem to share sirnilar views on the nature and formation of human mind. They have considered the developrnent of individual cognitive processes within the larger context of overall human biological and social evolution. ...Piaget's theory of cognitive development has been described as 'a progressive structurization whereby actions and intellectual operations become organized into coherent systems'..., which applies to Vygotsky's outline as well. (Martin and Stewin, 1974, p.348- 9

However there are some diiferences. Piaget -- who has always called himself a genetic epistemologist --" thinks that intelligence is essentially a biological phenornenon. In his mode1 of cognitive development he puts emphasis on the relationship between the individual and the environment. He "argued that the

54 In some cultures (African, Middle-Eastern), for example, children are strongly encouraged if not forced to use only the right hand while eating or giving something because the left hand is for persona1 hygiene.

55 The juxtaposition of the two words, "genetic" and "epistemologist" makes me wonder if meaning could be found in the genes. That would be surprising. 1 think Piaget used the expression "genetic epistemologistw metaphorically. 122 development of intelligence is the highest fom of adaptation of an individual to his or her environment. Adaptation involves an interaction between the individual's knowledge and the external environment, and two basic processes can be identified in this interaction: assimilation and accommodation" (Eysenck;1984; p.232).

Social interaction is important. It plays a major role in the development of the mind. Piaget thinks that it is the social interaction that gives rise to successive logical structures that regulate thinking processes. Since srnall children don't seem to use logic rules 1 can speculate that logic rules are developed through action (in the world). But, how do these logic rules get internalized? This is a difficult question to which there seems to be no satisfactory answer.

Kant contends that the mind is structured to apply causal relations between events. Although his list of "a priori concepts" is different from Kant's, Piaget seems to follow the same line. He thinks that concepts such as causality, the-space, number, morality and other Kantian categories develop slowly. However, Piaget does this "without questioning the particular causal connections a specific culture bas produced nor, what is methodologically even more problematic, the socio-cultural- historical notion of causality itselfw(Holzrnan and Newman;1993; p. 45)56. Contrary to Piaget, Vygotsky thinks that concept formation is a social-cultural-historical activity which "contains the key to the whole history of the childls mental development'' (Vygotsky;1987; p. 167) . In both cases sociocultural factors play major roles in the process of understanding the world, and also in the process of developing problem-solving capabilities. For example, a particular sociocultural ferment and some particular needs (in Western societies) led to the advent of computers. Thus cornputers could be considered as an extention of deductive reasoning approaches to problem solving.

One of the major socio-cultural factors is speech. Vygotsky asserts that speech plays an essential role in the organization of higher psychological functions. For a child, "speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand" (Vygotsky;1978;p.24). He thinks that "the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence,

56 Holzman and Newman think that Piaget's work on the origins and development of intelligence has been inspired by Kant's a priori synthetic categories. They think that "what the child constructs is a perception and understanding of laws of motion, speed, ternporality and causality that are taken by Piaget to be how the world is, independent of our construction of itn(1993, p. 202) 124 occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge" (Vygotsky, 1978, p.24) . Vygotsky, more than Piaget, is trying to conciliate the natural or biological and the cultural. His view on the creation/formation of human mind is inherited from Marx and Engels. Vygotsky's political background plays a major role in the shaping of his theory. It is behind his emphasis on the primacy of labour and tool use. As Wertsch reported it, Marx and Engels "argued that we become human by engaging in the process of labourvv (Wertsch;1985;p.77). I would sympathize with the view that labour interacts with human nature. However, 1 donlt think that engaging in the labour process is a necessary condition to becoming a human being or person. Vygotsky doesn't seem to espouse this view without questioning it. And, he goes a step further by emphasizing the role of the use of tools in the process of labour. Although he agrees with Engels' notion that "the tool signifies specifically hurnan activity" (ibid), Vygotsky acknowledges the fact that non-humans also use tools. For example, some monkeys use stones (as tools) to open nuts. However, the use of ~psychologicaltoolsvl or "signs" or speech could signifies specifically human activityS7. Vygotsky stresses that "it is decisively important that speech not only facilitates

57 By saying this, 1 assume that to the best of our knowledge, there are no other beings beside humans that use signs. But, this claim could be proven wrong. 125 the child's effective manipulation of objects but also controls the child's own behaviour. Thus with the help of speech children, unlike apes, acquire the capacity to be both the subjects and objects of their own behaviout"(Vygotsky;l978;p.134).

By arguing that speech as well as intelligence could only be developmental, Piaget is rejecting rationalism and innatism. But, his theory has an innatist and rationalist flavour. Piaget is opposed to predeveloped structures. He thinks that structures have to be acquired first and then, they can be developed. Piaget "stresses that the source of structure is the subject himself acting on the external content and he likens this to Kant's view that the source of structure is the mind itselfW(Atkinson, 1983, p.11). The structure and external input are required so that the mind can develop. Saying that they are necessary conditions for the development of the mind would not be misleading, 1 would Say. However, if the source of mind's structure is the mind itself then there is risk of circularity here. This could be avoided if Piaget thinks that human mind has built-in mechanisms to develop logic rules. He thinks that built-in mechanisms or "the structures may be inborn, or be in the process of forrning, or they rnay have been already formed through the progressive organization of actionsW(Piaget, 1962, p.2). If these structures are like grammar rules (to use Chomskyan jargon) or codes then we might be led to believe that humans are born with some kind of 126 innate knowledge. Even so, those built-in mechanisms would have some kind of "knowledge". It is possible to Say that these rules or codes aren't really innate since the child is not aware of them before he or she reaches the stage of concrete operations. But one question still remains: how does this change occur, even if this change is developmental? Even by being imersed in a proper environment, how does the child become capable of following or using, let us Say, the rules of inference ? If there is no circularity then Piaget would be flirting with innatism (which he rejects) .

In Piaget's theory period of sensory motor intelligence and period of concrete operations (arithmetics, logic, etc ...) are worlds apart. As said earlier, Piaget's mode1 fails to explain how a child jumps from the period of sensory motor intelligence to that of concrete operations. I guess that there must be some intermediate stage(s) during which the child develops tools that help her or him overcome the initial isolation. Piaget seems to rely on logical formalism in order to explain the rules of transformation from one stage of cognitive development to another. However, Gardner thinks that the logical formalism underlying those stages is invalidsa.

58 Gardner goes even further. He daims that "the stages themselves are under attack, and (Piaget's) description of the biological processes of stage transformation Vygotsky thinks that mental or cognitive structures are made of relations between mental functions. In his view, al1 mental functions have external or socio-cultural origins. For example, language is socially based even in its most primitive form. Children have to use language and communicate with others before they shift the focus to their own mental processes. And this will make it possible for the transition from external to internal speech to take place. It is the internal speech that will eventually evolve into thought. By saying that al1 mental functions have external or socio-cultural origins, Vygotsky doesn't underestimate the biological factor. He wants to show that the socio-cultural factor5' and biological factor are equally important. Thus, in Vygotsky's model, the child develops from a creature at the mercy of his immediate perceptions to an individual capable of controlling and ordering his perceptions through the application of mature thought processes to sensory data. So, also, does Piaget describe the evolution of the cognitive processes from the sensory, through the concrete, to the abstract levels of functioning (Martin and Stewin, 1974, p. 353) .

Even though Piaget rejects the idea of predeveloped structures and somewhat underestimates the role of social interaction, his

have eluded even sympathetic scholars (see Bairnerd 1978)" (Gardner, 1985, p. 118). However, Gardner acknowledges that "even disproofs of (Piaget's) claims are tribute to his general influence" (ibid). '' The use of singular is not intended to suggest that there is only one single socio-cultural factor. 128 assimilation/accommodation theory implies and needs both factors. Assimilation occurs when one incorporates new information into existing knowledge and/or structure. It is possible to extrapolate that there must be some kind of (predeveloped) structure so that a neonate can, for the first time, assimilate new information. Both assimilation and accommodation processes require external input.

Very often in Piaget's works, there is a mention of a stimulus being "assimilatedV by the structure. However, it is not clear how the assimilation is going to take place. Besides, the nature of structures is unclear. It is difficult to tell if they are biological or mental. Piaget "identifies structuring with knowing". As Furth says, Ilsuch a view simply proposes that an organism cannot respond to a stimulus unless the stimulus is at least in some rudimentary way meaningful or known to the organisrn". 1 think, in this case, the biological organismls response is considered as (a piece) of knowledge60. Despite its appeal, this comment raises a problem similar to the one encountered in the preceding paragraph: it seems to suggest that the organism has some kind of innate knowledge that is not

6O However, not al1 biological organismls responses can be considered as knowledge. For example, sneezing is a a biological organism's response to a stimulus, but 1 donlt think that the body has knowledge of the stimulus. 129 necessarily conscious or reflective. In this case, meaning could be accounted for in biological terms. 1 dontt think that would make any sense. Piaget's constructivist theory suggests that meaning is "negotiated" between the organism and its environment. This excludes the possibility of having innate ideas. It also excludes the possibility of replicating and/or simulating intelligence in a computer or any other artifact.

As Backhurst sees it:" ... meaning is the medium of the mental, and meaning is (in some sense) socially constructed; ...the human mind, and the forms of talk in which hurnan beings explain and predict the operations of minds, should be understood on the mode1 of tools, and like al1 artifacts, we cannot make sense of them independently of the social processes which make them what they are"(1995;p.15). As 1 said earlier, the roots of intelligence might be biological, those of meaning can be socio- cultural. Intelligence means faculty of understanding. In othex words, it is a "mechanism" that makes understanding possible. One understands something when he or she understands its meaning. So, without socio-cultural factor or input there cannot be meaning. And, the faculty or mechanism of understanding would be of no use. The interaction of both factors is the key to the cognitive developrnent. Whether the process of cognitive development is from the egocentric to the socialised or from the socialised to the individualised, one thing seems to be clear: both the biological factor and the socio-cultural factors are necessary for an individual. The two factors cooperate in order to produce intelligence. Without the biological, there cannot be a human being or a person. And, it is impossible to be a person if the socio-cultural factor is non-existent. Damasio observes that: 'the comprehensive understanding of the human mind requires an organismic perspective; that not only must also be related to a whole organism possessed of integrated body proper and brain and fully interactive with a physical and social environment" (1994;p.252).

Acknowledging the major role of the socio-cultural factor is a step forward. As Bruner sees it: "cultural psychology aspires to render perspicuous the structure of social life as it pertains to the emergence and flourishing of mind. If we can learn how cultures make mind, perhaps we can make cultures which make better, or at least more fulfilled, minds" (Bruner;1990;p. 31).

Despite al1 the effort by Doctor Itard, Victor (the Wild Child) could develop only a very limited linguistic and behavioral repertoire. This could show that a total cultural deprivation early in someone's life could have ixreversible effects that 131 cannot be modified by 'reprogranuningl the mind. A cornputer's 'behaviourl or perfomance can be radically changed by a reprogramming. However human beings are not cornputing machines.

Every human being is unique. We can duplicate al1 the parts of Deep Blue or any other computer and have two identical machines.

And these two machines would perform exactly the sarne way. However humans are not identical, and they don't think alike.

Even monozygotal or identical twins are two distinct persons who donft think alike. A brain is not a computer. Nature does not deliver a 'plug and play' ready to use mind that just needs to be turned on. Doctor Carla Schatz of the University of California at Berkeley thinks that the brain lays out "circuits that are its best guess about what is required for vision, for language, for whatever. And now it is up to neural activity -no longer spontaneous, but driven by a flood of sensory experiences- to take this rough blueprint and progressively refine it" (in Time;03/02/97;p. 50) .

If experiences refine the brain/mind than a human being "is defined, in large part, by the problems it faces. Man faces problems no machine could possibly be made to face. Man is not a machine. ...although (he) most certainly processes information, he does not necessarily process it in the way computers do. Cornputers and men are not species of the same genusr' (Weizenbaum;lW6;p. 203) . The idea of artificial intelligence presupposes that machines could be made to do things that usually require human intelligence. Can machines do things that humans do? Artificial Intelligence scientists think that it is possible to simulate human intelligence in machines. They also extrapolate that machines can have minds.

As said in chapters 1 and 3, Descartes and Hobbes 'prophetically launched artificial intelligencer. They both conceived thinking as an essentially conscious process which can be described in discrete steps. Hobbes also contended that thinking was nothing but computation. But their views diverged on the nature of the mind. Descartes contended that the mind was an immaterial substance. However Hobbes claimed that the Nnd was something corporeal or material. How couid Artificial Intelligence scientists make machines that have minds if the nature of mind is still unknown. The question of the nature of the mind has remained unresolved for centuries. And the debate still rages on.

As discussed in chapter 3, the project of artificial intelligence is mainly based on Newell and Simon's physical symbol systern hypothesis. Newell and Simon contend that the necessary conditions for something to be intelligent or to have a mind is that it be a physical symbol system. The capacity to manipulate physical units (symbols) by reference to syntactic rules is what takes to have a mind. In short, an intelligent entity must be physical and capable of manipulating physical symbols. This excludes the possibility of a nonphysical mind. How could a nonphysical mind manipulate physical symbols? Thus, from a pro- artificial intelligence point of view, the mind has to be capable of manipulating physical symbols. To do so, it must have physical properties. That is why, in chapter 2, 1 examined the idea of the brain as the mind. The conclusion is that the mind cannot be reduced to the brain. However this should not hide the fact that a well-functioning brain is the material seat of mental activity, properties, etc.. And this cannot help us answer the question of whether machines could do what humans do.

The only option left was to examine the criterion artificial intelligence scientists use to attribute intelligence to artifacts. Minsky, Simon, and others believe that machines become intelligent by carrying out a task that would require intelligence if performed by humans. Humans use intelligence while doing arithmetics. Pocket calculators also do arithmetics. If we agree with Minsky and Simon, the conclusion would be: pocket calculators are intelligent. This conclusion is nonsensical. A pocket calculator is simply a tool. It is not aware of the problem solving process in which it is engaged.

Besided it does know what it is doing. A pocket calculator or any other artifact simply manipulate symbols They are not cognitive system. A cognitive system must ber at least, capable of knowing, desiring, believing, and perceiving. Knowing, desiring, believing, and perceiving require consciousness and meaning.

Artiiicial Intelligence scientists donrt have an exhaustive list of everything that requires human intelligence. And they seem to reduce intelligence to deductive reasoning. There are things that humans do that machines cannot do (for example, enjoying poetry) . Even if a human being and an artificial intelligence device, while solving a problem, arrive at the same result, this doesnrt prove that humans and machines solve problems in the same way. Cornputers rely squarelly on deductive reasoning. But, as stated in chapter 3, humans corne to know, as says Locke, "by intuition, by reason, examining the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by sensation, perceiving the existence of particular things" (Russell;l96l;p.591). Humans also solve problem by creativity, 135 However mysterious, creativity is nevertheless meaningful and/or teleological. "Creativity is never simply a question of buil~ing ideas 'from scratchr. There is always an ongoing, evaluative process of aligning meanings within proper fruitful contexts (predicates) and then extending these lines of patterned organization to some desired end. The creative person must recognize various points along the way, as when a line of thought is becoming inconsistent or missing the targeted goal" (Rychlak;l99l;p 169) . Kasparov knew that he was playing chess against a machine,and he wanted to win the match. But Deep Blue was simply manipulating symbols. That is why I believe that scientists should not expect to uncover the mystery surrounding the nature of the mind by simulating what they cal1 intelligence in machines. Simon (1981) acknowledges that there are large areas of human thought processes that have not yet been explored and we are still agnostic about where the boundaries are.

The mind cannot be understood in tems of rules or programs. Of the computational theory of mind, Eisenberg asserts that "what it cornes down to ... is that they conceive 'mind' as either synonymous with 'brain' or at least as essentially related to brain in an empirically determinable way. Then they conceive of the brain as an information-processing machine- As a result, the mind is seen either as a machine in operation or as the patterns, procedures, software, or some other observable or scientifically 136 determinable phenomenonW(l992;p.15). Instead of talking about a computer mode1 we should talk about a computer metaphor. A metaphor seems to be a device that allows transactions between different contexts. With a metaphor insights "from one context could be transferred into another context". A metaphor cannot be turned into a scientific deduction. For example, Einstein's Relativity Theory shows that every description of a physical event must be relative to some specific space/time coordinates. But he didnlt intend to claim that: "in life everything is relative".

1 would side with Weizenbaum who, paradoxically, dismisses the very concept of mind. He affirms that llthere is... no such a thing as mind; there are individual minds, each belonging, not to

'manf, but to individual human beings" (1976;~.223) . A human being or a person is more than just the its biological organism or body. If a person were no more than his/her biological organism then monozygotical twins would simply be two identical copies of one single person. Monozygotical could have the identical biological material but each one of them has his/her own mind. However the mind cannot exist or operate without the body. Antonio Damasio thinks that the mind is not distinct from the body. He contends that the mind is (built) from the body and with the body. And failure to see this is what he calls: Descartes' error. 137 Sergio Moravia thinks that "Man can no longer be interpreted as homo duplex (despite the efforts by neo- and crypto-dualists): the 'mindu, of course, does not exist as an entity; and the 'body' is an extremely generic concept, itself derived from an out-dated brand of metaphysics (if anything, one should speak of the brain and the central nervous system)" (1995;p.3), 1 am not trying to suggest that the problem of the nature of the mind is a pseudo-problem. However 1 think that it is a product of a specific social and cultural elaboration- 1 would consider the mind as being primarily a heuristic concept. Thus, it does not matter whether the mind is material or immaterial and/or it exists or not. 1 would Say that the tenn 'mind' is a symbol that refers to some 'entity' that we could simply cal1 a human being, considered individually and existentially as a person. In chapter 4, I struggled to show that the comprehensive understanding of a human mind, a human being or a person "requires an organismic perspective; that not only the mind move from a nonphysical cogitum to the realm of biological tissue, but it must also be related to a whole organism possessed of integrated body proper and brain and fully interactive with a physical and social environment" (Damasio;1994;p.252) .

Locke thinks that our idea of a person is that of 'a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and considers 138 itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places'. Being a person could also be defined in many ways such as social, moral, legal, and spiritual. Humans have a capability for culture in the sense of conscious thinking and planning, transmission of skills and systems of social relationships, and creative modification of the environment. However machines are not capable of conscious thinking. Consciousness is one of the basic factors on which hinges the difference between human behaviour and computer performance.

Intelligence is generally viewed as the capacity to understand, to learn, to solve problems. It is the ability to deal with concrete situations and to profit intellectually from sensory experience. And intelligence cannot be reduced to deductive reasoning. Moreover Weizenbaum asserts that "intelligence is a meaningless concept in and of itself. It requires a frame of reference, a specification of a domain of thought and action, in order to make it meaningful" (1976;~.204) .

Tomputers trace our conceptual steps after we have corne to a premise and affirmed it demonstratively in the act of predication. They fail, however, to capture the oppositional meanings involved in cognition preliminary to such conceptualization" (Rychlak;1991; 161) . And predication (of meaning) is the main concept that stresses the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. A computer needs exclusively demonstrative premises in order to process

information accurately and arrive at a useful conclusion. Here is a linguistic trap for cornputers by Christopher Longuet-Higgins:

Premise 1: Men are numerous. Premise 2: Socrates is a man.

Conclusion : Socrates is numerous.

1 donlt think that the dullest of 'normal' being would arrive at such a conclusion. The logical reasoning is perfect, but the result is illogical. A computer would need an extra premise to

'make sense' of this syllogism. Actually, it would not 'rnake senser itself but it would give an acceptable conclusion. Since a computer cannot get the meaning, this conclusion would be acceptable to the user. Even an expert system needs 'tuningr. It has to meet the conditions of satisfaction set by the hurnan expert. These conditions change with the growth of the expert's own knowledge of the subject. Deep Blue scientist Murray Campbell conceded that the machine would never be as flexible as a human being .

As Weizenbaum sus up: Our own daily lives abundantly demonstrate that intelligence manifests itself only relative to specific social and cultural contexts. The most unschooled mother who cannot compose a single grammatically correct paragraph in her native language -as, indeed, many academics cannot do in theirs- constantly makes highly refined intelligent judgments about her family. Eminent scholars confess that they don't have the kind of intelligence required to do high-school algebra. The acknowledged genius is sometimes stupid in managing his private life. Cornputers perform prodigious 'intellectual feats', such as beating champion checker players at their own game and solving huge systems of equations, but cannot change a babyvs diaper. How are these intelligences to be compared to one another? They cannot be compared (1976;p.205). Armstrong, David The Nature of Mind in The ~rain/Mind Identity Theory; ed. V.C. Borst, St Martin's; 1983 Atkinson, Christine Making Sense of Piaget; Routledge and Kegan Paul; 1983 Backhurst, David On the Social Constitution of Mind; Bruner, Ilyenkov, and the Defense of Cultural Psychology; 1995 Berry, J Deep Blue's not really a player; The Globe and Mail; 17/05/1997 Block, Ned entry on Tonsciousnessl, in S. Guttenplan (ed); A Cornpanion to The ~hilosophyof Mind; 1994 Boden, Margaret The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence; Oxford University Press; 1990 Casti, J. Complexif ication; HarperPeremial, New York; 1995 Chalmers, David The Puzzle of Consciousness; in Scientific Arnerican; December, 1995

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