Dan Dennett: More on the brain as a computer

Daniel Dennett had this to say, at Edge.org:

The vision of the brain as a computer, which I still champion, is changing so fast. The brain's a computer, but it's so different from any computer that you're used to. It's not like your desktop or your laptop at all, and it's not like your iPhone except in some ways. It's a much more interesting phenomenon. What Turing gave us for the first time (and without Turing you just couldn't do any of this) is a way of thinking about in a disciplined way and taking seriously phenomena that have, as I like to say, trillions of moving parts. Until late 20th century, nobody knew how to take seriously a machine with a trillion moving parts. It's just mind-boggling. The idea is basically right, but when I first conceived of it, I made a big mistake. I was at that point enamored of the McCulloch-Pitts logical neuron. McCulloch and Pitts had put together the idea of a very simple artificial neuron, a computational neuron, which had multiple inputs and a single branching output and a threshold for firing, and the inputs were either inhibitory or excitatory. They proved that in principle a neural net made of these logical neurons could compute anything you wanted to compute. So this was very exciting. It meant that basically you could treat the brain as a computer and treat the neuron as a sort of basic switching element in the computer, and that was certainly an inspiring over-simplification. Everybody knew is was an over-simplification, but people didn't realize how much, and more recently it's become clear to me that it's a dramatic over-simplification, because each neuron, far from being a simple logical switch, is a little agent with an agenda, and they are much more autonomous and much more interesting than any switch. The question is, what happens to your ideas about computational architecture when you think of individual neurons not as dutiful slaves or as simple machines but as agents that have to be kept in line and that have to be properly rewarded and that can form coalitions and cabals and organizations and alliances? This vision of the brain as a sort of social arena of politically warring forces seems like sort of an amusing fantasy at first, but is now becoming something that I take more and more seriously, and it's fed by a lot of different currents.
I've posted on these issues before, but Dennett's article advances the topic much further.

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Daniel Dennet discusses “The Computational Perspective” to evolution

Edge.org recently posted Daniel Dennett's discussion of "The Computational Perspective." At the linked site, you'll find the video of Dennett's lecture, along with Dennett's PowerPoint slides. Dennett's focus was whether things that are more complex can result from less complex things. Dennett assures us that the answer is yes, and that this is exactly what Darwin demonstrated. darwin-insight-we-dont-need-to-know-how-to-make-machines This same principle was demonstrated by Alan Turing: turing-insight The net result is "competency without comprehension." For the second half of his talk, Dennett applied this same principle to the magnificent aspects of human culture, including the words of our languages, which have "tremendous replicative power." culture Dennet concludes that humans are the effect of the purposes of life, not the causes. We tend to project our views back onto nature, and we have the capacity to "discover the reasons everywhere in the tree of life." Looking forward, we are also "the first intelligent designers of the Tree of Life." At the this same page at Edge.org, you can also view 45-minute lectures regarding evolution by Alvaro Fischer, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Helena Cronin, Nicholas Humhrey, Ian McEwan.

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Down with music! Understanding scientific “attacks” on religion.

Many of us who have advocated scientific examination of religions have experienced forceful push-back by those who are religious.   We scientific types don't always understand that reaction; our attitude is often "We study everything.  That's what we do.  It's better to know than not to know."  Folks who are religious…

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