This bit bothered me, on Epstein's Information Processing metaphor: > The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syll

This bit bothered me, on Epstein's Information Processing metaphor: > The faulty logic of the IP metaphor is easy enough to state. It is based on a faulty syllogism – one with two reasonable premises and a faulty conclusion. Reasonable premise #1: all computers are capable of behaving intelligently. Reasonable premise #2: all computers are information processors. Faulty conclusion: all entities that are capable of behaving intelligently are information processors. Premise 1, in my reading, is not reasonable. It would be fallacious to assert that all computers are capable of "behaving intelligently", because we don't have a definition for intelligence, let alone a "universal" intelligence that would be consistent between things, or in any case how an individual thing's intelligence would be tested. The syllogism is the core of the author's contrarian argument. If we can't prove Premise #1 from the preceding syllogism, then the core argument of this essay does seem to lose its legs. Really, a single viewpoint/facet/argument about the brain-as-a-computer metaphor should undoubtedly be insufficient. More useful would be a set of arguments that compare or contrast how a computer and a human brain work. We can use these to coalesce an understanding of how close the metaphor is to reality. How do the two receive information? How do the two store information, recall information, delete information, update stored processes, etc? All of these perspectives begin to build a whole-picture of the relationship, which would seem more useful that trying to boil it down to a single statement. I think the author needs to revisit his basic assumptions and walk through the argument again, because I don't think what's laid out in the essay actually supports his conclusions, so confidently espoused in the introduction.