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I don't understand why the author is adamantly opposed to the book. The author, Colin McGinn, states his only credentials as a psychology student in the 70s.

I don't understand why the author is adamantly opposed to the book. The author, Colin McGinn, states his only credentials as a psychology student in the 70s. I believe Kurzweil is likely correct. Pattern recognition is the essence of human intelligence.

andrewtbham 14y ago
"I am thinking about London while in Miami I am not recognizing any presented stimulus as London—since I am not perceiving London with my senses. There is no perceptual recognition going on at all in thinking about an absent object " You could see Miami and you could recognize it as similar to London. That is pattern recognition.
- sp332 14y ago
  Humans are good at finding (or projecting) patterns, but there's more to a human brain than that. Memory is one of those things which is not just pattern-recognition.
  - andrewtbham 14y ago
    I suppose I don't see a distinction between memory and pattern recognition. To me, memory is implied in the definition of pattern recognition. The definition of recognition is "the identification of something as having been previously seen, heard, known, etc." i.e. memory
    - fmoralesc 14y ago
      Not necessarily. If you have some stymulus like > rrrrrrrtrrrrrryrrrrrurrrrirrrorrpr you can recognize patterns in it even if you have never seen, heard, or known them before. EDIT: of course this example is maybe too simple.
      - andrewtbham 14y ago
        i completely agree with that. that is what i am intending to convey. the point of others and the author is that pattern recognition doesn't explain the mind because it doesn't account for memory. my point is that the term recognition obviously implies a mechanism for memory.
      - worfly 14y ago
        when i first read that, i thought it said mirror at the end.
- tehwalrus 14y ago
  Then sitting in Miami and thinking of cheese, or the number 7. Makes no difference, you can obviously have thoughts which are not based on stimulus (e.g. my brain, when wanting "something random" picked cheese and 7.)
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    There are any number of stimuli that could trigger thoughts about cheese. The smell of food, being hungry, a colour, another thought about a time in which you were hungry, something round, something wedge shaped.... The fact that humans are so bad at picking random numbers and so often pick 7 does not seem so unusual if we are based on patterns. Actually, that is the sort of emergent phenomenon that seems rather obvious to me.
d--b 14y ago
The fact that neural network based algorithms can be used to recognize patterns is known for many years. Generalizing this idea to the whole brain - basically saying that the brain is only an assemblage of pattern recognizing machine - does not provide an explanation for things like memory and consciousness.
azakai 14y ago
> The author, Colin McGinn, states his only credentials as a psychology student in the 70s. He is just being humble. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn
- andrewtbham 14y ago
  so he is a philosopher... even worse than undergrad psych student :-)
addlepate 14y ago
You mean, you don't understand why a peon with such pitiable credentials is reviewing the book of the great genius Kurzweil. I am unsurprised to encounter this reaction.
fmoralesc 14y ago
McGinn is quite an interesting philosopher. Mainly, a pessimist regarding the mind-body problem; his position was that its solution is beyond human grasp, last time I checked. So he is at the very oposite pole to people like Kurzweil. The problem isn't only about human intelligence, it is about human mentality. McGinn's point is that pattern recognition is not essential to it; it very well might be true that pattern recognition is essential to intelligence, but that means nothing to the problem of mentality unless you reduce mentality into intelligence.
- duaneb 14y ago
  > The problem isn't only about human intelligence, it is about human mentality. McGinn's point is that pattern recognition is not essential to it; it very well might be true that pattern recognition is essential to intelligence, but that means nothing to the problem of mentality unless you reduce mentality into intelligence. Well stated.
duaneb 14y ago
Pattern recognition may be the main operating mechanism of the brain, but there's still much more to the brain than that: the consciousness problem is not solved or even really addressed at all, let alone thought and emotion and meaning: perhaps much of language is pattern recognition of language, but when we identify e.g. "moon" as a word, what does it map to? Pattern recognition also doesn't account for memory, for motivation, for intent and desire. And besides, it's not like this is news to anyone. Psychology & Neuroscience literature have known pattern recognition is an integral part of how the brain works for decades now. If it were the secret ingredient to the human brain, someone would have written about it far before Ray Kurzweil did. And it seems like everyone (including Kurzweil) forgot, pattern recognition is not exactly an easy thing to harness (the brain is far superior while consuming less power), so even if pattern recognition is THE SECRET to human intelligence, it doesn't really get us much closer to understanding the brain.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  In a system that can learn to recognize new patterns, learn to recognize new patterns of patterns, and can associate new patterns with already known patterns, how is memory unexplained?
  - duaneb 14y ago
    Well sure, if you take memory for granted then yes, it is already explained.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      What do you mean? In this model "memory" (as in, the ability to remember things you have learned, seen, thought, or otherwise experienced) is emergent from the ability to form new pattern recognizers... The ability to form new pattern recognizers is not itself built on this "memory". Do you mean that you are questioning the ability to form new pattern detectors? Do you think that isn't done, or do you just think the mechanism behind how that happens is inadequately explained?
gsg 14y ago
He's clearly a dualist and objects to Kurzweil's reductionist views. As I see it this isn't a book review in good faith so much as an excuse to air McGill's opinions on the matter. Consider this phrase: > The belief that London is rainy intrinsically and literally contains the propositional content that London is rainy, but no state of neurons contains that content in that way—as opposed to metaphorically or derivatively (this kind of point has been forcibly urged by John Searle for a long time). Or this one: > So what is the basis for the theory? The answer must surely be that the brain is causally connected to the mind and the mind contains and processes information. This is not the language of a book review, but that of a philosophical argument - although absent any of the justification or rigor one might thereby expect. I'm not impressed with McGill - he shows little regard for his audience's time by pontificating on the subject instead of just reviewing the damn text. Lame.

andrewtbham 14y ago

"I am thinking about London while in Miami I am not recognizing any presented stimulus as London—since I am not perceiving London with my senses. There is no perceptual recognition going on at all in thinking about an absent object " You could see Miami and you could recognize it as similar to London. That is pattern recognition.

sp332 14y ago
Humans are good at finding (or projecting) patterns, but there's more to a human brain than that. Memory is one of those things which is not just pattern-recognition.
- andrewtbham 14y ago
  I suppose I don't see a distinction between memory and pattern recognition. To me, memory is implied in the definition of pattern recognition. The definition of recognition is "the identification of something as having been previously seen, heard, known, etc." i.e. memory
  - fmoralesc 14y ago
    Not necessarily. If you have some stymulus like > rrrrrrrtrrrrrryrrrrrurrrrirrrorrpr you can recognize patterns in it even if you have never seen, heard, or known them before. EDIT: of course this example is maybe too simple.
    - andrewtbham 14y ago
      i completely agree with that. that is what i am intending to convey. the point of others and the author is that pattern recognition doesn't explain the mind because it doesn't account for memory. my point is that the term recognition obviously implies a mechanism for memory.
    - worfly 14y ago
      when i first read that, i thought it said mirror at the end.
tehwalrus 14y ago
Then sitting in Miami and thinking of cheese, or the number 7. Makes no difference, you can obviously have thoughts which are not based on stimulus (e.g. my brain, when wanting "something random" picked cheese and 7.)
- jlgreco 14y ago
  There are any number of stimuli that could trigger thoughts about cheese. The smell of food, being hungry, a colour, another thought about a time in which you were hungry, something round, something wedge shaped.... The fact that humans are so bad at picking random numbers and so often pick 7 does not seem so unusual if we are based on patterns. Actually, that is the sort of emergent phenomenon that seems rather obvious to me.

d--b 14y ago

The fact that neural network based algorithms can be used to recognize patterns is known for many years. Generalizing this idea to the whole brain - basically saying that the brain is only an assemblage of pattern recognizing machine - does not provide an explanation for things like memory and consciousness.

azakai 14y ago

> The author, Colin McGinn, states his only credentials as a psychology student in the 70s. He is just being humble. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn

andrewtbham 14y ago
so he is a philosopher... even worse than undergrad psych student :-)

addlepate 14y ago

You mean, you don't understand why a peon with such pitiable credentials is reviewing the book of the great genius Kurzweil. I am unsurprised to encounter this reaction.

fmoralesc 14y ago

McGinn is quite an interesting philosopher. Mainly, a pessimist regarding the mind-body problem; his position was that its solution is beyond human grasp, last time I checked. So he is at the very oposite pole to people like Kurzweil. The problem isn't only about human intelligence, it is about human mentality. McGinn's point is that pattern recognition is not essential to it; it very well might be true that pattern recognition is essential to intelligence, but that means nothing to the problem of mentality unless you reduce mentality into intelligence.

duaneb 14y ago
> The problem isn't only about human intelligence, it is about human mentality. McGinn's point is that pattern recognition is not essential to it; it very well might be true that pattern recognition is essential to intelligence, but that means nothing to the problem of mentality unless you reduce mentality into intelligence. Well stated.

duaneb 14y ago

Pattern recognition may be the main operating mechanism of the brain, but there's still much more to the brain than that: the consciousness problem is not solved or even really addressed at all, let alone thought and emotion and meaning: perhaps much of language is pattern recognition of language, but when we identify e.g. "moon" as a word, what does it map to? Pattern recognition also doesn't account for memory, for motivation, for intent and desire. And besides, it's not like this is news to anyone. Psychology & Neuroscience literature have known pattern recognition is an integral part of how the brain works for decades now. If it were the secret ingredient to the human brain, someone would have written about it far before Ray Kurzweil did. And it seems like everyone (including Kurzweil) forgot, pattern recognition is not exactly an easy thing to harness (the brain is far superior while consuming less power), so even if pattern recognition is THE SECRET to human intelligence, it doesn't really get us much closer to understanding the brain.

jlgreco 14y ago
In a system that can learn to recognize new patterns, learn to recognize new patterns of patterns, and can associate new patterns with already known patterns, how is memory unexplained?
- duaneb 14y ago
  Well sure, if you take memory for granted then yes, it is already explained.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    What do you mean? In this model "memory" (as in, the ability to remember things you have learned, seen, thought, or otherwise experienced) is emergent from the ability to form new pattern recognizers... The ability to form new pattern recognizers is not itself built on this "memory". Do you mean that you are questioning the ability to form new pattern detectors? Do you think that isn't done, or do you just think the mechanism behind how that happens is inadequately explained?

gsg 14y ago

He's clearly a dualist and objects to Kurzweil's reductionist views. As I see it this isn't a book review in good faith so much as an excuse to air McGill's opinions on the matter. Consider this phrase: > The belief that London is rainy intrinsically and literally contains the propositional content that London is rainy, but no state of neurons contains that content in that way—as opposed to metaphorically or derivatively (this kind of point has been forcibly urged by John Searle for a long time). Or this one: > So what is the basis for the theory? The answer must surely be that the brain is causally connected to the mind and the mind contains and processes information. This is not the language of a book review, but that of a philosophical argument - although absent any of the justification or rigor one might thereby expect. I'm not impressed with McGill - he shows little regard for his audience's time by pontificating on the subject instead of just reviewing the damn text. Lame.