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McGinn says that "thinking about London while in Miami" involves no pattern recognition, because no senses are involved. But Kurzweil's claim is pattern recogni

• fmoralesc 14y ago
  Yes, McGinn's step from pattern recognition to perceptual pattern recognition is argumentally bad, and kinda jarring in the article. I think McGinn's point is that human cognition involves creative elements (imagination for example) that don't seem well modelled on pattern recognition, but that doesn't come across that well. McGinn's tirade is not again antropomorphic language per se, it is against homunculism. The idea that a human mind is composed by agents (homunculi) that exhibit mental properties leaves the mental properties of those agents unexplained. That's the reason he proceeds to argue agains the use of "information processing", because he seems to find that also explanatorily lacking. > It's similar to his criticism of Kurzweil's "law" of accelerating change. Sure, it should be called a theory not a law, big deal. It should be called a generalization, or maybe an hypothesis, it isn't even a theory. McGin's question is: is this generalization valid? Can we say? If he sees fault in Kurzweil's evidence for it, why not say it? Why would he have to provide evidence as to when Kurzweil's prediction will fail? The burden of proof is not on him.
  • pbw 14y ago
    Kurzweil doesn't believe individual neurons have mental processes. McGinn doesn't believe Kurzweil believes individual neurons have mental processes. It's just a pet peeve of McGinn, it's completely immaterial to the book. I agree in an academic paper one would never say a neuron "shouts" anything, but this a pop-science book, and McGinn should treat it as such. The burden of proof is not on McGinn, but he is a smart guy, he should have an opinion and should share it. His opinion is only on what Kurzweil's calls the trend, not on the trend itself. This would be like discussing the current budget crisis, and suggesting it be called a budget debacle instead of a crisis, and offering no further insight.
    • fmoralesc 14y ago
      On the first point, I think the difference is a quite more subtle. Remember I talked about properties, not processes. Maybe when I said "mental" properties I oversimplified. The model McGinn is criticizing works like this: The mind has mental properties because it is composed of agents (homuniculi) that exhibit a certain kind of mental, or at the very least, not-physical property (non-physical in the sense that they don't belogn to a physical theory). For example, one could try to explain mentality in terms of modules of the brain that are information processing agents. But then, how do we explain "information processing" in those agents? Btw, those agents need not be neurons, it could also be sets of them, of something else (they don't even need to be merely parts of the brain). It's true that McGinn is not very tolerant of Kurzweil loose way of talking, but I think it's because he regards the conceptual issues as quite important. He is a philosopher after all, his standards for accepting bullshit can be quite different. > even talk of “pattern recognition” by neurons is already far too homunculus-like for comfort: people (and animals) recognize patterns—neurons don’t. Neurons simply emit electrical impulses when caused to do so by impinging stimuli; they don’t recognize anything in the literal sense. The paraphrases you propose for Kurzweil's way of talking seem to remove homunculism from it, but maybe only partially. I think that can be McGinn's worry, and the reason he goes agains the idea of "information processing". See: > Even in sober neuroscience textbooks we are routinely told that bits of the brain “process information,” “send signals,” and “receive messages”—as if this were as uncontroversial as electrical and chemical processes occurring in the brain. We need to scrutinize such talk with care. Why exactly is it thought that the brain can be described in these ways? It is a collection of biological cells like any bodily organ, much like the liver or the heart, which are not apt to be described in informational terms. It can hardly be claimed that we have observed information transmission in the brain, as we have observed certain chemicals; this is a purely theoretical description of what is going on. So what is the basis for the theory? And then: > We have discovered that nerve fibers transmit electricity. We have not, in the same way, discovered that they transmit information. We have simply postulated this conclusion by falsely modeling neurons on persons. > ...there is theoretical danger in such loose talk, because it fosters the illusion that we understand how the brain can give rise to the mind. On Kurzweil's book being just pop-sience book: McGinn worries, I think, about the public having a wrong idea of what we really have in terms of our explanations of mentality because theoreticians can have a wrong idea of it. Others might think it enough to propose certain hypothesis as solutions of some sort to those problems. But with that, I've polemicized too much for now, I think.
• JabavuAdams 14y ago
  McGinn seems to interpret "pattern recognition" as visually recognizing geometric / spatial patterns, rather than groups of neurons recognizing patterns of activation. While there's a lot to criticize Re: Kurzweil and his claims, McGinn's dismissal of the pattern recognition argument is just wrong. It does stem from an obvious misconception, though. If you've worked with artificial neural networks, it's clear that Kurzweil is talking about patterns of activation, not sensory stimuli.
• TaylorCarman 14y ago
  It makes a big difference whether an observed pattern is genuinely lawful or merely an emergent contingency. You can't just go around calling patterns or trends "laws" for free. Otherwise, there is a "law" that I drink coffee every morning. If the law of accelerating returns really is a law, then WHAT exactly is behaving in a lawlike way? Physical matter? Information? But – and this is McGinn's point – does the notion of INFORMATION behaving in a lawlike way even make sense? Information is just physical phenomena (words on a page, electric charges) interpreted (by someone) AS conveying or containing information. To say that information behaves in a lawlike way is like saying that drawings of cats behave in lawlike ways. Absurdly confused.