Began reading Michael Graziano’s Consciousness and the Social Brain as a part of my continuing education in the various aspects of the neurosciences. Not being a scientist I have to rely on these exploratory mission impossibles: that is, I have to rely on the scientists themselves who are actually doing the science in question. As always, some are better than others at using the old style ‘folk language’ of our common lingua franca than others. Graziano starts with a basic premise that the “human brain contains about one hundred billion interacting neurons. Neuroscientists know, at least in general, how that network of neurons can compute information. But how does a brain become aware of information?”1 One thing already obvious is his metaphor of the brain as a computer: as a computational device that processes data, organizes information, carries on the inputs/outputs of the survival mechanics of the human body in its interactions with itself and the world. This notion of the brain as computational is not a known fact, but a theory just like other theories. Yet, the way Graziano words it here in the statement it’s as if this was a known fact among facts rather than another theoretical insight into how the brain in fact works. But is the brain computational? Are their other theories of the brain that neuroscientists support?
We can see already that we’re in trouble. Before I even begin to read Graziano on consciousness I have to know why he thinks the brain can be like a digital device such as a computer; or, why he accepts the theory of the Computational Mind (CTM). Of course such a notion has only arisen within the past 30 years according to the Stanford philosophical encyclopedia – as one scholar tells us:
This view—which will be called the “Computational Theory of Mind” (CTM)—is thus to be distinguished from other and broader attempts to connect the mind with computation, including (a) various enterprises at modeling features of the mind using computational modeling techniques, and (b) employing some feature or features of production-model computers (such as the stored program concept, or the distinction between hardware and software) merely as a guiding metaphor for understanding some feature of the mind. This entry is therefore concerned solely with the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) proposed by Hilary Putnam [1961] and developed most notably for philosophers by Jerry Fodor [1975, 1980, 1987, 1993]. The senses of ‘computer’ and ‘computation’ employed here are technical; the main tasks of this entry will therefore be to elucidate: (a) the technical sense of ‘computation’ that is at issue, (b) the ways in which it is claimed to be applicable to the mind, (c) the philosophical problems this understanding of the mind is claimed to solve, and (d) the major criticisms that have accrued to this view.2
Of course their speaking of Mind not Brain so that there are differences in the technical use of such a theoretic. Philosophers love to speak of the Mind as if it were disconnected from the physical Brain that produces it. And, of course, as usual this leads into another series of questions as to how the Mind and Brain connect; or, the question: Is there really such a thing as Mind? Or, is the Mind like other concepts just an object of philosophical speculation and positing? But then again scientists posit the physicalness of the Brain, too. But as you can see we’ve suddenly found ourselves falling into all kinds of difficult terrain with no end in site.
I originally wanted to tell you about what Graziano is up too, but have found myself in that strange zone of thought where language becomes a stumbling block to the very quest of description of these facts. Of course I could just silently pass over all these little details of computational, modular, functional, etc. aspects and theories surrounding how the brain actually operates, but then if we don’t weed out the truth of this basic foundational view of the physical three-pound lump in my skull how shall we ever begin to describe what awareness is? I think I’ll have to just throw up my hands and begin again from the beginning. Why can’t this stuff be a little easier on my brain? Can you tell me that! 🙂
1. Graziano, Michael S. A. (2013-08-01). Consciousness and the Social Brain (pp. 3-4). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.
2. Horst, Steven, “The Computational Theory of Mind“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
The Dark Fantastic: Literature, Philosophy, and Digital Arts 