Philosophy for Life: Teach Yourself: The Ideas That Shape Our World and How To Use Them by Thompson Mel

Author:Thompson, Mel [Thompson, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: -
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2017-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

Cognitive science and artificial intelligence

Much of what we have been discussing in this chapter is related to the traditional mind/body problem, which developed out of the radical dualism of Descartes and the issues raised by it. By the latter part of the twentieth century, however, these problems (without necessarily being resolved) were set in a new and broader context, provided by the development of the cognitive sciences, including neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Cognitive science is an umbrella term for a number of modern disciplines that impinge upon ideas of the self or mind:

• Artificial intelligence provides a model for understanding how the human mind works, replicating the process of decision-making and data assessment.

• Neuroscience is now able to map out the functions of the brain, identifying areas that are associated with particular mental or sensory processes.

• Pharmacology is able to control behaviour by the use of drugs, bringing a whole new chemical element into our understanding of behaviour.

• Clinical psychology looks at the way an individual’s mind functions, taking into account both its conscious and unconscious workings.

Clearly, there is no scope within this present book for examining these disciplines. All we need to be aware of is the way in which science today is far more flexible in its approach to the mind than would have been the case a century or more ago. In particular, it is able to map out mental functions such as memory, emotion, reasoning and perception, showing the way they have a physical component that can be examined scientifically, quite independent of our own personal experience of them.

Science needs data upon which to work. In the case of mental operations, one approach has been to examine the physical equivalent of the mental operation – generally in terms of brain function. Another has been to allow mental operations to provide their own physical data. For example, the behaviourist approach to gathering data was to set up experiments that involved actions and responses, and then measure those responses. Can this boxed rat learn – by rewarding it every time it does the right thing – to press a lever in order to get food?

A key term here is functionalism. This approach sees mental operations as the way in which intelligent life sorts out how to react to the stimuli it receives. Let us take a crude example. If I put my hand on something hot, my body receives the sensation of burning. My mind then becomes aware of the pain, remembers that if the hand is not removed from the heat damage is likely to be done, and therefore decides that I should withdraw my hand. Muscles contract, the hand is withdrawn, and the pain subsides. We may not be able to tell exactly which neurons, firing in the brain, were responsible for each step in that operation. What we do monitor, however, is the mental functions that were performed. Mind is what mind does – with inputs, processing and outputs; just like a computer.

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