The Fourth Age by Byron Reese

Author:Byron Reese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

The Human Mind

What is the difference between the brain and the mind? The brain is an organ made up of three pounds of goo that behaves in a mechanistic way. The mind is all the mental stuff that you can do that seems way more difficult than this goo could possibly pull off. The mind is the source of emotion, imagination, judgment, intelligence, volition, and will. The mind is why music can make you melancholy, and it is with the mind that we are able to imagine the future.

Think about it. How could an organ be creative? How could three pounds of tissue fall in love? How could simple neurons think something is funny?

The concept of the mind has pervaded our everyday language and is used by everyone. We ask people if they are out of their mind, we seek peace of mind, we tell people what’s on our mind. We are told that great minds think alike. We can be of two minds about something, or conversely, have a one-track mind. People are of sound mind, things can blow your mind, and you can make up your mind. There are hundreds more colloquialisms about the mind, none of which seem quite the same if the word “brain” is used instead.

However, people mean very different things when they invoke the concept of mind. Referring back to our foundational questions, if you are monist or believe people are machines, you might say, “The mind is just a catchall phrase for the stuff the brain does that we don’t really understand. But what the mind does is all just normal mental processes. It may be an emergent aspect of the brain, but even then, it is just simple biology.”

The dualist or someone who believes humans are not merely machines might say, “The mind is you. It is something that exists outside the laws of physics. It may be created by the brain, but it is something completely different from the mere functioning of an organ. You will never be able to reduce it to a chemical formula, because it isn’t physical in nature.”

Can an AGI be built without invoking the nebulous concept of the mind? No, which is unfortunate, since it makes building an AGI that much harder. An AGI, by definition, has to be dramatically smarter than any creature in the animal kingdom. If you made a computer dolphin AI that was as smart as the smartest dolphin, no one would call that an AGI. Consider the exchange in the Will Smith movie I, Robot where Smith’s character, Detective Spooner, is interrogating a robot named Sonny:

DETECTIVE SPOONER: Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful painting?

SONNY: Can you?

The ability to write symphonies and make beautiful paintings certainly comes from the mind, whatever it is, and we would expect our AGI to be able to do those two things, since to be a true general intelligence it must have human-level cognitive abilities. So the mind can’t be conveniently swept under the carpet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.