
How to Create a Mind - Book Review - mhb
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/mar/21/homunculism/?pagination=false/#
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pbw
McGinn says that "thinking about London while in Miami" involves no pattern
recognition, because no senses are involved. But Kurzweil's claim is pattern
recognition is key to _memory_ , and certainly memory is involved when
recollecting London. It's fine to disagree with Kurzweil's claim about memory,
but to imply he's discovered a big loophole ("this point seems totally obvious
and quite devastating") and suggest Kurzweil thinks patterns only apply to our
senses, is completely silly.

McGinn's tirade against anthropomorphic language is also silly. It's obviously
something he's trotted out from previous writings, which is okay if it were
insightful. Can't he mentally translate "a neuron shouts when it sees a
pattern" into "a neuron fires when a certain combination of it's input
terminals are excited" or perhaps instead of "fire" which is potentially
anthropomorphic itself, Kurzweil should write a script to replace "fire" with
"the voltage-gated ion channels embedded in the plasma membrane will open
allowing an inward flow of sodium ions, etc. etc". Please, where does it stop.
Look beyond the words to what the person is actually saying.

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.

Kurzweil is a huckster, he is selling books, he's going to overstate things.
Just make the mental translation law->theory in your mind and move on with
your life.

McGinn meanwhile has no opinion on what is actually going to _happen_. He says
accelerating change is "just a fortunate historical fact about the twentieth
century". So is he saying it has stopped now, 13 years in to the 21st century?
I don't believe it has. Or that it will stop? When will it stop McGinn, in
2015, 2029, 2045, 2387? Because this matters _a lot_ in terms of how much
computer power we end up with. He has no opinion at all what is going to
happen, he only cares what we call things.

~~~
fmoralesc
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
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
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
You raise some good points, but it's disturbing that McGinn's understanding of
basic information-processing ideas is so weak.

I thought that philosophers and computer scientists actually talked to one
another.

~~~
fmoralesc
Some do. Hopefully that will happen more often.

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reader5000
I think trying to understand "the mind" by way of the brain is like trying to
understand Windows OS by way of the CPU. It's just not the way to do it.

Having said that it seems like the book reviewer's central complaint was _To
create a mind one needs at a minimum to create consciousness..._. I'm quite
skeptical of this claim simply because "consciousness" is such a sketchy
concept: <http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-02-27/>

~~~
mtrimpe
I couldn't agree more.

It seems that whenever computers become able to do something that we
previously used to define consciousness, we just create a new definition of
what it means to be human/conscious that doesn't include that new capability.

Essentially we're continuously redefining consciousness as "that which humans
can that machines can't."

My guess is that we'll keep expanding that until human consciousness is just
"the version that operates in flesh and blood rather than silicon".

~~~
AJ007
Did you read the book? Because that is one of the points Kurzweil makes.

The book review in question is crap. I'm happy to read Kurzweil critics but
claiming something is too complex to understand to does not make for
legitimate criticism, in any field.

Pattern recognition is a given, how to do it is not. That is really what the
book is about (hint: hierarchical hidden markov models.) As for the
philosophical stuff, I read The Age of Spiritual Machines many years ago when
it came out (and I was barely in high school), so there was nothing in How to
Create A Mind that challenged views I've had over a decade to think about.

The whole issue of consciousness I think is minor. Which, I personally would
explain consciousness as "living" awareness ( in the book Kurzweil says even
the smartest people start to sound stupid when trying to describe this.)

The good news is our industry is not going to get dull anytime soon.

~~~
mtrimpe
Just to be clear, I didn't read the book. I even just skimmed the original
post. I was just responding to the parent comment and it's claim about the
sketchiness of (the definition of) consciousness.

Perhaps I should read Kurzweil once even if just to see how much our views are
aligned..

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seiji
We can all agree Kurzweil is past his intellectual expiration date. The
saddest part here is he wasted such a good title, "How to Create a Mind,"
repeating his historical non-usable drivel (not to mention it sounds like a
Culture series book).

My current "create a consciousness" track is to get something with pattern
completion completion working (NB: aspie nerds often fail this step
interpersonally ("Oh, Hello!" " _blank stare_ "), but not
intellectually/professionally ("What does this thingamajigger do?" "Oh, well,
that's there because historically we used a 3.2 bit kernel to operate the Arm
of God and... [30 minutes later]... Why are you falling asleep?").

The thing inside your head stringing your actions together into a coherent
after-the-fact story isn't pattern recognition or even pattern completion, but
pattern completion completion. You have to take the context of the new world
generated by your prior pattern completion and run a new internal world
simulation based on that, then take action. This does leave out intrinsic or
emotional motivations pulling you hither or thither, but that's a vague
writeup for another time. Though, there are plenty of smart people running
around in the world with seemingly no emotions. Emotional feeling doesn't seem
to be a prerequisite for consciousness (or for being usable to be exploited by
employers to make them 10x-1000x richer while you get 0.5x richer).

It's fun to think about at least.

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andrewtbham
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
"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.

~~~
tehwalrus
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
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.

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stcredzero
_> There is no perceptual recognition going on at all in thinking about an
absent object. So pattern recognition cannot be the essential nature of
thought. This point seems totally obvious and quite devastating, yet Kurzweil
has nothing to say about it, not even acknowledging the problem._

Is it really the case that my brain is not recognizing patterns when I
remember something? I don't think this is the case, otherwise I would never
realize something about a remembered object after the fact.

 _> He does in one place speak of dreaming as a “sequence of patterns” and he
might try to say the same about thinking. But this faces obvious objections.
First, even if that is true, there is no pattern recognition involved when I
dream, or when I think about London and my friends and relatives there._

Seems to me the brain is taking random stimuli and piecing it together into a
narrative when one dreams. Sounds like there could be some pattern recognition
involved there. Also, the author has never spoken of absent friends and said
something like, "Doesn't Bob look sad?" Is he remembering the recognition of
sadness, or is he recognizing sadness from the memory, and how could one be
sure of the difference?

Methinks the author either knows something left unexplained, or isn't being
nearly as clever as he thinks.

~~~
seiji
I think the review author means physical in-your-face "perceptual
recognition." Thought remembering is a weaker form of physical recognition,
but you're right -- it works mostly the same as far as recall is concerned.

With physical recognition (touch, temperature, smell, taste, sound, sight),
all the details are instantly available to our perception and recall/memory
access is easier. It's difficult to _fully_ remember the feeling of a
childhood holiday only from your memory. You get a much richer recall
experience if you go back to the place/time of year you lived it. Little
things will trigger your memory you didn't even know you remembered.

The review author would be less confused if "pattern recognition" was replaced
with "memories linked to what you're thinking about." Saying "pattern
recognition" of London doesn't make sense to non-tech people. Saying "You
remember things attached to London in your mind" helps out more, right?

I like that we are kinda strange.

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carwithcookies
I'm glad McGinn criticizes Kurzweil's use of anthropomorphic language. I'm
only in CH 3 and have been waiting for him to translate his friendly, talking
recognizers back into neuroscience.

Also bothersome is Kurzweil's repeated but unacknowledged use of Chomsky's
ideas about recursion in language.

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tehwalrus
While the reviewer is mostly correct in their objections, probably, I have to
disagree that "red" or "the smell of a rose" are not patterns.

The brain perceives by receiving electrical signals from neurons, whether from
the optic nerve (which, incidentally, encodes both colour _and_ geometry) or
the nerves from the nasal cells. These are going to arrive in the brain as
identical chemical 1s and 0s for the brain's sensory pattern recognition
circuits to deal with (or whatever.)

Independent thought, recursive concept matching (smell -> memory of childhood,
memory of childhood -> fear, adrenal response) and all the rest are a strong
point of the criticism, though, since these are obviously not based on pattern
recognition.

------
dschiptsov
_"Kurzweil's new book on the mind is magnificent, timely, and solidly argued!
His best so far!" ~Marvin Minsky_

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worfly
I think this question is central to his disagreement with Kurzweil, "Are we
seriously to suppose that dreams and thoughts have geometrical shape?"

Which to my ear, belies his fundamental apprehension of geometry.

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andremendes
I would suggest the lecture of Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. I remember in
the beggining of the book, it touches this topic in a way that I can't
describe using my English habilities.

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goldfeld
I was really interested in what a Mind-Book would be, and how one would go
about about reviewing one such book. I was disappointed.

