...Journal of Information Technology (2008) 23, 55–62 & 2008 JIT Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 0268-3962/08 $30.00 palgrave-journals.com/jit Debate and Perspectives ‘Computer models of the mind are invalid’ Ray Tallis1, Igor Aleksander2 1 5 Valley Road, Bramhall, Stockport, Cheshire, UK; Imperial College of Science, Tech. and Medicine, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, London, UK 2 Correspondence: R Tallis, 5 Valley Road, Bramhall, Stockport, Cheshire SK7 2NH, UK. Tel: þ 44 7801 834230; E-Mail: raymond@rtallis.wanadoo.co.uk Journal of Information Technology (2008) 23, 55–62. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000128 Proposer: Professor Ray Tallis t is a great pleasure to have this joust with Igor who is not only a brilliant thinker about the mind, but also a great intellectual sparring partner. Igor has expressed his dissent from the view that I’m going to advance in support of the motion which is that ‘computer models of the mind are invalid’,1 in his book: The World in My Mind, My Mind In The World: Key Mechanisms of Consciousness in Humans, Animals and Machines. He actually devotes five pages of the final chapter to what he calls ‘Tallis’s complaint’ which I am now going to make public. The point of issue is whether computer models of the mind are valid. I am going to argue that they are not because the computational theory of mind is invalid. Igor may go on to argue that even if the computational theory of mind is invalid it may still be useful...
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...structures, on a neuron that receive messages from other neurons. (COE-GCU Framework 2010, pg. 22) | The texts states, “When a neuron’s dendrites are stimulated by other neurons (either those in the brain or those extending from other parts of the body), the dendrites become electrically charged. If the total charge reaches a certain level, the neuron fires, sending an electrical impulse along its axon to the terminal buttons.” (pg. 23) | Synapses | “Junction between two neurons that allows transmission of messages from one to the other.”(COE-GCU Framework 2010, pg. G-11) | Learning eliminates Synapses by increasing the neurons. | Cortex | “Upper part of the brain; site of complex, conscious thinking processes.”(COE-GCU Framework 2010, pg. G-3) | This is where conscious and complex thinking takes place. | Synaptogenesis |...
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...of opposites, the personal and collective, and the unconscious and conscious. We use our primoridal past, something we inherit from our ancestors, to make sense of our future. Where Freud used the word libido, he was speaking more about the sexual driver, on the contrary, Jung uses the word to mean an energy that moves a person forward. The ego for Freud is teh executor of the personality, whereas, for Jung, the ego is one’s conscious perception of self. Our personal unconscious is where our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories have been surpressed and can be esaily retrieved. All of our experiences in our life histories are stored in our personal unconscious. Our experiences, according to Jung, are grouped together in what he calls. Complexes are ideas and attitutudes that agglutinate together thru feelings. There are four types of complexes: The Ego- which is in our personal conscious, this is where we accept things as who we are, typically good things. The Shadow-this is the opposite of the Ego, things we do not accept as us, which are typically bad. the Shadow is not as well developed as the Ego. The Persona-This is a Greek word which means "maks", the facade we wear for society, and is also given by and used by society. Archetypes-specific meanings we ues to make sense of the world, and are connnected to our primoridal past. Jung's theory was based on the ego, which is one's conscious mind, the part of the psyche that selects perception, thoughs, feelings...
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...A Three-fold Theory of Social Change and Implications for Practice, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation By Doug Reeler, of the Community Development Resource Association, 2007 “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side.” Oliver Wendell Holmes “Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.” Heraklietos of Ephesos, 500 B.C “My eyes already touch the sunny hill, going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its inner light, even from a distance. and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces.” Rainer Maria Rilke Contents 1. Who Needs Theories of Change? ............................................................................... 2 1.1 The Need ...........................................................................................................................2 1.2 Theories in Context ....................................................................................
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...appear to be less and less certain about how people really make decisions and even less confident about how we can influence the process. In some ways, understanding consumer decision-making is far simpler than is generally believed. However, being able to influence what people will do in terms of buying, thinking and behaving in a given context, is infinitely more complex. It is only possible to influence an outcome when our feet are firmly grounded in reality and not in the fantasy that human beings are rational creatures in total control of their decision making capabilities. What we need to do is to shift our thinking from describing human 'doing' to becoming more aware of what it means to be a human 'being'. The last five years have seen significant advances in understanding how human beings 'work' due to developments in many new and old sciences brain scanning, cognitive experiments, genetic studies, foetal learning and patterning behaviour, physics, and so on. The knowledge no longer sits in separate scientific silos, but is being shared and debated in more generalist and public domains. We need to debate how this new knowledge challenges conventional models of thinking about consumer decision making. If we remain closed to the debate, we will become proverbial dinosaurs in the eyes of new science. Handed-down wisdom and...
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...“don’t think about it”, all you seem to do is think about that particular situation, person, place, or thing? This is what psychologists call the “rebound effect of thought suppression.” The rebound effect is “the tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency following suppression” (p.189). In other words, trying to avoid a thought may, in fact, cause you to have even more thoughts about that subject. This effect begins to explain the process by which the conscious mind tells itself not to think about something, but the unconscious mind overpowers the conscious brain and causes it to solely focus on that one particular idea. Much like how Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Daniel Wegner found in their studies on thought suppression, I personally believe that thought suppression is simply the mind hiding its true emotions....
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...it is normally easy to recognize because of the impaired motor reflexes. Stimulants are the second type of substance. This substance increases the nervous system’s activity. Examples include cocaine and crystal meth. This type of stimulant gives feelings of euphoria and alertness. Since cocaine also can block the reuptake of our natural neurotransmitters, the use of this drug sometimes can lead to extreme highs when the user is taking and lows when the user if off of it. As someone who has witnessed a cocaine addiction in a friend, I first recognized it by the sudden change of mood that would happen when the person would use. Opiates are the next type of substance. Opiates work by numbing pain and elevating moods. They tend to trick the neurotransmitter to thinking they are natural endorphins. Eventually the brain will stop producing these endorphins naturally. This is one of the reasons why addiction is common with opiates. Signs of opiate addiction are normally physical such as weight loss or weigh gain, track marks, and bad outward appearances. The last type of substance is hallucinogens. This type of substance is known to create sensory or perceptual distortions. The science behind the effects of these substances is very complex as they tend to affect many different neurotransmitters. They act on the serotonin system which can cause the complex types of hallucinations. Some of the signs of hallucinogen abuse include dilated pupils, extreme sweeting and warm body...
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...meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious conscious. He certainly made that the goal of his work as a theorist. And yet he makes the unconscious sound very unpleasant, to say the least: It is a cauldron of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous cravings, a burial ground for frightening experiences which nevertheless come back to haunt us. Frankly, it doesn't sound like anything I'd like to make conscious! A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to make the exploration of this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background in Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially knowledgeable in the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If anyone could make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in symbolic form, it would be Carl Jung. He had, in addition, a capacity for very lucid...
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...mode of thinking. According to Hastie et al (2001), it suggests that there are two modes of thinking, System 1 thinking (intuitive) and System 2 thinking (analytical). It also argued that any kind of serious, complex thinking employs both analytical and intuitive thought. It explains System 1 thinking as relatively unconscious, relatively independent of language and generates a feeling of certitude. It is related to intuition and allows rapid, automatic decision-making. In contrast, System 2 thinking is controllable, conscious, rule-based, and is less characterised by feelings of certitude. It is commonly called analytic thinking. While System 2 thinking covers the higher level cognitive, attention-demanding, information processing activities that characterise much decision-making, it also notes that decision makers should aware that information processing under System 1 thinking may have far greater impact on judgements and choices. This brings us to the aspect of heuristic, Gigerenzer (2004) suggest that there are two common models of heuristics, recognition heuristics and social heuristics. It explains that Recognition heuristic builds on the human capacity for recognition, for example of faces, voices, names. It shows that when trying to judge between options, where one option is recognised and another is not, people will infer that the recognised option has the higher value. The social heuristic uses human capacities for social learning and imitation. In brief, this heuristic...
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...limitations of this approach can be grouped into three categories: extrinsic limitations (the result of factors extraneous to experience), limitations of common sense as a social practice (ensuing from the way knowledge is shared and communicated) and intrinsic limitations (limited viewpoint). Extrinsic limitations Extrinsic limitations can be bias or dogmatic. Bias limitations is insights based on personal experiences are difficult to distinguish from one's preferences, desires or fears. Dogmatism limitation is when beliefs based on common sense become embedded in a particular cultural framework, they are very difficult to change and often become dogmatic. Limitations of common sense as a social practice Limitations can be intangible or elusiveness in nature. According to this limitation, common sense is based on clues often too complex and subtle to be rationally explained and systematically described. Intrinsic limitations Intrinsic limitations are limited in scope and inaccurate in nature. Limited scope means that common sense is limited one’s own experiences which is not taking into account all aspects of reality. Imprecision limitations mean that common sense relies on ‘rule of thumb' methods and, therefore, is not very precise. With those limitations listed, it is no wonder why critical thing is more reliable. Critical thinking is judicious (deliberate and thorough) thinking (correct reasoning) about what to believe and, therefore, what to do. Critical thinking is neither...
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...art, literature and even the way people bring up their children. The Psychodynamic approach is concerned with the influence of the unconscious mind – that is the mental process of which we are not consciously aware – on the feelings, thinking and behavior of the individual. It is one of the older approaches to Psychology having been developed as far back as the 1890s. Sigmund Freud developed a collection of ideas mainly on how the unconscious mind works. It holds that our early experiences of relationships with significant people such as our parents during the first five years of child development remain in the unconscious. Thus affecting the way we perceive situations in later life. Freud believed that the unconscious determines our behaviors and that we are motivated by unconscious emotional drives which are shaped by unresolved conflicts from our childhood experiences. For example, a child exposed to abuse during 1- 5 years of development will have an unstable personality compared to a child who wasn't exposed to abuse. Freud (1923) later developed a more structural model of the mind, the psychic apparatus, comprising the entities id, ego and superego which are rather hypothetical conceptualizations of important mental functions. In saying this, according to Freud, the mind can be seen as being similar to an iceberg with only the very tip being exposed and the bulk of the ice berg being unseen. Freud assumed the id operated at an unconscious level (beneath the sea) according...
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..."Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest." - Author Unknown Critical Thinking is the process of thinking about one's thinking, a conscious evaluation of one's thoughts. Critical thinking can be understood as a way of becoming aware of and taking control of one's own thinking processes in order to think more effectively. It is consciously directing one's thinking to make it more rational, clear, accurate, and consistent. Critical thinking helps us ask relevant questions, weigh evidence offered in support of arguments, interpret complex problems, and make wise decisions. This is especially important when you realize that many problems do not lend themselves to clear-cut solutions. The desire to have easy answers is understandable, but can also be dangerous. Excessive simplification of complex problems often leads to simple "solutions" that can make matters worse. Life's problems seldom present themselves as neat packages that can be isolated and systematically solved through a series of action steps. For example, suppose you are deciding whether to change jobs. You may be able to determine how much you like or don't like your job, how well you do it and whether adequate advancement opportunities exist. But even if you have other offers and know what the new jobs would be like, a job change will affect other things in your life. It is rarely as simple as replacing one job with another. Will you have to relocate, sell a house, disrupt the lives of children,...
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...Introduction The brain is most complex of all of the organs in the body. The brain is the place where emotions, perception, planning, memory, action, thinking, learning and language, among other things, all take place. Cognitive functioning takes place in the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain and is carried out by neurons. The brain is made up of thousands of neurons that are responsible for carrying messages from the brain and into the body. These neurons interact with one another by releasing a neurotransmitter that fits on to the receptor of a neighboring neuron. When the receptor is triggered in the brain it causes the body to react, act, think, feel, learn and so forth. But how does this actually work? Brain imaging has given us some insight to answer this question. Brain imaging like MRI’s, CAT, and PET scans all help in discovering the brains role in cognitive functioning. Advances in imaging technology have helped researchers pin point which areas of the brain are responsible for thinking, learning and memory. By recording activity of the brain in action, researchers can examine the systems of brain regions that participate in different cognitive functions, ranging from basic sensory and motor functions to complex functions like reasoning and language understanding. According to the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at the University of Pittsburg “To discover how brain cells actually support cognitive processes, CNBC investigators use physiological studies...
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...understanding of human behaviour is called ‘psychoanalysis’. (Freud, 1939), the father of psychology, assumed that mental illnesses wasn’t something to be treated medically but by what has come to be known as psychodynamic therapy. He advocated that the unconscious mind could influence the mental illness whilst recovering (Cardwell, 1996). This approach to psychoanalysis is demonstrated in his treatment of Anna O. Freud assumed that mental illnesses wasn’t something to be treated medically but by therapy. He implicated that unconscious mind could influence the mental illness whilst recovering (Cardwell, 1996). He diagnosed her illness as hysteria and developed a form of therapy to treat her symptoms (Webster, 2015). (Cardwell, 2004) Freud compared the mind to an iceberg with the water above being the conscious and the water beneath the unconscious part of the mind. The id - the primary part of personality follows pleasure and gratification, and dominates the unconscious part of the mind. Ego - driven by reality principles and penalties of an action dominates the conscious mind. Superego contains conscience and guilt, and also dwells mostly in the conscious mind. The superego develops as we become aware of societal rules. (Cardwell, 1996) According to Freud we have two drives which are sex and aggression. Our sex motivates us to live, prosper and reproduce, whilst aggression represents power and a survival instinct. The id advocates behaviours that will result in a sexual satisfaction...
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...Processing Theory In this paper I will be discussing the information processing theory in children, describing the components of the information processing theory, defining the components and their functions. I will also be discussing the summary of the interrelationships among the components and explaining the need to move information through the model. Explaining how the child processes information and how it changes with age. Information processing theory is the theoretical perspective that focuses on the specific ways in which people mentally thinks about (“process”) the information they receive. People process information in different ways; sensation, perception, sensory registers, working memory, and long-term memory. Sensation is the physiological detection of stimuli in the environment. Perception is the cognitive interpretation of stimuli that the body has sensed. Sensory register is the component of memory that holds incoming information in an unanalyzed form for a very brief time; this is two to three seconds or less. Working memory is the component of memory that enables people to actively think about and process a small amount of information. Long-term memory is the component of memory that holds knowledge and skills for a relatively long period of time. Sensory register information processing is believe that human memory includes a Sensation information processing is through environmental the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. This is the first process...
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