More than Computing

August 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The properties exhibited by inert matter are, for the most part, unspectacular. Matter exists, it displays form, texture, colour, mass etc. It may be reflective, magnetic, absorbent, or even give off radiation of various sorts. What inert matter cannot (usually) do is to compute. In order to perform acts of computation an entity must display a certain level of cybernetic complexity which is beyond inert matter. This complexity is available however, to a large number of systems.

Cybernetic systems, from the simple thermostat to human brain tissue, performs, at various levels, acts of computation, this ability however may not be the last word. It may be that some systems, structures, or materials are capable of exhibiting exotic properties that is a far beyond computation as computation is from the properties exhibited by inert matter.

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Computational Mind

December 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The mind is (partly) a computer, programmed by the body, which is, in turn, designed through evolutionary interactions with the environment. Or, ‘the mind is embodied, and the body is embedded’. But this may not be saying very much.

A few years ago the only objects capable of performing computations were brains and room-sized mainframes. Now computing is relatively ubiquitous, taking place routinely in our phones, toys, kitchen appliances, clocks, cars etc. This increasing distribution of computation is likely to continue, and will, at some point become routine, part of the fabric of our experience. We will soon refer to the computational abilities of material with the matter-of-factness that we currently use when talking about a materials strength, or weight, or colour. At that point, (and we are already seeing the signs of this), the concept of the brain as kind of computer will cease to be interesting. Of course the brain is a computer, and of course part of its functioning is the wielding and manipulation of symbols. But when computation is commonplace and everything computes we will feel obliged to ask ‘what else does the brain do?’.

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Physicalese for Beginners

May 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The mind of the machine speaks ultimately in zeroes and ones, whereas the body of the machine speaks in the physical language of input/output devices; printers, monitors, robotic arms, webcams etc. In humans, there is no such switch from concrete action to abstract symbols, the structure of the representation of experience that constitutes cognition remains embodied throughout. Human bodies, like the bodies of machines, are medium sized objects moving at medium speed, and the language of these bodies is constrained and constructed from the affordances they possess. It is a language of space, and motion, and gravity: of the swinging of an arm in a predictable arc when catching a ball and the rhythmic fall of a foot when walking. It is also the language of the senses: the flow of light across the retina when we pass a window and the feel of warmth on the back of the neck when we walk away from the sun. The body talks to the world, and listens to the worlds responses, in a kind of ‘physicalese’. The universal language of embodied human being.

The ‘mentalese’ spoken by our minds uses this same grammar and vocabulary, or more accurately, the body provides the grammar and vocabulary utilised by the mind. There is no need for translation into some kind of neurological Visual Basic or C++.

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Mentalese and Dualism

May 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

We have grown accustomed to the idea that actions and our thoughts take place in two radically separate worlds, and that the languages of these worlds is also radically separate. This idea finds its purest expression in the physical dualism of the hardware/software binary of computation. Standard (digital) computation involves both the analog, literal, concrete artifacts of input/output devices, (and the world which the devices connect to), as well as the abstract symbol systems which represent and process the data acquired by the input/output devices. The ‘language’ of I/O is one of spaces and surfaces, of movement and duration, of force, texture and distance. An I/O device is required to interact with the environment and is therefore bound to speak the language of the physics of that environment. The symbolic language spoken by the CPU on the other hand, ultimately a language with the limited but powerful vocabulary of only 0 and 1, has its own grammar and syntax unconnected to the physics of objects and spaces. CPU languages, from LISP to VB and C++, are self-contained symbolic systems and their primary importance is their ability to generate results. The actual working of these languages or codes is irrelevant.

This idea of two radically separate languages, one internal and one external, produces odd results when applied to the human body and mind. It would result in an assumption that the mind, like the CPU of a computer, used a discreet and hermetic symbolic system to process the data provided by by the I/O devices of the senses. Further, that the actual processes of that internal language, call it ‘Mentalese’, is irrelevant provided that the results are appropriate. In other words, computation metaphors of mind reinforce the idea that the language of the body is different to the language of the mind, and contributes towards dualist understandings of mind and body.

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Human Programming (top down approaches)

June 2nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

• The language of ‘top-down’ programming (in the context of human action) is the language of embodied action, communicated through metaphor.
• Top-down programmes may take the form of analogies, beliefs, theories, or imaginary structures.
• Top-down programming may serve to organise a complex series of actions, such as performing a dance like the twist, or it may organise the nuances of an action such that the action is performed more optimally, or it may organise cognitive behaviour such that certain mental states are produced or optimised.

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Computational Metaphors of Consciousness

June 9th, 2007 Fred McVittie

If the cognitive processes of the mind can be thought of as a kind of computer, then they would constitute a multi-tasking, holographic, qubit-wielding distributed array. If the conscious part of the mind were a monitor attached to this computer, it would be a 15″ black & white with a resolution of 480X640 (and with a dodgy lead).

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