"There was always a subject, a "transcendental ego," applying the rules, which simply postponed a scientific theory of behavior by installing a little man (homunculus) in the mind to guide its actions."
— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)
Author
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Publisher
MIT Press
Date
1999
Metaphor
"There was always a subject, a "transcendental ego," applying the rules, which simply postponed a scientific theory of behavior by installing a little man (homunculus) in the mind to guide its actions."
Metaphor in Context
Until the advent of the computer the empiricist school had the edge because the intellectualist view never succeeded in treating man as a calculable object. There was always a subject, a "transcendental ego," applying the rules, which simply postponed a scientific theory of behavior by installing a little man (homunculus) in the mind to guide its actions. Computers, however, offer the irresistible attraction of operating according to rules without appeal to a transcendental ego or homunculus. Moreover, computer programs provide a model for the analysis of behavior such as speaking a natural language which seems to be too complex to be accounted for in terms of S-R psychology. In short, there is now a device which can serve as a model for the mentalist view, and it is inevitable that regardless of the validity of the arguments or persuasiveness of the empirical evidence, psychologists dissatisfied with behaviorism will clutch at this high-powered straw.
(pp. 178-9)
(pp. 178-9)
Provenance
Reading and searching at Google Books
Citation
Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason 6th printing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999).
Date of Entry
02/22/2011
