"In the absence of any empirical or a priori argument that such a formalism for processing physical inputs does or must exist, and given the empirical evidence that the brain functions like an analogue computer, there is no reason to suppose and every reason to doubt that the processing of physical inputs in the human brain takes the form a digital computer program."
— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)
Author
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Publisher
MIT Press
Date
1999
Metaphor
"In the absence of any empirical or a priori argument that such a formalism for processing physical inputs does or must exist, and given the empirical evidence that the brain functions like an analogue computer, there is no reason to suppose and every reason to doubt that the processing of physical inputs in the human brain takes the form a digital computer program."
Metaphor in Context
One way to avoid this regress would be to claim that the ultimate data are inputs of physical energy and that such inputs can always be digitalized and processed according to rule. This seems to be Fodor's view. The claim that these inputs are processed in a sequence of operations like a digital program is not unintelligible, but would, as Fodor admits, demand an incredibly complex formalism which no one has been able to discover or invent. In the absence of any empirical or a priori argument that such a formalism for processing physical inputs does or must exist, and given the empirical evidence that the brain functions like an analogue computer, there is no reason to suppose and every reason to doubt that the processing of physical inputs in the human brain takes the form a digital computer program.
(pp. 286-7)
(pp. 286-7)
Categories
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
