Have they solved the mind-body problem of dualism? Why or why not?
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Mind-body problem, concerning the relation between human mind and body.
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Dualism, proposes that the mind and body are distinct and fundamentally different substances.
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The mind is non-physical, immaterial, and operates outside the realm of physical laws.
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The body (and brain) is physical, material, and operates under the laws of physics and biology.
Their move
- McCulloch was convinced that neural pulses had contents corresponding to the contents of mental atoms, and that human knowledge could be explained by the logical relations between those contents
- With these ideas, McCulloch wanted to reduce the mind to the brain, explain how the brain acquires knowledge, and thus solve the mind–body problem.
- Their way of solving the problem was to ‘‘demonstrate’’ how a system of neuron-like elements embodies ideas by having a causal structure that mirrors propositional inferences.
- McCulloch and Pitts defined a grammar for representing a class of expressions, but did not define a deductive system.
- Instead, they made a number of assumptions about the properties of neurons and their pulses, so as to define a class of nets of idealized neurons.
- They also interpreted the expressions defined by their grammar as describing input–output behaviors of neurons.
- Finally, they devised effective methods for mapping classes of expressions and nets one-to-one, in such a way that each neuron’s behavior was correctly described by one of their well-formed expression, and each well-formed expression was satisfied by some neuron’s behavior.
- If the neuronal pulses were interpreted, in turn, as ‘‘propositions’’ or ‘‘ideas,’’ then the expressions describing neuronal behavior could be seen as describing logical relations between a neuron’s inputs and its outputs.
The problems
- how can mind and body interact?
- how can minds be free in a world determined by natural law?
- how do we know there is a real world out there?
- how do we know that other minds exist?
- Animal minds—according to Descartes only humans have minds, animals are mere machines
- what happens when we fall into a dreamless sleep?
Result
- They proposed a computational theory of mind that sought to explain mental functions in terms of neural activity
- suggesting that neural events could be mapped to propositional inferences, thus giving a logical structure to mental processes
- ==The author argued that they over simplified and idealized neurons so that propositional
inferences could be mapped onto neural events== - Their theory did not fully address the complexities of how mental states arise from neural processes, but they provided a new way to understanding the relationship between mind and brain through a computational way.
What is thinking for them? How would they explain mental life?
- they viewed the brain as a logical machine
- the thoughts and feelings, is linked to the underlying neural activities in the brain , like a series of computations performed by the neurons.
Why do they think that their theory is important for psychology and mental disease?
- Because they think understanding the structure and activity of neural nets could provide insights into mental processes and by specifying the neural net’s structure, one could derive knowledge about mental processes, effectively reducing the mental disease to the properties of neural nets (reducing psychology to neurophysiology) (like change the game of kind to game of degree)
Is the computationalist account of the brain convincing? Why or why not?
it introduced a new way to capture the relationships between neural activity and logical propositions, and suggest that mental processes can be represented by functions and symbols.
I think it is hard to model a very complicated thing, the real physical world for example. And by simplify it, ignoring some details making it more ideal while still following the main rule, we can simulate it and get more close to it.
We can achieve it at once, but can approach it gradually.
In summary, while the computationalist provided a framework for understanding the relationship between computation and neural activity, its convincingness is undermined by simplifications, assumptions lacking empirical support, and the evolution of more sophisticated models in neuroscience.
Thus, it may be seen as a foundational, but not entirely sufficient, account of brain function.
How was their work important for the future of AI? What directions of research did it become a foundation for?
They provided a mathematical framework for understanding how networks of neurons could perform logical operations, which directly influenced the development of artificial neural networks.
later influenced the concept of finite automata became integral to computability theory.
And their way to design to logic also inspired and influenced is essential the development of modern computer architecture