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7 Materialism: The Brain As Computer
such as that of our Chinese room program. To coin a phrase, understanding
is what understanding does. This would be mechanical understanding—and
that’s what many cognitive scientists say we have.
Beyond Physicalism
Even the true believers acknowledge that much of the physicalist theory of mind
has only limited plausibility and is hard to accept. The critics, who batter and
pummel the physicalist point of view, are many and articulate. It almost seems
unfair because physicalism is so easy to criticize. But the physicalists remain
dominant, because at the end of the day, there is no viable alternative.
In the interests of fairness, it must be acknowledged that physicalists, too,
disparage and flog their critics: That too is easy to do, because the critics cannot
present the physicalists with a solid alternative. The critics of physicalism are
often accused of being mysterians, or even worse, Cartesians. They’re in a
difficult position, because what they’re claiming is that there are phenomena
in the real world that are non-material but nonetheless able to affect the material
world. (Material includes force and energy.) When you defend such a position
you find yourself in the same party as proponents of psychokinesis and extrasensory perception: You’re skating on thin ice.
There is an intermediate position that some people have taken, called
emergentism. Emergent properties are important in science, and also quite
common. 6 As an example, when water freezes, remarkably complex ice crystals are formed, whose geometry is neither present nor latent in liquid water.
The formation of such crystals is an emergent property of water. Very frequently, a complex structure has properties which are absent in the component
parts, and could not have been predicted: They’re emergent properties of the
newly-formed structure. It has been claimed that sensations and awareness are
emergent properties of complex nervous systems.
A related but far more egregious idea is called Integrated Information Theory.
It is a proposal which has wide currency today, and is accepted by a number
of very clever people who ought to know better. The theory concerns any system, such as a brain or computer, in which a network of interconnected wires
brings channels of information together. According to the theory, when the
network of wires is sufficiently large—so the connectivity of the system exceeds
a certain unknown threshold—then the network undergoes something like a
phase change. Just as the phase change in water gives rise to crystals of astonishing complexity, the phase change in data processors gives rise (somehow,
7 Materialism: The Brain As Computer
such as that of our Chinese room program. To coin a phrase, understanding
is what understanding does. This would be mechanical understanding—and
that’s what many cognitive scientists say we have.
Beyond Physicalism
Even the true believers acknowledge that much of the physicalist theory of mind
has only limited plausibility and is hard to accept. The critics, who batter and
pummel the physicalist point of view, are many and articulate. It almost seems
unfair because physicalism is so easy to criticize. But the physicalists remain
dominant, because at the end of the day, there is no viable alternative.
In the interests of fairness, it must be acknowledged that physicalists, too,
disparage and flog their critics: That too is easy to do, because the critics cannot
present the physicalists with a solid alternative. The critics of physicalism are
often accused of being mysterians, or even worse, Cartesians. They’re in a
difficult position, because what they’re claiming is that there are phenomena
in the real world that are non-material but nonetheless able to affect the material
world. (Material includes force and energy.) When you defend such a position
you find yourself in the same party as proponents of psychokinesis and extrasensory perception: You’re skating on thin ice.
There is an intermediate position that some people have taken, called
emergentism. Emergent properties are important in science, and also quite
common. 6 As an example, when water freezes, remarkably complex ice crystals are formed, whose geometry is neither present nor latent in liquid water.
The formation of such crystals is an emergent property of water. Very frequently, a complex structure has properties which are absent in the component
parts, and could not have been predicted: They’re emergent properties of the
newly-formed structure. It has been claimed that sensations and awareness are
emergent properties of complex nervous systems.
A related but far more egregious idea is called Integrated Information Theory.
It is a proposal which has wide currency today, and is accepted by a number
of very clever people who ought to know better. The theory concerns any system, such as a brain or computer, in which a network of interconnected wires
brings channels of information together. According to the theory, when the
network of wires is sufficiently large—so the connectivity of the system exceeds
a certain unknown threshold—then the network undergoes something like a
phase change. Just as the phase change in water gives rise to crystals of astonishing complexity, the phase change in data processors gives rise (somehow,