Re: Turing Machines and Physical Computation

From: dan michaels (feedbackdroids_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/27/04 

Date: 26 Nov 2004 21:31:59 -0800

patty <pattyNO@SPAMicyberspace.net> wrote in message news:<GtIpd.155286$R05.112941@attbi_s53>...

> > ON THE COMPUTER "METAPHOR"
> >
> > 'It has always bothered me that models of psychological
> > processing were thought to be inspired by our understanding of
> > the computer. The statement has always been false. Indeed, the
> > architecture of the modern digital computer - the so-called Von
> > Neumann architecture - was heavily influenced by people's (naive)
> > view of how the mind operated. Perhaps I had better document
> > this. Simply read the work on cybernetics and thought in the
> > 1940's and 1950's prior to the development of the digital
> > computer. The group of workers included people from all
> > disciplines: See the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, or "Her
> > Majesty's Conference on Thought processes". Read the preface to
> > Wiener's book on cybernetics. Everyone who was working together -
> > engineers, physicists, mathematicians, psychologists,
> > neuroscientists (not yet named) - consciously and deliberately
> > claimed to be modelling brain processes.'
> >
> > Reflections on Cognition and Parallel Distributed Processing
> >
> > D.A. Norman
> > (Ch 26, p534, Parallel Distributed Processing Volume 2)
> > McClelland J and Rumelhart D 1986
>
> I get that computer behavior and human behavior are essentially
> different. Why they are so different is certainly what we came here to
> discuss.
>

Hi patty, every couple of weeks I click on a post totally at random to
find the same silliness repeated, with 0.999 confidence.

The problem with presenting a disembodied fragment is that it possibly
implies what the fragmenter wants it to implie, but it hardly tells
what the original writer actually "meant". Follows are parts of the
**REST** of Norman's story .... [caps are mine] ...

.... here we are talking about a new form of COMPUTATION ...

... these MODELS are highly parallel, with thousands of elements
INTERACTING primarily through actviation and inhibition ...
... each ELEMENT is highly interconnected with perhaps tens of
thousands of connections ....
...these NEUROLOGICALLY INSPIRED COMPUTATIONAL PROCESSES pose new
requirements on our understanding of computation, suggest novel
THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS of PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA, and suggest
powerful new ARCHITECTURES for MACHINES OF THE FUTURE ....

.... carry on a tradition that has long existed .... a tradition of
BUILDING MODELS of NEUROLOGICAL PROCESSES ....

[and later on .....]

... the whole point for the cognitive scientist is to UNDERSTAND
COGNITION ... to do so, we insist upon explanation of the INTERNAL
PROCESSING STRUCTURES THAT GIVE RISE TO COGNITIVE ACTIVITIES ....
.... this is why we have spoken of REPRESENTATION, of MECHANISMS of
memory and attention ...