"The landmark event that launched what is now broadly called ‘cognitive science’ was the publication of
Language and Communication
(1951) by the psychologist George Miller. Miller proposed that the
mental world could be studied rigorously using concepts from information
theory, computation and linguistics.
This kind of thinking was taken to its ultimate expression in the short book The Computer and the Brain (1958), in which the mathematician John von Neumann stated flatly that the function of the human nervous system is ‘prima facie
digital’. Although he acknowledged that little was actually known about
the role the brain played in human reasoning and memory, he drew
parallel after parallel between the components of the computing machines
of the day and the components of the human brain.
Propelled
by subsequent advances in both computer technology and brain research,
an ambitious multidisciplinary effort to understand human intelligence
gradually developed, firmly rooted in the idea that humans are, like
computers, information processors. This effort now involves thousands of
researchers, consumes billions of dollars in funding, and has generated
a vast literature consisting of both technical and mainstream articles
and books. Ray Kurzweil’s book How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
(2013), exemplifies this perspective, speculating about the
‘algorithms’ of the brain, how the brain ‘processes data’, and even how
it superficially resembles integrated circuits in its structure.
The
information processing (IP) metaphor of human intelligence now
dominates human thinking, both on the street and in the sciences. There
is virtually no form of discourse about intelligent human behaviour that
proceeds without employing this metaphor, just as no form of discourse
about intelligent human behaviour could proceed in certain eras and
cultures without reference to a spirit or deity. The validity of the IP
metaphor in today’s world is generally assumed without question.
But
the IP metaphor is, after all, just another metaphor – a story we tell
to make sense of something we don’t actually understand. And like all
the metaphors that preceded it, it will certainly be cast aside at some
point – either replaced by another metaphor or, in the end, replaced by
actual knowledge."
