Neural networks and computer simulation

Neural networks have the full power of turing machines. That is to say that it is possible to construct a machine using neural connections to do anything that a computer could do. But that doesn't say much about how the human neural network is made. That's like saying "matter can be used to construct any shape" and "my hand is made out of matter." That doesn't mean my hand can assume any shape. Everyone knows that the body is controlled by the nervous system aka neural networks. That doesn't mean we understand cognition!

That is to say that the sensorimotor system in the human body can perform the functions required to conceptualize and, infer from those conceptions, in a manner required by human cognition. The logical assumption is that these self same sensorimotor neural networks are the networks the body uses to conceptualize during cognition.

The above paragraph that I have copied from the OP contains the really important conclusions upon which the new cognitive science paradigm is based.


We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. "Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement." It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

"These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real."

Oh, ok. Well keep at it...I wonder how long it will take them to prove that the world is not flat.