Natural Human Thought

Some non-existent category invented by people for lack of better arguments.

As in "it better models human thought", "it's the natural way that humans think", or "humans naturally think in terms of objects". Oh, yes, it is increasingly used to defend ObjectOrientation, not so much ObjectOrientation in general but some folks' limited view of OO.

If we are to believe there's such a thing, than we probably ought to believe that there's such thing as "artificial" or unnatural human thinking. Presumably when we think about algebra, logic, or other less than natural way to model problems and look for their solution, we put ourself in a category less than "natural humans". I've done quite a lot of math, played chess, programmed professionally in all major paradigms, but I never felt unnatural for not thinking the way some people think that I'm supposed to "naturally think".

And it's all a matter of habit and formation. Some people find it super-natural that chess players can keep in memory thousands of games or that piano players an keep in memory thousands of notes. The people who've been there can assure you there's nothing unnatural or artificial, it just happens, there's no special, unnatural/artificial thinking involved.

EwDijkstra juggled with some "twisted" logic he devised whose main elements are what he called predicate transformers. These can be used to model semantics of imperative programs, and facilitate ProofOfCorrectness. To untrained software engineers, they look completely alien and "unnatural". However, EwDijkstra manages to pull lots of rabbits out of his hat and expose one page or two page solutions (including proofs and the whole enchilada), to problems that for your average "operational thinking" software engineers look like the mother of all complex problems. Should we presume that Dijkstra's way of looking at algorithmic problems is unnatural while ours is more natural? Or should we admit that we don't have enough training and exercise in mastering the art that Dijkstra mastered?

Or take the art of manipulating symbols, commonly needed in algebra and calculus. Entirely "unintuitive" and nothing to do with natural way of thinking. Train one good high school student for a year and he'll naturally (meaning seamlessly, without much of an effort) resolve symbol manipulation exercises, just like a 8 year-old kid can "naturally" play piano or violin. By the way, if you never played violin or piano try to improvise it, see how "unnatural" it feels.

The conclusion should be that clutching at straws about naturalness, is nothing but being stuck in old habits, just like in the fable with cave man who killed. The only "natural" thing about human mind is that it is inventive and it is evolutionary, and it is adaptive, and it is inquisitive. Therefore it can embrace new and even spectaularly new ways of thinking. To commit ourselves a priori to the one true natural way of thinking would be equivalent to a suicide of our intellect.

You have a peculiarly annoying habit of creating new pages for the same arguments you've been repeating ad nauseum for the past six years, TopMind/BryceJacobs?.

That shows the danger both of stereotypes and of leaping to conclusions. In fact, this page was created by Costin in regard to an argument with RK. Also it seems to me that Top would have more likely taken the opposite side than Costin did. -- dm

We've had the map of the Nematode nervous system mapped for some time -- so can we not at least simulate NaturalWormThought? http://www.wormatlas.org/MoW_built0.92/introduction.html ? If the Human brain is ever completely mapped would we not potentially be able to do the same? See http://www.setiai.com/archives/000052.html

Well, there's entirely too little conflict on this page.

I assert that, since HumanThought? is not a function of anything like cells shaking hands with one another, or chemicals mixing in a grey soup, or tiny electric currents dashing from node to node, you're not going to be able to model "natural" human thought. At least not with a computer. At least not any time soon.

{{What does that have to do with the view expressed in the first two sections above? Looks like a lot of context has been lost here.}}

I am amused by the continued assertion that the mind is somehow a direct projection of electric current passing around nodes in a piece of meat. I've given up trying to "argue" the point with those who accept this point of view as "science" and back it up with published research from a group of people who have yet to demonstrate that they even vaguely understand what the mind really is or how it works, as illustrated by decades of inability to produce any valid results on actual people.

So there. -- GarryHamilton

Well, that was pretty content-free. You assert that you believe in Dualism; that the mind is not rooted in the brain. Well, you can believe any wacko mysticism you like, but I don't see the point in telling us these unsupported assertions.

As for "decades of inability" etc, 1. read William James 1890 textbook on psychology; it's quite scientific. There was then a lull and some backwards progress due to Skinner's dead-end behaviorism and Jung's not-helpful mysticism, but eventually: 2. read a modern text on cognitive science, which is all about hard cold known facts, not airy-fairy fluffy psychological angels dancing on pinheads. 3. read a modern text on evolutionary psychology, which again is about cold hard facts, and has quite a bit of explanatory power.

I.e. you're behind the times.

Nothing to stir up controversy like making assertions based on not paying attention to modern research. -- DougMerritt

P.S. "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" was never more than unsupported speculation, and although a thought-provoking read, was never an accepted theory because it is wrong in some specifics, and is too vague to be a theory in other areas. It shouldn't be regarded as a seminal text -- not even back when it was published.

P.P.S. Your assessment of the state of the art of brain research is more than 60 (sixty) years out of date, neglecting even McCulloch? and Pitts 1943 results on a highly simplified neuron model and Hebbs 1948 on patterns.

Most recently there has been quite a bit of progress in understanding e.g. the organization of cortical microcolumns, and dramatically, in understanding a few of the estimated 10,000 neurotransmitters, which has resulted in spectacular breakthroughs in dealing with the MIND by directly treating the appropriate part of the BRAIN by selective neurotransmitter reuptake suppression even with first generation drugs like Ambien (essentially the perfect sleep aid) and Modafinil (essentially the perfect wakefulness drug).

The imperfection of some of these drugs such as SSRIs is due to the fact that, for each messenger molecule, there are actually several or even a large number of different kinds of receptors, distributed differently in different neurons in different parts of the brain -- and in other parts of the body, which is why they often have unintended side effects on the digestive tract.

But even so, they are miraculous compared with what came before, and improved understanding of the different receptor types will undoubtedly lead to better targeted 2nd and 3rd generation drugs.

We used to make moral condemnations of people whose minds suffered problems like depression ("don't be a wimp!"), daytime sleepiness ("don't be so lazy!"), nighttime sleeplessness ("relax, don't worry so much!").

Now we understand that in many of these cases, there's simply a hardware problem, and it has nothing to do with morality.

But your point of view, that the mind has nothing to do with the brain, doubtless means you are stuck with medieval moral judgements of people. Welcome to the 21st century.