Metaphors Of The Mind :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign personal business Web SitesThe brain (and, by implication, the consciousness) has been compared to the latest technological innovation in every generation. The computer metaphor is now in vogue. Computer computer hardware metaphors were replaced by software metaphors and, lately, by (neuronal) electronic network metaphors. Such attempts to understand by comparison are common in every field of human being knowledge. Architects and mathematicians corroborate lately come up with the structural concept of "tensegrity" to relieve the phenomenon of life. The tendency of humans to see patterns and structures everywhere (even where there are none) is salutary documented and probably has its survival value added. Another trend is to price reduction these metaphors as erroneous, irrelevant, or deceptively misleading. Yet, these metaphors are generated by the same Mi nd that is to be described by them. The entities or processes to which the brain is compared are overly "brain-children", the results of "brain-storming", conceived by " wits". What is a computer, a software application, a communications network if not a (material) representation of cerebral events? In other words, a necessary and sufficient connection must exist between ANYTHING created by humans and the minds of humans. Even a gas pump must have a "mind-correlate". It is also conceivable that representations of the "non-human" parts of the Universe exist in our minds, whether a-priori (not deriving from experience) or a-posteriori (dependent upon experience). This "correlation", "emulation", "simulation", "representation" (in picayune close connection) between the "excretions", "output", "spin-offs", " returns" of the human mind and the human mind itself - is a key to underst anding it. This claim is an instance of a more than broader category of claims that we can learn some the artist by his art, about a creator by his creation, and generally about the origin by any of its derivatives, inheritors, successors, intersections and similes. This general contention is especially strong when the origin and the point of intersection share the same nature. If the origin is human (father) and the product is human (child) - there is an enormous amount of data to be safely and certainly derived from the product and these data will surely apply to the origin. The closer the origin and the product - the more we can learn about the origin. The computer is a " mentation machine" (however limited, simulated, recursive and mechanical). Similarly, the brain is a "thinking machine" (admittedly a great deal more agile, versatile, non-linear, maybe even qualitatively different).