[FRIAM] naive question

[Prof David West]

Marcus and glen (and others on occasion) have posted frequently on the "algorithmic "equivalent" of [some feature] of consciousness, human emotion, etc.

I am always confronted with the question of of "how equivalent?" I am almost certain that they are not saying anything close to absolute equivalence - i.e., that the brain/mind is executing the same algorithm albeit in, perhaps, a different programming language. But, are their assertions meant to be "analogous to," "a metaphor for," or some other semi/pseudo equivalence? 

Perhaps all that is being said is we have two black boxes into which we put the same inputs and arrive at the same outputs. Voila! We expose the contents of one black box, an algorithm executing on silicon. From that we conclude it does not matter what is happening inside the other black box—whatever it is, our, now, white box is an 'equivalent'.

Put another way: If I have two objects, A and B, each with an (ir)regular edge. in this case the irregular edge of A is an inverse match to that of B—when put together there are no gaps between the two edges. They "fit."

Assume that A and B have some means to detect if they "fit" together. I can think of algorithms that could determine fit, a simplistic iteration across all points to see if there was a gap between it and its neighbor, to some kind of collision detection.

Is it the case that whatever means used by A and B to detect fit, it is _**merely**_ the equivalent of such an algorithm?

The roots of this question go back to my first two published papers, in _AI Magazine_ (then the 'journal of record' for AI research); one critical of the computational metaphor, the second a set of alternative metaphors of mind. An excerpt relevant to the above example of fit.

*Tactilizing Processor
*
*Conrad draws his inspiration from the ability of an enzyme to combine with a substrate on the  basis  of  the  physical  congruency  of  their respective shapes (topography). This is a generalized  version  of  the  lock-and-key  mechanism  as  the  hormone-receptor  matching discussed by Bergland. When the topographic shape  of  an  enzyme  (hormone)  matches  that of  a  substrate  (receptor),  a  simple  recognize- by-touch  mechanism  (like  two  pieces  of  a puzzle  fitting  together)  allows  a  simple  decision,  binary  state  change,  or  process  to  take place, hence the label “tactilizing processor.”*

Hormones and enzymes, probably/possibly, lack the ability to compute (execute algorithms), so, at most, the black box equivalence might be used here.

[BTW, tactilizing processors were built, but were extremely slow (speed of chemical reactions) but had some advantages derived from parallelism. Similar 'shape matching' computation was explored in DNA computing as well.]

My interest in the issue is the (naive) question about how our understanding of mind/consciousness is fatally impeded by putting all our research eggs into the simplistic 'algorithm box'?

It seems to me that we have the CS/AI/ML equivalent of the quantum physics world where everyone is told to "shut up and compute" instead of actually trying to understand the domain and the theory.

davew

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