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Human beings and machines: Naturalising the mind

Perception and action A philosophical approach Sandro Nannini Università di Siena Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali. Human beings and machines: Naturalising the mind. D. Dennett – E il cervello è a sua volta un’immensa macchina per molti versi simile al computer […]

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Human beings and machines: Naturalising the mind

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  1. Perception and actionA philosophical approachSandro NanniniUniversità di SienaDipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Sociali Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  2. Human beings and machines:Naturalising the mind D. Dennett – E il cervello è a sua volta un’immensa macchina per molti versi simile al computer […] E. Carli – Crede allora che sarebbe possibile “amare” una macchina? D. Dennett – Quanto all’ipotesi di amare una macchina, devo dire che se tale macchina fosse Michelle Pfeiffer non vedo perché non potrei amarla. (Cervelli che parlano, Mondadori, 1997, pp. 75-76)

  3. Perception and sensory-motor coordination • Animals acquired the ability to perceive some features of the external world and of their own body in order to execute movements apt to increase the probability to survive (e.g. by catching preys or avoiding plunderers). Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  4. Perception and sensory-motor coordination • Human senses and human sensory-motor coordination are the result of biological evolution. Biological evolution Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  5. Perception and sensory-motor coordination: • Perceptions can be conscious or unconscious: in both cases perceptions are mental representations of the internal and external world. • Human beings construct a representation of the external world in order to move and act in it. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  6. The computational brain • The brain acquires by means of the senses a certain amount of information about some regularities of the external world as regards the distribution of matter and physical events in space and time and changes the format of such information step by step until a pattern of motor neurons activity able to trigger a right motor response is produced. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  7. Styles of brain computation No!!! Symbolic representations A Brooks’ robot Unlikely! No representations May be! Subsymbolic representations Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  8. Frogs and flies • A frog recognizes flies as food only if they are moving. • We human beings instead recognize flies as flies independently of their movements. • Therefore, the representation that an animal has of its environment is functional to the actions that it is able to execute in that environment. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  9. A reply to (3c): frogs and flies • It is not the case that we human beings see flies as they are, frogs instead see them as they appear to them. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  10. The 1-eaters and the 2-eaters 1000200000010000000200100000000001222200000010000000200100000000001222?????????????????????????????? 100020000001000 000020010000000 000122220000001 000000020010000 0000001222????? ??????????????? ?????????? 1000200000 0100000002 0010000000 0001222200 0000100000 0020010000 0000001222 ?????????? ?????????? ?????????? Which is the right representation? It depends on what you eat! Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  11. Real world / phenomenal world • Mental representations are constructions of the mind (=brain), not the copies of real objects. • There is similarity between the activity patterns of hidden units in an artificial neural network and mental representations: they are a representation (= a state space partition) of the input apt to get the desired output. • Every species lives in its own phenomenal world adapted to a certain kind of interaction with the real physical world. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  12. Conclusion • Perceptions can be naturalised only if the common sense concept of ‘perception’ is radically changed: perceptions are not copies of real objects passively received from the external world but formats given to sensory inputs in order to construct a stable and multi-purpose model of reality that is able to control the very flexible behaviour of human beings. • These perceptions can be functionally reduced and therefore can be implemented by brain processes. Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

  13. Thank you for your attention! Roma, 15 gennaio 2010

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