ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I discuss four computational distinctions at the heart of natural computation, and thus relevant to the central and most interesting question of cognitive science: “How the brain computes the mind”. I assume that we can think of cognition as a form of computation, implemented by the tissues of the nervous system, and that the unification of high-level computational theories of cognitive function with detailed, local-level understanding of synapses and neurons is the core goal of cognitive (neuro)science. Thus I am concerned her e with how the brain computes the mind, following Alan Turing’s seminal gambit (Turing, 1950), and much of subsequent cognitive science, in thinking that intelligence is a kind of computation performed by the brain. By thus asserting that the brain is a kind of computer, I must immediately clarify that the natural computations performed by the brain differ dramatically from those implemented by modern digital computers (Richards, 1988). Computation (the acquisition, processing, and transformation of information) is a more general process than the serial, binary computation performed by common digital computers. From this viewpoint, the assertion that the brain is a kind of computer is a mild one. It amounts to nothing but the everyday assumption that the brain is an organ responsible for acquiring, remembering, processing and evaluating sensory stimuli, and using the knowledge thus acquired to plan and generate appropriate action.
