The Human Brain Vs. the Computer: Essay

Humans are famous for their developed brains, capable of thinking, or rather, overthinking. It is amazing how many thoughts we can think daily, and how billions of neurons lead to those thought processes. Computers can do a lot of things humans can, and at times perform better than humans ever could, but getting computers to think the way humans do is still a hurdle for the time being. However, due to their capabilities, sometimes the definition of 'thinking' for computers can become a little blurry. 'Can computers think like the human brain?' is a question that has been asked numerous times over the years, and always raises more questions than it answers. To be able to understand the significance of this question, we first need to know what direction to look into. What is thinking? Is it a process that we fully understand? Does this understanding allow us to reproduce it in something we have built?

Holyoak and Spellman (1993) defined thinking as “the systematic transformation of mental representations of knowledge to characterize actual or possible states of the world, often in service of goals”. Laid out in such terms, it seems easy to assume that something built by humans could one day achieve this. Alan Turing was one of the first people to wonder whether computers could think. He proposes the famous 'Imitation Game' in which, if someone is unable to differentiate between the answers given by a computer and a human, the computer exhibits human-like tendencies, and the statement that it can think seems plausible, and goes on to say that it is not 'completely unreasonable' to describe computers as brains. He argues that our brains can be thought of as machines, and if we could simply develop such a machine that has been programmed according to how the brain works, we could, in effect, create a machine that behaves like a brain. This argument is, of course, subject to many assumptions, and he concludes by saying that even if we somehow figure out how to make such a machine, we still cannot program something to have free will, since everything that has been programmed will be determined beforehand, and this fact leaves no choice for the computer to think or act on its own. All the statements made by Turing do not prove anything conclusive, except that computers might one day be able to think.

Indeed, many people were positive that computers would catch up to human mental capabilities and intelligence in a couple of decades, but that has not yet happened. Another train of belief says that as the main function of computers is to receive input and deliver some output, there must be some sort of thinking process going on inside the computer to be able to give us that output. But is following instructions the same as thinking? Because if it is so, then computers can think right now. Also, just because the computer can provide us with an output for which humans would have to think, it does not mean that computers are thinking in order to reach that output. As Douglas F. Stalker says in 'Why Machines Can't Think: A Reply to James Moor (1978), a computer is a machine – made by humans. When describing the computer and its abilities, we make note of different frameworks present inside it, but never once do we allude to it having 'thoughts'. When making computers, we made sure they had all the instructions they needed to do different jobs, but did we ever give them instructions on how to think? Surely not. And if that is the case, then are we saying that computers are doing something that has not been instructed to it?

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Secondly, if a computer is fed a story, it may be able to read and know the meanings of the words of the story, but it still does not understand the text, in the way that humans do. Why? Because it does not pause to think or ponder upon the meaning, it will solely be concentrated on doing whatever task it has been given to perform (such as translating the text). This can be seen with the 'Chinese Room' example, where Searle points out that a person not knowing the Chinese language could still give answers to Chinese questions if they were provided with instructions in a language that they did understand. In effect, they would give out the impression that they do understand the Chinese language, even though they did not. Simply put, computers have the syntax and the rules, but they are still lacking a semantical connection to the world. Without this connection, computers have no reason to think. This is clearly explained when the author states that minds are more related to the semantic field, and most mental phenomena have four important characteristics that make them so: intentionality, consciousness, causality, and subjectiveness. As we can see, computers do not truly have any of these characteristics.

It is easy to get confused when we look at how much can be achieved through a computer. It seems hard to accept that so many complicated procedures could be done without any thought taking place, but what should be noticed here is that even though humans need to think in order to perform a particular task, does not mean that the computer requires thinking for the same task.

If we talk about the brain, we know that neural activity happens whenever we think. We still are not clear on how it happens, and which happens first - the firing of the neurons or the formation of a thought. With such limited knowledge, it is doubtful that humans could recreate something that works exactly like our thought process when we ourselves are still figuring it out. As stated by J.R. Lucas in 'Minds, Machines and Gödel' (1961), if there is something that a mind can perform and the computer can not, no matter how trivial, and no matter how many other important functions and calculations the computer can do, the mind and the machine are not the same. Their workings and processes are different, and so, even though the outputs might be the same, just because humans require thinking for those processes, computers may not.

There is no doubt about the limit of the capabilities of a computer, which only grows as every day passes. There are things that computers do that humans never could, but the argument is not about their capabilities, but rather if they have the one crucial ability to think. We live in an age where there are technological breakthroughs almost every day. Technology never fails to amaze us, and it would be folly to say for sure that computers will never be able to think. As Marvin Minsky says in 'Why People Think Computers Can't' (1982), as we make more and more technological advances, our knowledge grows and so do the abilities of man-made computers, and one day, it might be possible for computers to think. But right now, the human brain still has the upper hand.

References

1. Chodosh, S. (2016). Mind Aglow: Scientists Watch Thoughts Form in the Brain. Scientific American.
2. Dos Santos, R. (2019). Why Computers Don’t Think? Searle and the Artificial Intelligence, 3, pp.57-75.
3. Holyoak, K.J. and Spellman, B.A. (1993). Thinking. Annual Review of Psychology, 44(1), pp.265-315.
4. Lucas, J.R. (1961). Minds, Machines and Gödel. Philosophy, pp.112-127.
5. McCarthy, J. and Hayes, P.J. (1981). Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence. In Readings in Artificial Intelligence (pp. 431-450).
6. Minsky, M.L. (1982). Why People Think Computers Can't. AI Magazine, 3(4), pp.3-3.
7. Searle, J.R. (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. The Turing Test: Verbal Behaviour as the Hallmark of Intelligence, pp.201-224.
8. Searle, J.R. (1990). Is the Brain a Digital Computer? In Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (Vol.64, No.3, pp.21-37).
9. Shieber, S.M. ed. (2004). The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence. MIT Press.
10. Stalker, D.F. (1978). Why Machines Can't Think: A Reply to James Moor. Philosophical Studies, 34(3), pp.317-320.