Society of Mind

== The Society of Mind ==

be properly described as having a "mind" or "understanding",

: "When you start to study the brain and body scientifically, you inevitably wind up using metaphors. Metaphors for the mind, as you say, have evolved over time -- from machines to switchboards to computers." [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lakoff/lakoff_p2.html George Lakoff]

: "If we look back over recent centuries we will see the brain described as a hydrodynamic machine, clockwork, and as a steam engine. When I was a child in the 1950's I read that the human brain was a telephone switching network. Later it became a digital computer, and then a massively parallel digital computer. A few years ago someone put up their hand after a talk I had given at the University of Utah and asked a question I had been waiting for for a couple of years: 'Isn't the human brain just like the world wide web?' The brain always seems to be one of the most advanced technologies that we humans currently have." - [http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html Rodney A. Brooks]

And since Marvin Minsky's "Society of Mind" we know that

"agents". Steven Pinker says about it in "How the

mind works" (on page 144) "The society of mind is a  

wonderful metaphor" and continues (on page 419)

"Mental life often feels like a parliament within".

: "What if we took [a brain simulation computer] program and trained a large number of people, say, the population of China, to hold in mind the data and act out the steps? Would there be one gigantic consciousness hovering over China, separate from the consciousness of the billion individuals? If they were implementing the brain state for agonizing pain, would there be some entity that really was in pain, even if every citizen was cheerful and light-hearted?"