Brain, Mind, and Computers

by Stanley L. Jaki

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895269074
• ISBN13: 9780895269072
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A key work in Jaki's oeuvre

[I meant to rate this with 4 stars.] If you read enough of Fr. Jaki's works, or at least enough of the right ones, you see certain themes emerge time and again. One of the most important of those "Jakian" themes is the irreducible ontological gap between "the quantitative and the qualitative." Fr. Jaki explicitly cites an early source for this distinction as Aristotle (cf. Categories 16a). What makes physics the chief of natural sciences is its ability (sometimes envy-producing for other sciences) to isolate minute areas of material reality and explain them to an exhaustive quantitative degree. However, given the gap between quantities and qualities, this limits physics to quantitative concerns (when physics brings in literally meta-physical perspectives and assumptions, it makes proper use of the realm of qualitative reality). Given the nature of reality, you could call physics the supreme, because supremely limited, science. The disparity between quantities and qualities is the thesis of Fr. Jaki's first book on the history of science, **The Relevance of Physics** (TRP, 1966), its relevance being but the narrowly defined flip-side of its Irrelevance in many areas of life, an irrelevance acknowledged by many of physics' brightest lights. The quantity-quality theme is also the driving force behind **Brain, Mind and Computers** (BMC). Indeed, Jaki mentions he originally intended to make BMC a closing chapter of TRP, but, upon reading M. Taube's **Computers and Common Sense**, he decided the cognitive/AI issue needed a lengthier, manifold treatment on its own. Ideally, then, BMC should be read in conjunction with, and perhaps only shortly after, TRP. BMC originally (ca. 1969) consisted of four chapters (each averaging 160 footnotes) and an epilogue, but in 1989 Fr. Jaki reissued BMC with a new fifth chapter (sort of like H. Dreyfus did with his **What Computers STILL Can't Do**, though Fr. Jaki thinks not very highly of Dreyfus's phenomenological arguments against strong AI), so be sure you get the newer paperback edition from Regnery. Not only as a "Jakian" Catholic myself, but also as a believer in academic rigor -- one of Jaki's great strengths -- I am constantly miffed and surprised not to see this book cited in the indices or bibliographies of books dealing with the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. (An exception is D. Hofstadter's annotated bibliography in **Gödel, Escher, Bach**, but even then he brushes BMC aside as mere polemics, albeit with some "interesting" points ... yet he never engages those interesting points.) Certainly BMC is dated in terms of its contemporary analysis of AI. Even so, the gaps it fills in the historical record and the emphasis it lays on key issues -- such as 1) the futility of a physicalist reduction of human consciousness, 2) the important (rather Gödelian) discrepancies between human cognition and computerization (i.e., between language-as-understood and terms as formally describable), and 3) the cr

Reviews and descriptions from the cover of the paperback edition . . .

In an age when computers make ever greater inroads into our everyday lives, well may we ask: Do computers have intelligence? Are they living? Have free will? Exercise moral judgments? Stanley L. Jaki, historian and philosopher of science, deals with these and related questions in Brain, Mind and Computers, a thoroughly documented rebuttal of contemporary claims about the existence of, or possibility for, man-made minds. His method includes a meticulously documented survey of computer development, a review of the relevant result of brain reseach, and an evaluation of accomplishment of physicalist schools in psychology, symbolic logic, and linguistics, and a thorough critique of claims about artificial intelligence. Comments on the first edition: "Dr. Jaki's book is the most informed, pentetrating and lucidly written treatment of the subject that I have read anywhere." Robert A. Nisbet, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University. "Certainly it is rewarding and refreshing to read such penetrating criticism of a field in which gratuitous theorizing and dogmatism are able to flourish bcause our scientific understanding is so small." Sir John C. Eccles, Nobel Laureate, 1963. "This is a book fascinating in style as well as content...which every scientist should read." Eugene P. Wigner, Nobel Laureate, 1963. "Dr. Jaki presents a sustained, well-informed, and persuasive argument for mind-body dualism...my own predilections are exactly opposite to Dr. Jaki's conclusions, but I welcome his challenge..." Herbert Feigl, University of Minnesota