Creating a Mind
Recently, I read a review by Colin McGinn of Ray Kurzweil's How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed . According to McGinn, the book reveals, at last, the secret of human thought which is pattern recognition! Kurzweil argues that one needs to build a machine that recognizes patterns in order to create a mind. Personally, I find this idea extremely naive because pattern recognition is just one of mind's many functions. On the other side, McGinn says that "the brain is causally connected to the mind and the mind contains and processes information", which seems bizarre. I always thought that the brain induces the mind but this statement implies that the brain and the mind are two separate entities. What is even more bizarre are reviews of the book like this: Ray Kurzweil's understanding of the brain and artificial intelligence will dramatically impact every aspect of our lives, every industry on Earth, and how we think about our future. If y