The Computer and the Mind

Thoughts

Philip Johnson-Laird is an academic who sits at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. He studies cognition and the inner workings of the brain. My first exposure to his work came through his book "Mental Models," which I used when writing my dissertation to help articulate what, exactly, a model is, and understanding what models can and cannot do.

This book is particularly apt, given the recent resurgence in machine learning and artificial intelligence. When the book was originally published in 1988, the idea of a neural network was still undergoing development, and many foundational ideas are discussed here. That the book is not written like a computer scientist who is teaching how to do X in Y, or assume the reader will be able to follow graduate-level linear algebra concepts, but rather like a cognitive scientist carefully devising an experiment to devise the mechanisms of the brain.

The organization of the book is in six parts, each focusing equally on aspects of how our brains work, and how that can be replicated through computation.

Part 1, Computation and the Mind, starts by talking about the concept of computability, what it means to compute something, and how we might replicate some of the computing functions of the brain. It answers some basic questions that any non-expert would have, like how do you study the mind?

The remaining parts each focus on a particular aspect of our mental machinery:

Part 2: Vision

Part 3: Learning, Memory, and Action

Part 4: Cogitation

Part 5: Communication

Part 6: The Conscious and Unconscious Mind