What I'm struggling with is that I've seen similar points made by philosophers in "Dynamical Systems Theory" (see e.g. the work of Tim vanGelder), and as a student I spent many hours working to understand their arguments. Once I did, I came to the conclusion that they were wrong. 🤷‍♂️ - ThreadSky

tyrellturing.bsky.social • 17 days ago

What I'm struggling with is that I've seen similar points made by philosophers in "Dynamical Systems Theory" (see e.g. the work of Tim vanGelder), and as a student I spent many hours working to understand their arguments.

Once I did, I came to the conclusion that they were wrong. 🤷‍♂️

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tyrellturing.bsky.social•17 days ago

At its core, my perspective comes down to something I once heard Yoshua say to such a philosopher at a meeting:

By computation I just means physics. That's it. Other than magic, there is no alternative to the computational framework for understanding cognition, in my opinion.

neuroai.bsky.social•17 days ago

Well I don’t know the context of that philosopher but that would be a bizarre & inaccurate statement from Yoshua if it was directed at Earl! Physics is actually a lot closer to the dynamical systems approach Earl is advocating for! If anything Earl can make that comment to us lol

tyrellturing.bsky.social•17 days ago

But this is Yoshua's point:

Dynamical systems are not in any way counter to computation!!! Why does anyone think they are? I've never understood...

If the concern is digital versus analog, we can do computation with analog systems - no problemo. 🙂

neuroai.bsky.social•17 days ago

And that can be your valid conclusion within your paradigm! It doesn’t mean that they are wrong. I had a similar trajectory & our frameworks are close, but after more complexity science & doing a bit more math, it has recently become like a Necker cube: I see their view too. We’re not kings:)

tyrellturing.bsky.social•17 days ago

No, we're not. But, I've never had anyone present me with a "non-computational theory" that didn't just turn out to be analog computation, or continuous time computation, etc.

tyrellturing.bsky.social•17 days ago

It could be, as you're suggesting, that I just can't see it. But, my deeper suspicion is that "non-computational" folks mean something very different by "computation" than I mean.

neuroai.bsky.social•17 days ago

I totally agree, computation is in common. I genuinely don’t think computation in itself is the culprit, but how we think the brain is doing its thing. I liked your point that maybe they’re just against digital metaphors. But I’d like to think more to name these views better, perhaps with your help!

arula-ratnakar.bsky.social•17 days ago

My understanding of computation from what I've learned in classes is it's a mathematical function converting input to an output, with a function being the following:

Given 2 sets, domain S & codomain T, a binary relation R between S and T is a function if all elements of S appear exactly once in R.

arula-ratnakar.bsky.social•17 days ago

If it is being used differently than that I definitely need to learn what the other versions of computation are defined as.

neuroai.bsky.social•17 days ago

Personally I think this discussion is a lot more nuanced than early definitions. It concerns whether there are different paradigms in mathematical accounts of the brain, their differences, lineage, consequences, etc. IMO you shouldn’t worry about your class definitions at this stage.

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