So, you have been equivocating. We are done here.

OK. Can you not first quote my equivocation back to me? You might be right, and I will admit to my mistake.

I notice the list only mentions the brain. I can see the merit of viewing the brain as a kind of computer, but I can’t see the merit of viewing the mind as part of that computer, for the reason I’ve described. That the brain responds to stimuli in “programmed” ways I don’t find contentious; but the idea that the actions we take are programmed into us by evolution I think is pseudoscientific. — AJJ

The brain is the hardware and the mind is the software.

Think about how you learn. Learning is natural selecton shaping your understanding of the world and your place in it on much shorter time scales. When you learn something, what is the learning about, if not some information in, or about, the environment that you then use to produce better-informed decisions and actions that improve fitness? In learning something new, you change the way your mind interprets sensory data until that interpretation is no longer useful and you learn something else.

The Stanford entry you quote does go on to mention, as it had already stated at the outset, that 'there is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise.' These allegations of flaws are not necessarily expressed ardently, but they are powerful. Many of them come from people who believe that evolutionary biology provides a more secure basis for scientific progress and that evolutionary psychology bears the heavy weight of biasses that its practitioners hold. — mcdoodle

It would seem to me that any allegation of flaws would be based on biases themselves. Biases that would include ideas that the mind and body are sepearate things, or that the mind is an illusion. Evolutionary Psychology seems to reject that mind is an illusion and rejects the idea that we can explain the mind by referring to only biology while rejecting the psychology, or what it is like, of the mind.

It attempts to answer questions like why do we feel hunger or pain? Feeling hunger or pain is the body's way of being informed of these conditions in order to respond appropriately. Organisms that reponded appropriately to such indicators would have a better chance at surviving. What would be a a evolutionary biologists explanation for the feeling of hunger and pain, or do they simpy reject that such feelings exist?

The brain is the hardware and the mind is the software.

Think about how you learn. Learning is natural selecton shaping your understanding of the world and your place in it on much shorter time scales. When you learn something, what is the learning about, if not some information in, or about, the environment that you then use to produce better-informed decisions and actions that improve fitness? In learning something new, you change the way your mind interprets sensory data until that interpretation is no longer useful and you learn something else. — Harry Hindu

This doesn’t address the OP argument, which I think demonstrates that the mind cannot possibly be a computer, or part of one.

And I don’t think learning is analogous to natural selection. Natural selection works through random mutation and learning isn’t random, but rather intentional: “I am going to do this now for this reason.”

I would try to resolve the issues here as follows:

1. Evolutionary psychology is the attempt to explain what are regarded as psychological phenomena by means of evolutionary theory. For example, if the common definition of psychology as "the science of behavior" is accepted, then the fact that humans don't (typically) kill and eat our own young may be explained by the enormous evolutionary disadvantages of this practice.

2. The cognitive paradigm attempts to explain behavior as the product of an information processing machine.

3. These two paradigms are by no means mutually exclusive. Since the cognitive paradigm is currently the dominant paradigm in psychology, the bulk of contemporary evolutionary psychology takes place within a cognitive framework.

4. However, there is no reason why evolutionary psychology has to be cognitive. For example, the illustration I gave in point (1) above about us not eating our own young made no reference to any information processing. You can have a behaviorist (or psychoanalytic, or take your pick) evolutionary psychology just as easily.

5. Therefore, the argument of the OP is, if anything, purely an argument against cognitive psychology. So now we are left with the problem of deciding whether it is a good argument against cognitive psychology. Which brings us to...

6. We all know definitions are often highly contentious intellectual battlegrounds, and that the broadest and most basic concepts are often the most difficult to define. On a common sense level, it's obvious what is and is not alive. But when we bore down to try to achieve a truly rigorous definition of life, it's anything but easy. It's genuinely very challenging to say exactly what makes something alive; and thus, what constitutes "biology."

We see this in virtually every field. Hence the psychologist Boring's (yes, that was really his name) quip that "intelligence is what intelligence tests test."

What is life? What is intelligence? What is a computer? These are genuinely difficult terms to define. I can't help but think of Socrates' famous elenchus method.

7. So while the OP is perfectly correct that, given the definition stated, we are trapped in an infinite loop, similar to Plato's infamous "third man" problem, in which we are always one step away...

8. ...this could just as easily be taken as indicative of a problem with the definition as a problem with cognitive psychology. I could just as easily say that a computer is anything that is accurately described by information processing theory. For example, the logic circuits in an iPhone continue to function as logic circuits regardless of how I regard them, or even whether I exist at all.

Or, for example:

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4607/computer

And of course, the real point of cognitive psychology is that... yes, our minds, brains, and behavior are accurately (to some acceptable degree of accuracy, anyway) described by information processing theory. Not that humans are in every respect identical to the computational devices we design and build.

Thus, I do not find the OP's argument a compelling one.

[Edited quite a few times to correct the odd slip and clarify a few things here and there.]

I accept all your points except number 8. That something can be accurately described by information processing theory doesn’t change the fact that, in an of itself, it isn’t actually what you’re describing it as. Every concept you use is derived from the mind, so it remains that step beyond when you attempt to describe it in the same way. That very fact, it seems to me, makes the mind profoundly different to a computer.

That something can be accurately described by information processing theory doesn’t change the fact that, in an of itself, it isn’t actually what you’re describing it as. — AJJ

How would you feel about the position that yes, it does mean that it is what you're describing it as; it just doesn't mean that it can't be other things as well?

Every concept you use is derived from the mind, so it remains that step beyond when you attempt to describe it in the same way. — AJJ

This argument of your own seems to me to lead to the conclusion that no concept can ever describe the mind; or at least, cannot do so fully. You may wish to comment on that. I am currently re-considering my own views on the recursion problem.

PS If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer, and so ad infinitum. Is this what you are saying?

Ugh... I think I forgot to "reply" to you when I responded above. I post this so you'll get a notification.

My apologies. I'm new here. :roll:

How would you feel about the position that yes, it does mean that it is what you're describing it as; it just doesn't mean that it can't be other things as well? — Theologian

I think that illustrates that whatever it is you’re describing is observer-relative. A calculator to an adult is device for making mathematical computations; to a child it’ll more likely be a toy. I still say that in and of itself it’s neither.

This argument of your own seems to me to lead to the conclusion that no concept can ever describe the mind; or at least, cannot do so fully. You may wish to comment on that. I am currently re-considering my own views on the recursion problem. — Theologian

Yes, I did also think of that. That would seem to me to be right.

PS If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian

I had noticed this so no worries.

Yes, I guess I must be. It seems impossible to make an object out of something that is always first-person subjective.

I'll get back to you on recursion shortly. For now, though, I'd like to examine this:

I think that illustrates that whatever it is you’re describing is observer-relative. A calculator to an adult is device for making mathematical computations; to a child it’ll more likely be a toy. I still say that in and of itself it’s neither. — AJJ

Are you saying that literally all descriptions are observer relative?

Do you think that there is an objective reality? Do you think it is describable?

Are you saying that literally all descriptions are observer relative?

Do you think that there is an objective reality? Do you think it is describable? — Theologian

My thought here to appeal to final causes. An acorn is not observer relative because it has a final cause. It becomes (or can become) an oak tree regardless of our description of it, and we can describe what it actually is because of this.

A computer does not have a final cause of its own. It derives its final cause from whoever is perceiving it (observer relative), and so cannot be described as if a computer is what it actually is.

That sounds promising enough to me at the moment anyway.

I'm actually getting a bit sleepy. Will respond tomorrow. Or possibly later today, depending on where you are in the world.

Night all.

Actually, one last post...

Two points:

1. I don't think the recursion problem is the fatal flaw you see it as. You see, I think you're thinking in these terms...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZN2eoAPCwY

When really, this might be more enlightening:

https://www.slideshare.net/AsifAliRaza/recursion-37090597

The key point being, infinite recursion can be described, just so long as it has some kind of structure.

2. Regarding your most recent claim, that final cause is what allows things to have objective reality, I think you have two quite heavy burdens of proof to meet:

2.1 Given the general skepticism with which science regards final cause, I think the onus is on you to show that anything has final cause.

2.2 Even if you believe final causes exist, why is it that final causes give things objective existence? You have provided no argument to support this claim.

1. I don't think the recursion problem is the fatal flaw you see it as. You see, I think you're thinking in these terms...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZN2eoAPCwY

When really, this might be more enlightening:

https://www.slideshare.net/AsifAliRaza/recursion-37090597

The key point being, infinite recursion can be described, just so long as it has some kind of structure. — Theologian

But the Family Guy joke demonstrates the actual problem with the statement, “Everything I say is a lie.” You’ll have to explain the force of your point; I’m not getting why describing a grammatical structure called recursion addresses the problem with describing what is always first-person subjective as if it’s an object.

2. Regarding your most recent claim, that final cause is what allows things to have objective reality, I think you have two quite heavy burdens of proof to meet:

2.1 Given the general skepticism with which science regards final cause, I think the onus is on you to show that anything has final cause.

2.2 Even if you believe final causes exist, why is it that final causes give things objective existence? You have provided no argument to support this claim. — Theologian

2.1 needs its own thread. I’ll probably make one after we’re finished discussing this.

I think final causes give things objective existence because they mean a thing will behave a certain way (will be what it is) whether we perceive it as doing so or not. The bundle of matter that we call an acorn will become the bundle of matter that we call an oak tree regardless of our perception of it. On the other hand, the bundle of matter that we call a computer will never compute anything unless we perceive it as doing so (and so will not be a computer unless that is what we perceive). In and of themselves, its computations are just electrical signals bouncing around - those signals however exist objectively, because they behave a certain way regardless of our perception of them.

I’m not getting why describing a grammatical structure called recursion addresses the problem with describing what is always first-person subjective as if it’s an object. — AJJ

Because when I said:

If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer, and so ad infinitum. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian

You responded:

Yes, I guess I must be. It seems impossible to make an object out of something that is always first-person subjective. — AJJ

So it seemed to me that you were saying that we were trapped in infinite recursion, and that this was a fatal flaw. My counter was that, as syntactic theory illustrates, infinite recursion is not a fatal flaw. It can in fact be handled quite adequately.

Beyond that... although I disagree with your claims, I do not want to argue that they are wrong. Primarily because you raise some quite deep issues concerning our the relationship between self, other minds, and this thing called "objective reality;" that I am still thinking through myself.

However, I am going to argue - and I don't think you would wholly disagree - that you have articulated some fairly elaborate claims that you haven't completely justified. You yourself have stated that your appeal to final causes

needs its own thread — AJJ

That aside, I also don't think you've sufficiently motivated your position that there is a fatal

problem with describing what is always first-person subjective as if it’s an object. — AJJ

.
I can see two big problems with this.

First, is a mind "always first-person subjective?" If there are other minds in the world, then those minds would seem, by definition, to be second or third person. And if we have some ideas about those other minds, why should those ideas be only subjective? If, as you claim, only things with final causes have objective reality, do minds have final causes? If so, they would seem to be more amenable to objective description than other things, not less.

Second, don't forget: a model - or a description - is never identical to the thing being modeled, and does not need to share all its properties. It only has to share enough of its properties to tell us how the thing behaves. An electron's orbit is not an equation. But it does not follow from this that an equation describing an electron's orbit is wrong. Nor that equations are fundamentally incapable of describing an electron's orbit.

I think the the view that without a subjective perceiver, logic circuits are not logic circuits but only electrical currents is also problematic. Many philosophers would see the property of being logical as an emergent property that, well, emerges from the circuits when arranged in those structures that embody the rules of logic. In order to motivate your own theory, you need to show that they are wrong.

And of course, if they are wrong, you might also be prevailed upon to give your own account of where minds themselves come from, since minds have also been suggested to be emergent properties that come into existence in much the same way.

Also, let's not forget: while you are now slipping back to saying that a mind cannot be a computer because a computer is only a computer when perceived as such by a mind, there are problems with that too. As I observed before, computers can, and have been defined in other ways. The mathematical model that defines a Turing machine, for example, makes no reference to the operator. But far more seriously and fundamentally, when I said that:

it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer, and so ad infinitum. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian

You yourself acknowledged

Yes, I guess I must be. — AJJ

Thus, even if you are right and the mind cannot be modeled as a computer, that's insufficient to justify what you yourself have now stated to be your position: that a mind can never describe another mind, period.

So as I said: I am not arguing that you are wrong. But I am saying that you wish to persevere with this position, you face some very serious problems that remain unaddressed.

So it seemed to me that you were saying that we were trapped in infinite recursion, and that this was a fatal flaw. My counter was that, as syntactic theory illustrates, infinite recursion is not a fatal flaw. It can in fact be handled quite adequately. — Theologian

It can be handled when constructing sentences, but I don’t see how this applies to adequately describing the mind. Constructing an infinite sentence about it won’t necessarily explain it.

Really the way I described things in my last post can be done without mentioning final causes, so that may not be an issue.

First, is a mind "always first-person subjective?" If there are other minds in the world, then those minds would seem, by definition, to be second or third person. And if we have some ideas about those other minds, why should those ideas be only subjective? If, as you claim, only things with final causes have objective reality, do minds have final causes? If so, they would seem to be more amenable to objective description than other things, not less. — Theologian

If you were to describe someone else’s mind you’d not be able to apply that description to your own mind due to the same problem. Though actually I think it is the case that the mind can be described in terms of its final cause, I’m just yet to read about that.

Second, don't forget: a model - or a description - is never identical to the thing being modeled, and does not need to share all its properties. It only has to share enough of its properties to tell us how the thing behaves. An electron's orbit is not an equation. But it does not follow from this that an equation describing an electron's orbit is wrong. Nor that equations are fundamentally incapable of describing an electron's orbit. — Theologian

I think you have a point here. Although I wouldn’t concede that the mind is like a computer; it still seems to me to be of an entirely different nature.

I think the the view that without a subjective perceiver, logic circuits are not logic circuits but only electrical currents is also problematic. Many philosophers would see the property of being logical as an emergent property that, well, emerges from the circuits when arranged in those structures that embody the rules of logic. In order to motivate your own theory, you need to show that they are wrong. — Theologian

Those circuits can’t embody the rules of logic unless meaning is applied to what they’re doing by a mind. A computer producing a syllogism on its screen is not applying logic unless we give the words a certain meaning. Its circuits are simply following the laws of physics.

Where our minds come from is also another thread.

Also, let's not forget: while you are now slipping back to saying that a mind cannot be a computer because a computer is only a computer when perceived as such by a mind, there are problems with that too. As I observed before, computers can, and have been defined in other ways. The mathematical model that defines a Turing machine, for example, makes no reference to the operator. But far more seriously and fundamentally, when I said that: — Theologian

Am I slipping back to that? I thought I’ve always been saying that. I don’t think you can describe the mind as a computer, since no computer actually does anything except what a mind makes or perceives it to do. I may be wrong that the mind can’t be described though, just not as a computer.

Am I slipping back to that? I thought I’ve always been saying that. — AJJ

Well, you began the thread by saying that evolutionary psychology was a pseudoscience because the mind was always one step beyond a computer. Then, in response to my first post, you agreed that your argument only applied to cognitive psychology. Then, in response to a later post, you agreed that your argument lead to the conclusion that mind could never describe mind at all. Finally, in the post above, you seem to be back to saying that the mind cannot be described as a computer, but have now added that it can, perhaps, be described in terms of its final causes.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing that you modify your position over time. People who are fundamentally reasonable and willing to engage with the arguments of others tend to do that. You may have noted that at one point I modified my own position on the recursion problem. I was just flagging that your position did seem to have changed.

Yeah, that’s all correct. I would say though that not being able to say what the mind is doesn’t preclude being able to say what it isn’t.

FWIW I think your fundamental problem is here:

Those circuits can’t embody the rules of logic unless meaning is applied to what they’re doing by a mind. A computer producing a syllogism on its screen is not applying logic unless we give the words a certain meaning. Its circuits are simply following the laws of physics. — AJJ

I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying you are at the level of raw assertion.

Think of certain AI characters in Star Trek, like Data or The Doctor. Do such characters have minds? Are mind and meaning emergent properties that can emerge out of certain kinds of information processing systems?

I'm not saying the answer is "yes." I am saying your position is dependent on the answer being "no," which I don't think you've shown to be the case.

I would simply counter that the assertion there is yours; that you’d have to show how that would even be possible (for a mind to emerge).