I doubt that the brain does much searching in the computational sense at all. Computer searches - - i.e. laying out a set of options and systematically going through them - strike me as a brilliant artificial evolution from what the brain actually does.
My pretty uninformed guess is that the brain works primarily by "recall" - (there doesn't seem to be an agreed term) - i.e. the brain is primarily an image-processing device; it processes incoming images as whole figures, (even words & other symbols, as Damasio points out, have actually to be processed as images first). And the brain has special powers, which we have yet to emulate mechanically, - to recall similar whole figures - a similar apple image, say, or a similar "a-p-p-l-e" word, - with extremely limited search, or consideration of alternatives, almost immediately. (Perhaps neurons, or neural networks, have special powers to rapidly recognize previous reconfigurations of themselves). It strikes me that the prime example of this is movement. The brain doesn't, I suggest, go through searches in producing movements. When we want to play a "backhand" or a "forehand" or "throw a punch" or "kick", we more or less immediately recall a rough, holistic figure of that movement, (mainly kinaesthetic, partly visual), which is fluidly adaptable to the precise physical situation and relevant objects - "along these lines" so to speak. We don't search through lists of alternatives. Motor memories are important because they are probably, evolutionarily, (no?) about the first form of memory. Who, if anyone, is arguing for anything like this idea of the brain having special powers of figurative recall? ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
