The Computer and the Brain: Perspectives on Human and Artificial Intelligence

This collection of interdisciplinary analyses addresses the issue of the language of the brain. The contributors include computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, linguists, and historians. The resulting collection reflects the state of knowledge more than a generation after John von Neumann entitled his tantalizing and provocative lectures The Computer and the Brain. John von Neumann was one of the first to address the highly controversial issue of appropriate models to use in discussing cognitive science. The issue he raised most pointedly, and one that is still hotly debated, is the language of the brain. In his Silliman lectures he questioned the validity of using the computer as an interpretive model for human thought, asserting that the language of the brain is not mathematical. Later in the same lecture series, however, he attributes a statistical pattern to the brain. This paradoxical stance of von Neumann's is representative of the rapidly shifting nature of cognitive science, and of the study of the nature of language.