I Can't Get No (Boolean) Satisfaction: A Reply to Barrett et al. (2015)

Citation: King R (2016) I Can't Get No (Boolean) Satisfaction: A Reply to Barrett et al. Sometimes history can be philosophically interesting. Barrett (2011) and colleagues (e.g., Barrett et al., 2014, 2015) are to be congratulated on widening the scope of our understanding of animal cognition to include its ecological elements. However, in their eagerness to overturn a narrow model of computation, she and her colleagues have glossed over some rather interesting and salient historical facts. This is poignant, as these facts strengthen their case, and sharpen the focus on the more complete picture of ethologically valid cognition that they are drawing. The key figure missing from the usual historical narrative is George Boole, whose bi-centenary has just passed and (it just so happens) is the luminary whose soon-to-be-restored home is visible from the office where I type this, in the University he led, and on the machine that his insights made possible. Barrett (2011) wants to draw a distinction between computation—in a narrow sense–abstracted from any particular setting, and the highly embodied—especially ecologically rooted–cognition that she sees in the animals she studies. In support of this distinction, she cites Searle's (1990) claim that, as a matter of history, humans tend to use their most impressive piece of technology as a mental metaphor. As exemplars, the ancient Greeks used models of torque-powered siege devices, de La Mettrie's (1960) L'Homme Machine used images of clockwork brains, Freud's libidinous mind was powered by hydraulic instincts, and so on (see Daugman, 2001 for a more extended discussion). But, as an important historical fact the order of technology-then-metaphor is the other way round in respect of the computational model. Thinking about thinking—specifically Boole's thinking about thinking–came long before the technology did. The technology grew out of it. Thus, it's less true to say that computers are a metaphor for thinking, than that thinking is a metaphor for computation. One important difference that modern computers have from the " technology as metaphor " pattern is that in none of the other cases have advances been made in the technology as a result of the comparison. Fountains, hydraulics, and clockwork did not become more sophisticated by reflecting on their mind-like properties. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has advanced considerably—to the point where it might be said, without hyperbole, that AI is in many cases the proof that psychology as a science is advancing. When we …