Where Consciousness Is Concerned, The Appearance Is

How Do We Get From Electrons To Elections And From Protons To Presidents?

Because We Do Not Understand The Brain Very Well We Are Constantly Tempted To Use The Latest Technology As A Model For Trying To Understand It. In My Childhood We Were Always Assured That The Brain Was A Telephone Switchboard...sherrington, The Great British Neuroscientist, Thought The Brain Worked Like A Telegraph System. Freud Often Compared The Brain To Hydraulic And Electromagnetic Systems. Leibniz Compared It To A Mill...at Present, Obviously, The Metaphor Is The Digital Computer.

We Often Attribute 'understanding' And Other Cognitive Predicates By Metaphor And Analogy To Cars, Adding Machines, And Other Artifacts, But Nothing Is Proved By Such Attributions.

In Many Cases It Is A Matter For Decision And Not A Simple Matter Of Fact Whether X Understands Y; And So On.

Well, What Does "good" Mean Anyway? As Wittgenstein Suggested, "good," Like "game," Has A Family Of Meanings. Prominent Among Them Is This One: "meets The Criteria Or Standards Of Assessment Or Evaluation."