According to Propositional Theories the mind has no need for mental
imagery or pictures but instead uses symbolism and logic to process
sensory input. This removes the problem of the Homunculus 'the little
man in our head' which has been talked about, and in Artificial
Intelligence research seems to have been proved to some degree.
Symbolism uses sort of 'on and of'' states as in the basics of
computers who really are a big collection of switches that can be
turned either on or off depending on what you tell them (input). If
we associate this with symbolic learning in humans, are we just a
walking collection of switches that can be turned on or off
depending on our input ? Think of the first transistor conputers that
had to change their physical state to be either on or off. Do we have
these physical states in our head ?.
Symbolism removes the Homunculus but turns us into walking transistors.
Steven used the example of turning the F grid into symbolic on off
states in our head ( 00010010 e.t.c) is this really how we process all
sensory input ?
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