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A mind connected to a world

Deep Blue could calculate that a chess position was lost. Its representation of that position was built for chess. It did not connect surrender on the board to surrender in a history book or an argument between friends.

A person can meet the same idea in all those places. Each encounter adds context about people, danger, choice, and loss.

This suggests another possible ingredient in understanding: contact with a world that answers back.

A human mind develops through a brain connected to a body, senses, memories, other people, and consequences. Meanings become connected because life keeps providing new situations in which to use them.

That does not prove a machine needs a human body. It changes the question: what kinds of experience, action, and feedback might connect its symbols to more than one task?

# citations(3)↓
  1. [1]research.ibm.com
  2. [2]plato.stanford.edu
  3. [3]plato.stanford.edu