Gary Marcus

Chemistry is an abstraction of physics, even while fundamental questions remain in the underlying layer...

at the moment we understand both chemistry and physics way way way better than we understand neuroscience.

Oy. “Knowing how Y works” means having a theory of Y that explains something and hasn’t been contradicted by evidence, yet. “X is an abstraction of Y” just means a theory of Y based on a simpler theory X. How can you ever “know how Y works” without making abstractions?

symbol-manipulation has not been rejected by evidence yet, but most readers of this thread are "sure" the brain doesn't do it (despite abundant evidence from linguistics and psychology that suggests symbol-manipulation is part of what brain do)

Don't we know at least a little (if not everything) about how brains work? That there are many many neurons that communicate, etc. And is it not fair to say ANNs are a very simple abstraction from that current understanding of brains (there are many neurons, etc.)?

Maybe, but maybe not. We can't even model the worm, and have had wiring diagram since 1986. Maybe we are on right track, & maybe we aren't. Maybe it's ok to simplify everything dendrites do, and treat all cell types equally, and maybe we miss something fundamental by doing so.

I tend to agree with you @GaryMarcus, but surely there are different levels of abstraction/fidelity in how closely current artificial methods model the biological. We have *some* non-trivial understanding of the biological system, so speaking of abstractions seems very reasonable

nobody said we shouldn't ponder potential abstractions; it's the moral certainty that i objected to, as being premature.

Gary, we know some things about how brains work, and we know that ANNs can capture these aspects. This is very well established. You are confusing two statements: (1) ANNs are an abstraction of neural processing (true). (2) ANNs are a good model of the brain (? - TBD).

If we don't know the answer to (2), how can we be sure about the answer to (1)?