Too messy or too neat? Assessing the limits of computational models of the brain

Mazviita Chirimuuta has written a timely book that reinvigorates a classic argument against mechanical minds: biological naturalism, the view that consciousness and general intelligence depend upon life. A central commitment of this book is a kind of Kantian humility about the prospects for our knowledge of the brain: it holds that because there is a fundamental difference in kind between silicon-based computational “maps” and the biological “territory” of the brain, no scientific model can prov