The 'biological assumption' underlying AI holds that, at some operational level—usually identified with neurons—the brain processes information in discrete operations using a biological analogue of on/off switches, so that its activity can be modeled as digital switching.

By Hubert L. Dreyfus, from What Computers Can't Do

Key Arguments

  • After explaining that digital computers represent information in binary digits—'yeses and noes, of switches being open or closed'—Dreyfus directly extrapolates this to the brain in his first numbered assumption.
  • He formulates the biological assumption as: 'on some level of operation—usually supposed to be that of the neurons—the brain processes information in discrete operations by way of some biological equivalent of on/off switches.'
  • By paralleling computer hardware switches with neuronal behavior, this assumption licenses treating brain processes as discrete, switch-like events suitable for digital modeling.

Source Quotes

The machine must operate on finite strings of these determinate elements as a series of objects related to each other only by rules. Thus the assumption that man functions like a general-purpose symbol-manipulating device amounts to 1. A biological assumption that on some level of operationusually supposed to be that of the neuronsthe brain processes information in discrete operations by way of some biological equivalent of on/off switches.
The machine must operate on finite strings of these determinate elements as a series of objects related to each other only by rules. Thus the assumption that man functions like a general-purpose symbol-manipulating device amounts to 1. A biological assumption that on some level of operationusually supposed to be that of the neuronsthe brain processes information in discrete operations by way of some biological equivalent of on/off switches. 2.

Key Concepts

  • Thus the assumption that man functions like a general-purpose symbol-manipulating device amounts to
  • 1. A biological assumption that on some level of operationusually supposed to be that of the neuronsthe brain processes information in discrete operations by way of some biological equivalent of on/off switches.

Context

First in the explicit list of four assumptions that, according to Dreyfus, are built into the computer model of mind; it translates the digital computer’s discrete switching architecture into a claim about neural functioning.