MichaelJ on Nostr: Something that grinds my gears is when people talk about the human mind as if it is ...

Something that grinds my gears is when people talk about the human mind as if it is like a computer.

It's actually the exact opposite.

The computer is like the human mind.

The ancients and medievals held that the mind consists of three distinct parts: memory, intellect, and will. Concepts are held in the memory and distinguished and judged by the intellect under the direction of the will.

Now consider computers. They have RAM (computer memory), a CPU, and programs. Data is held in memory and processed by the CPU under the direction of a program.

We made computers in the image of the human mind.

This makes the digital world a sort of secondary world populated by pseudo-intelligences that have no will of their own, but are directed by their human programmers. What happens in the digital world, then, reflects on us.

St. Bonaventure said that the human mind "can be led to the contemplation of eternal light by the consideration of its own self, irradiated and flooded as it is with such splendors." Let us consider how the reflection of the mind we have built in the digital world can lead us to contemplation of that which is eternal and true.