How Come Information? Mind, Nature, and Artificial Magic

The ambition to invent a machine for the “perfect imitation” of the mind appears to flow, by logical consequence, from the invention of machinery for the “perfect imitation” of nature. From perspective drawing to photography, theWestern science of art has taken advantage of mechanical means, such as lenses and mirrors, to replicate our visual experience of nature. Its main concern has always been to capture the “magic” of nature into the “synthetic instant” of a picture. Indeed, the main achievement of visual art might be described as sight enhancing. In a similar way, the science of logic has taken outstanding advantage of computing machines to simulate our experience of thought, where the main goal appears to be nothing more than to recreate the nature of the mind in the form of a sort of artificial magic. How else might we pursue the simulation of human thought, and to what extent can the cognitive experience of information processing be regarded as thought enhancing?