A THING ABOUT READHEADS

Q: What does the title mean?

A: A Thing About Readheads can be understood in two ways:

• It means an attitude towards readheads--prejudice，resent.
• It emphasize that we can't find an explicit way decribing how this is formulated:not furmulae, language,nor attitude yet.

Q: What does this intuition pump show?

A: The "language of thought" is just a myth,which stumbles scientists and lead them astray to other aspects.

Q: What's the parallel between comments in a program and "A thing about readheads"?

A: Here's the point:

• They are all related to(about) the rudimentary structures that really make a difference,and they don't .
• You can't derive the exact source code from several comments,and you can't know what exactly is in your body about how the feeling "a thing about readhead" emerges.("the brain source code")
• A comment functions in the observer level,the source code functions in the machine level,you can't try to represent (replace) the machine level from the comment level--a machine won't work with instructions of comments.Similarily,we use languages to describe our brain speciality,but the brain itself won't function given "instructions of language stuff".Language is the way we use to describe how the mind works,but not the way how the brain works.We need to go to the more rudimentary level if we wannna make progress,rather than using language models to stimulate.

Q: I think we can use the intentional stance,say,the language is a higher level performance and hides details.Why this doesn't work here?

A: The point here is,you just can't use the language level thing to explain models of the mind--language are also derive from that model,as the way comments derives from the source code. We can't lull ourselves into believing that we can make progress just through language--it's seems to be a simpler way(and will die earlier),without figuring how language emerges.It just has nothing to do with language

Q: Any other usage?

A: