For your final paper, you will write an essay on the metaphor comparing the mind to a computer. Why do
you think this has become the dominant metaphor in neuroscience? Is this an accurate description or is the
mind something more? Discuss how Aristotle describes the intellect and the process of understanding and
abstraction. How are the senses involved in the mind’s operation? Is there a part of the mind which is
immaterial, or is everything reducible to brain states?
This is a popular discussion (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/27/why-your-brain-is-not-acomputer-neuroscience-neural-networks-consciousness; https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-notprocess-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer) but for your sources I’d have you rely on Aristotle and
Aquinas, Ed Feser has a good book on The Philosophy of Mind, Mortimer Adler’s book The Difference of
Man and the Difference It Makes has some good ideas; James Reichmann’s Philosophy of the Human
Person has some good chapters on intellection; and generally other academic articles you can pull from the
library’s database. I like the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly since those people are usually
pretty solid. Also, academic journal articles will probably be more available to you than books, unless the
library has ebook versions of the ones I’ve listed.
The paper is 3-5 pages in length, double-spaced; 12-point font, 1 inch margins; Turabian format (title page,
footnotes, and bibliography).