You Think You Want a Revolution?

The renowned theorist of scientific revolution, Thomas Kuhn, argues that revolutions can occur when scientists are faced with prolonged anomalies and disruptions in the relation between theory and practice in the real world. Even so, new theories that seem to correspond meaningfully with the real world must be present and able to be tested. In spite of a great deal of hype, the desire for intelligent machines that imitate human consciousness and the numerous attempts to develop these since ancient times is not a scientific revolution, not anomalous, and not a disruption of either theory or practice with respect to a philosophical or scientific understanding of human and machine intelligence. It is simply a modification of what is assumed to be known about some aspects of the intelligence of conscious humans. What about human intelligence and human consciousness? What do we really know about human conscious intelligence? Given that we are human, and we utilize and depend on our conscious intelligence to live and thrive, we should ask about this first. If we are paying attention, it is the philosophy and neuroscience of human consciousness and intelligence that has undergone a revolution or disruption and not that of machines.