The Bactra Review Brainchildren
``[F]rom the outset I worked from the `third-person point of view' of science,
and took my task to be building --- or rather sketching the outlines of --- a
physical structure that could be seen to accomplish the puzzling legerdemain of
the mind. At the time --- the mid-1960s --- no one else in philosophy was
attempting to build that structure, so it was a rather lonely enterprise, and
most of the illumination and encouragement I could find came from the work of a
few visionaries in science and engineering: Warren McCulloch, Donald MacKay,
Donald Hebb, [W.] Ross Ashby, Allen
Newell, Herbert Simon, and J. Z. Young
come to mind. Miller, Galanter and Pribram's 1960 classic, Plans and the
Structure of Behavior, was a dimly understood but much appreciated
beacon, and Michael Arbib's 1964 primer, Brains, Machines and
Mathematics, was very helpful in clearing away some of the fog.''
[Brainchildren, p. 356]