In the long run, Hawkins abandons his initial description of "Frame" and (to my mind) wanders into simple Object Oriented Design and Mathematical constructs that lie behind Quantum Mechanics. I'm not sure gets this, but he starts with a frame-based description of consciousness, which is a fine example of putting this phenomenon on the test bench. Many philosophers claim this is not possible. Daniel Dennet is happy to allow what we say about our experience to be evidence of what that experience is. The problem with Dennet is that he was writing decades before Hawkins used the powerful frame language to speak of what it "feels like" to be in the world. Armed with Hawkins' way of speaking, it may be a good idea to loop back and read Dennet again. With apologies to Hawkins, this is what I think a frame is: It is a frame of reference like Cartesian space It contains objects, each of which has a location in the space - for example, (x,y,z) coordinates. In object-...

I have been rather dismissive of Hawkins' " Thousand Brains " idea but I can't help thinking he's on to something, specifically: Once you broaden your understanding of what a "frame*" is, it is quite plausible that people think in frames. The most powerful computer system we have built so far, the Internet, runs on a relatively simple "frame language", understood by over a billion "hosts" including the one you are reading this on. Hawkins provides a plausible description of human experience in terms of "frames" somehow being the unit of experience. It is plausible that the neocortex has some kind of structure that implements frames, including the ability to create frames "on the fly" and use them as a unit of memory and reasoning. Thousand Brain is not too dissimilar from the theory presented in Surfaces and Essences, which presents analogy as the "fuel of thought". "Surfaces" is really talking ...

I posted this review of " A Thousand Brain s" on Amazon. Bottom line, there are great ideas but, at bottom, the "science" in it is extremely shakey. If you toss out the hardware ideas and focus on the systems analysis, it's brilliant. This reminds me of another great book on the workings of the mind, Surfaces, and Essences . In that book, the authors wisely steer clear of speculating on how analogy and metaphor are implemented in the brain. "A Thousand Brains" can be profitably read in this spirit. In subsequent posts, I will be seeing what can be done with Hawkins' theory if we see it as systems analysis rather than neuroscience. " AMAZON REVIEW If this is the only neuroscience book you read, you'd think neural columns are a "thing". I am reminded of the brilliant idea of "memes", which fell apart due to the inability to define them rigorously. It is no coincidence that Richard Dawkins (inventor of the meme) is over th...