The mechanical behavior of humans in the forced routines of industrial and post-industrial society, the ubiquity of computing and the appropriation of vocabulary around the once complex denotations of "intelligence" make for easy analogies. We have adapted by becoming more machine-like which then leads to easier application of the computer analogies of mind. If we do ultimately account for ourselves as machines we will, with Pogo, have only ourselves to blame.
I think of Zizsek's comparison of the madcap Drs. Hawkeye and Pierce with the robotic "Private Pyle" in Full Metal Jacket. Pierce and Hawkeye were good, human soldiers while Pyle was a de-humanized machine that ultimately destroyed himself and his DI programmer.
Human see, human do - our unique talent for mimicry means we can do an impression even of a machine if needs be and needs have been.
Reductionism has an urgency, a get down to it now, that I think comes from the flywheel of 300 years of "progress" and it stinks of oil and tastes of cigarettes and coffee - the natural history of all four being deeply intertwine. The dopamine and (let's face it) testosterone that fuel this "progress" cost us in terms of a more fully human way of relating to a world that we have largely challenged with one hemisphere tied behind our backs.
That is so well said that I'd like to quote it (anonymously if you prefer,
let me know] on my FB page, if that's ok with you.
I've been reading a draft chapter from a book-in-progress, this chapter available online and entitled "Nietzsche and Whitehead on the Decadent Desire for Static Being" by J. Thomas Howe, and want to quote a footnote from it for your consideration:
"Whitehead suggests that the idea that mathematical entities are devoid of process is mistaken. Plato misunderstands mathematics when he identifies it with a realm of changeless eternity. Whitehead writes 'that mathematics is concerned with certain forms of process issuing into forms which are components for further process' (MT, 92). It should be clear that Whitehead’s critique of Greek mathematics is not directed at either mathematics’ general usefulness or even the ability of mathematics to illuminate various aspects of the nature of reality. Rather, it is directed at a specific view of mathematics. What Whitehead is leery of is what Ralph Norman calls mathematicism. Mathematicism involves the presupposition that knowledge is only that which is deductively certain. Whitehead’s interest in mathematics is, as Norman writes, in its
'aesthetic philosophical use – i.e., its use as the search for infinitely rich and diverse patterns of order, in its confidence that the conception and enjoyment of such coherence is an open-ended enterprise, that in fact the mind deployed has as its destiny whatever expansion of its initial systems may be required in the large encounter of looking and finding' (Ralph V. Norman, Jr., “Whitehead and ‘Mathematicism,’” in
Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy, ed. George L. Kline [Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963[, p. 34)."
I no longer have the url link to the chapter I'm quoting. I came across notes and extracts from it in my Word files.
This arcane subject matter is surely interesting, but I'll have to watch it develop from the sidelines. I'm glad that you have pursued cybernetics and even built some small robots, and look forward to your discussion with Michael. My first question is what are "ANNs"? 
