p. 54 on equating brains with computers

« This moment of ferment gives birth not just to cognitive science as a discipline but to the doctrine that would come to be known as functionalism, which by the 198s had become "the prevailing view in philosophy, psy-chology, and artificial intelligence . .. which emphasizes the analogies between the functioning of the human brain and the functioning of digital computers" (Searle I984, 28).

Whether or not one finds this idea credible, it is notable that despite the general objections of some of the closest former workers in the field, by the 19705 the view that the brain itself must be something like a digital computer had become widely adopted throughout the academy. It is not even always clear what was meant by the comparison so much as that it had to be true, had to be that in some way the machine we had created was also a model of a more originary creation still in some ways beyond our under-standing. But it is still remarkable the degree to which philosophers in particular took hold of this idea and ran with it, and perhaps even more remarkable is the degree to which, just as Chomsky's ideas became a cultural lightning rod in linguistics -on my argument, exactly because of the political forces to which they were and are tied–their extension in philosophy perhaps even more clearly came to define the boundaries of the field, and in a sense, thought itself. »