Ron Burnett seems fascinated by what he calls our “need to anthropomorphize machines” (126). He fails to recognize, though, that we need to anthropomorphize everything in the universe in order to conceptualize any of it. Much of the reason, I think, for the way we speak about machines – “the computer doesn’t want to turn on” – stems from the fact that those kinds of metaphors best describe what we imagine the machines as doing. Try explaining the internet to someone without using any words that could also be applied to humans. There’s a strong case to be made for the theory that we anthropomorphize machines for the same reason we anthropomorphize animals, or even plants: it’s just the simplest way to speak about them. Our internal states are most familiar to us; it makes perfect sense that we choose these metaphors to describe the world outside of ourselves. When I tell my house-sitter that my plants are “thirsty,” I know she'll know what I mean.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of evidence, much of which Burnett discusses, that we do have an unusual desire to imagine machines as paralleling our own brain processes. One need look no further than the Turing tests. If not all, at least some of us are very interested in the idea that we can create an artificial intelligence equivalent to a human’s. Burnett repeatedly asks, why? Part of the reason he gives has to do with control, and I think that this is right. All the great struggles of our lives have to do with control: control of the world outside us, but especially control of our own feelings and desires. Our ability to create a machine that can think like us strongly implies our ability to alter our own thought processes. If our brains, as Michael Dertouzous suggests, operate based upon “a handful of ‘programming rules’” (138), then surely we can discover those rules and program ourselves as we see fit.

I agree with Burnett that Dertouzous presents a radically oversimplified view of natural processes. However, I take issue with Burnett’s dismissal of our already existing powers of self-control. The very example he gives to demonstrate the utter lack of control he claims we have demonstrates that we can, in fact, exercise at least some. Burnett suggests that we try thinking about everything we say before we actually say it and observe how radically it changes our words and thoughts. This “simple experiment” (137) does show how little direction we ordinarily give our speech, but it also shows that we have the capacity to give it much more! In case you’ve forgotten, I want to impress upon you the fact that it is actually good to “think before you speak.” The more control we manage to exert over ourselves, the better off we will be (I hold this truth to be self-evident; if any of you doubts it, please let me know, and I’ll try to elaborate). So much of the deterministic psychological and neuroscientific research forgets that. And, as Burnett himself points out, almost all the knowledge we have gained in these fields comes from “those people whose minds have been affected by accident, disease, or stroke” – hardly the sort of people you’d expect to build self-discipline.