George A. Miller, language, and the computer metaphor and mind.

Abstract

This article asks why the analogy between humans and computers was understood by cognitive psychologists to mean that "minds exist and that it is our job as psychologists to study them". Earlier psychologists, such as Clark Hull, used analogies between humans and complex machines such as telephone switchboards to defend a rigorous behaviorism. How, then, did the computer metaphor of mind come to be seen as the root concept underlying a paradigm shift from behaviorism to cognitivism? To answer this question, this article examines the life and work of George A. Miller, one of the most prominent of a generation of psychologists who began their careers as "good behaviorists" but later came to embrace cognitivism.

Neuroeconomics of Emotion and Decision Making

“…The cognitive revolution used the structure of computer software as a metaphor for understanding the structure of human cognition (Crowther-Heyck, 1999;Miller, 2003). This is due largely to the intellectual history of cognitive science.…”

Herbert Simon and the GSIA: Building an interdisciplinary community

“…Gardner, like his fellow program officers at the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, was an advocate of interdisciplinary research. Simon knew of Gardner's support for the new Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, an interdisciplinary research institute founded in 1960 by Bruner and Simon's friend George A. Miller, so he turned to Gardner and the Carnegie Corporation to get his project on "complex information processing" (CIP) up and running (Crowther-Heyck, 1999a).…”

“…The various sponsoring organizations divided the costs of housing the attendees, with RAND paying the lion's share. The summer seminar had quite an impact on the attendees: the psychologist George A. Miller, for example, based his influential text Plans and the Structure of Behavior on the concepts and techniques learned at this seminar, writing the text while in residence the following year at the Ford Foundation's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Crowther-Heyck, 1999a;Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960).…”

Computation vs. information processing: why their difference matters to cognitive science

“…Shannon's work immediately influenced psychologists such as George Miller, who put Shannon's technical notion of information at the foundation of a new science of mind (Miller & Frick, 1949;Miller, 1951;cf. Garner, 1988;Crowther-Heyck, 1999). Shannon's information theory entered neuroscience around the same time (MacKay & McCulloch, 1952).…”