[ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Mon, 2/22/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I consider computations of natural processes as
>> acausal descriptions of material processes. By "acausal", I
>> mean that although we may ascribe computational descriptions
>> to natural processes, those computations will reflect no
>> real underlying causal mechanisms. Such programs *describe*
>> and *predict* natural processes but they do not *cause*
>> natural processes.
> 
> The computations undergo the same causal mechanisms as
> anything else.

You say this, but then you say...

> This bit hits that bit, which rolls onto the other bit,
> which closes the circuit and makes a light flash, and so on. 

How can you call that "the same causal mechanisms as anything else?" You describe here the causal mechanisms of a digital computer, not those of a biological brain. 

> At the basic physical level there is no "program", that's just something 
> the human mind superimposes on a certain type of physical activity. 

In real digital computers I see real bitwise operations exactly like those you describe above. I see no such bitwise operations in the organic brain, or if I do then I see them only because I have abstracted so far away from its real biological processes that I might just as well call turnips computers too. 

-gts