[ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

[Christopher Luebcke]

Whether it's

  T is caused by B
  B has the property m

or

  T is contained in B
  B has the property m

You cannot, from either of these cases, deduce that

  T has the property m

You could only deduce that statement if you modified the original statements such that

  T is B

Surely you're not claiming that thoughts are brain matter?




________________________________
From: Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Fri, February 26, 2010 11:13:45 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

> I believe that the only workable definition of the noun 'a
> thought' is, fundamentally, 'a statement', which is
> certainly information, certainly can be held in media other
> than brains, and certainly does not have mass.

By the noun thought I mean the intentional mental state of a conscious
mind. Hard drives and newspapers contain information but they do not have
mental states intentional or otherwise, at least not this side of science-
fiction.

On my materialist view, brain matter causes and contains thoughts. And brain matter has mass. So notwithstanding the possible involvement of massless particles, thoughts have mass.

-gts





      
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