[ExI] Digital Consciousness

[Giulio Prisco]

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Brains are not like digital computers.
>>> Brains are biological organs, not fundamentally different from livers or
>>> kidneys.
>
>> Livers and kidneys are computers: they are physical systems
>> that evolve in time and interact with their environment according to
>> well known physical laws and stored programs.
>
> If livers and kidneys are computers then we might as well say that just
> about everything is a computer. It's warm here tonight and so I have a fan
> operating in my home office. It's oscillating back and forth, as if
> according to a program. I suppose I could think of it as a computer.
>
> Gordon
>

No "as if" needed: the fan is oscillating back and forth according to
a program. The fan is a very simple computer. Livers and kidneys are
more complex computers. The brain is a much more complex computer.

I am using "computer" in the general sense of physical systems  that
evolve in time and interact with their environment according to
physical laws and stored programs. In this sense, yes, considering
everything as a computer is a useful framework.