<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>Stathis,</span></div><div><br></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div class="y_msg_container">> If the brain, being a system of interacting atoms, acquires semantics<br>> then what forbids a digital computer, also a system of interacting<br>> atoms, from also acquiring semantics?<br><br></div><div class="y_msg_container">The point here is that organic brains are not like digital computers running programs according to syntactical rules. The "systems of interacting atoms" that we call brains are nothing like the systems of atoms that we call digital computers. If that is true then the computational model of mind is at best dubious and at worst false. </div><div
class="y_msg_container"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div class="y_msg_container"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It is tempting to imagine that the brain is a sort of natural digital computer, created by nature, and that our thoughts are something like programs running on the hardware of the brain. But we are assigning that designation. Computational states are not actually intrinsic to the physics of the brain itself, except that we find it interesting and convenient to think so. </span></div><div class="y_msg_container"><br></div><div class="y_msg_container">-Gordon</div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>