[ExI] Is the brain a digital computer?

Gordon Swobe gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 21 15:06:51 UTC 2010


--- On Sun, 2/21/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Confusion arises also because some people believe,
>> naively, that if we can compute x then a computation of x =
>> x.
> 
> Who said this? 

Anybody who says "A digital simulation of a brain will equal a brain" says exactly that a computation of x = x where x = a brain.

> The claim is that a simulated x will have at least some
> of the properties of x, but not necessarily all the
> properties. A simulation may look like x but not smell like x, for
> example.

Except in the special case in which x = a digital program or computer, the digital simulation of x will not even look like the originals except that we *imagine* so. We *imagine* the convenient fiction that the apple-shaped patterns of pixels on our screens really look like the apples we simulated. 

To see this, go find your magnifying glass and take closer look at that apple on your monitor. Compare it to what you see when you hold the glass to an actual apple. That's not an apple on your screen after all, now is it?

-gts



      



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