On 1/16/2014 12:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 16 January 2014 16:26, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
The computational metaphor in the sense of the brain works like the Intel
CPU inside the box on your desk is clearly misleading, but the sense that a
computer can in theory do everything your brain can do is almost certainly
correct. It is not that the brain is like a computer, but rather, that a
computer can be like almost anything, including your brain or body, or
entire planet and all the people on it.
Jason
I think neuroscientists have, over decades, used the computational
metaphor in too literal a way. It is obviously not true that the brain
is a digital computer, just as it is not true that the weather is a
digital computer. But a digital computer can simulate the behaviour of
any physical process in the universe (if physics is computable),
But Bruno concludes that physics is not computable. So does that imply one should say
"no" to the doctor?
Brent
including the behaviour of weather or the human brain. That means
that, at least, it would be possible to make a philosophical zombie
using a computer. The only way to avoid this conclusion would be if
physics, and specifically the physics in the brain, is not computable.
Pointing out where the non-computable physics is in the brain rarely
figures on the agenda of the anti-computationalists. And even if there
is non-computational physics in the brain, that invalidates
computationalism, but not its superset, functionalism.
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