From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!geb Mon Dec 16 11:02:02 EST 1991
Article 2135 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: From neurons to computation: how?
Message-ID: <12707@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 15 Dec 91 15:42:04 GMT
References: <1991Dec14.110633.28844@oracorp.com> <40640@dime.cs.umass.edu>
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Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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In article <40640@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>From Donald Braben (in Beauty is our business: Springer Verlag 1990)
>   As late as the 1960's, it was widely believed that if we had enough
>   information on temperatures, currents, pressures, etc. over a wide enough
>   area, and had computers adequate to the taks of compiling the
>   information, we could predict the main features of weather with
>   reasonable accuracy over long periods --- weeks or months ahead. We now
>   know that this is not the case, not because of limitations to our
>   technology or to our lack of commitment, but because of the intrinsic
>   properties of complex systems.
>
I think the brain is much more highly structured and organized that
the atmosphere, but even if this were granted, it still does not
preclude the possibility of creating the brain.  Even complex
man-made systems can have emergent behavior that was not designed
or forseen.  Why could not an artificial brain do so as well as
a real brain?

>brain, and whether these "elements" behave like digital computers. 
>
I must have missed where someone claimed that.




-- 
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Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
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