From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!ogicse!willamette.edu!jfirman Tue Mar 24 09:57:01 EST 1992
Article 4572 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jfirman@willamette.edu (John Firman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.edu,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Help!  looking for article...
Message-ID: <1992Mar18.184632.10836@willamette.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 92 18:46:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: willamet.1992Mar18.184632.10836
Organization: Willamette University, Salem, OR
Lines: 34

I am currently taking a class in Automata Theory, and today we got into
a discussion about the domain of the human brain as far as computability
is concerned (i.e. the domain of problems computable by the human
brain).  We talked about the fact that there is an uncountably infinite
number of languages over sigma*, yet the number of phrase-structure
languages (the languages accepted by Turing Machines) is only countably
infinite.  If you consider a human brain to be a biological turing
machine (sketchy), then the consequence of the above assertion is that
there are problems that a human brain cannot compute (read comprehend?)

At any rate, this brought to mind an article I read a long time ago in
Discover Magazine that "proved" that there is a finite number of ideas
or concepts (of course this finite number is more than the number of
atoms in the universe).  I think that this article was actually a
problem in one of those Mensa sections at the end of the magazine that
they used to have (I don't know if they still have them).  Finally, I
get to the point.  I would really like to find this issue of Discover so
that I could bring the article to class.  I can't remember which issue I
found it in, but it was at least 6 years ago.  Does anyone know of an
ftp site that contains back issues of Discover, or any pertinent
information that would help me on my quest?  I would really appreciate
any help you could give.  Thanks in advance!!

mail responses to:

jfirman@willamette.edu

-John


-- 
John Firman				|  
Willamette University			|  <insert clever quote here>
Salem, OR               		|


