From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!garrot.DMI.USherb.CA!uxa.ecn.bgu.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert Tue May 12 15:49:25 EDT 1992
Article 5452 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!garrot.DMI.USherb.CA!uxa.ecn.bgu.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert
>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,talk.phlisophy.misc
Subject: Re: Question: Minds and Machines
Message-ID: <1992May7.175530.18595@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 7 May 92 17:55:30 GMT
References: <1992May5.201703.17963@psych.toronto.edu> <OZ.92May6132613@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <1992May7.153948.8766@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 52

In article <1992May7.153948.8766@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <OZ.92May6132613@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
>>christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>>
>>   bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>>   
>>   >  Regarding (1), the greatest resemblence is at a very abstract level:
>>   >both computers and brains are essentially information processing
>>   >devices.  
>
>... comments and counter comments deleted for brevity.
>
>Can I play? :-)  Although I will admit to both an academic and personal
>bias, I don't see why you think Chris is out of line here.  The question
>we are trying to answer is, at least in part, how similar brains and
>computers are.

 I'm going to jump in too - probably a mistake :-(

 I think the problem here is one of interpretation or mis-interpretation.

 The term "information processing" is ambiguous.  It is sometimes used as
a synonym for "computing" as on a digital computer.  But it also carries
is own meaning as taking some information and processing it, not necessarily
in any specified way.

 It's my impression that Bill was using the term in the second sense, while
Michael and Chris are reading into it the first sense.

>                To *assert* the above similarity is simply to beg the
>question we are trying to answer.

  How about giving Bill some benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he wasn't begging
the question at all.  Perhaps he was trying to find a point of common
agreement from which the discussion can then pick up.  Saying that the
brain processes information does not necessarily imply that it processes
the information in the same manner as typical computer programs, nor does
it imply that the type if information is similar to the type of information
typically processed by computers.

>                                   If someone want to offer *arguments*
>about this *essential* nature of the brain, in constrast to weather
>systems, the stock market, the movement of galaxies, etc., then we
>*would* have some substance...

  My interpretation of Bill's comment was that he was commenting on the fact
that the brain is a product of biological evolution, and pointing out what
seemed to be an essential property of the brain which would provide the
survival benefits to allow it to evolve.

  I do assume you are not claiming that weather systems and the movement of
galaxies are the product of biological evolution.


