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From: vlsi_lib@netcom.com (Gerard Malecki)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <vlsi_libD1wAM2.Dq2@netcom.com>
Organization: VLSI Libraries Incorporated
References: <34@reservoir.win-uk.net> <3ebc5a$bc8@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <3ec1o8$sno@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 1995 19:10:49 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:1629 comp.ai.philosophy:24296 comp.ai:26217

In article <3ec1o8$sno@agate.berkeley.edu> <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
>In <34@reservoir.win-uk.net> shane@reservoir.win-uk.net (Shane McKee) 
>writes: 
>
>>I still haven't had anybody (including Roger Penrose) give me a
>>good reason why the human brain can't be regarded as a computer.
>>OK, so the mind sometimes doesn't work algorithmically, but its
>>constituent molecules do obey known (or at least simulable)
>>physical laws. Why -can't- intelligence be an emergent property of
>>an underlying algorithmic process involving these constituents?
>
>You're confusing two separate issues.  One is, whether the brain
>can be regarded as a computer.  The other is, whether the brain
>can be simulated on a computer (because physical reality can).
>An atomic explosion can be simulated on a computer, but it does
>not follow from this that the atomic explosion can be regarded
>as a computer.
>
>Cheers.


It is, if you are interested in knowing if a particular mechanical
construction involving fissile material is capable of exploding.
Wind tunnel experiments involving a small scale model of the real thing
can be rightly called computers. So can slide rules. 	

Of course, any phenomenon is a simulation of itself, therefore can
be considered as a computer (even though hard-wired for that particular
phenomenon).
