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From: embronne@cs.vu.nl (Bronneberg EM)
Subject: Re: Men : Analogical or Digital ?
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Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 13:19:55 GMT
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John Day (jday@csihq.com) wrote:
: In article <3rjvt4$cub@gnu.mat.uc.pt>,
:    Pedro Miguel da Fonseca Marques Ferreira <pmferr@pardal.dei.uc.pt> wrote:
: >
: >[skip]
: >
: >	Is man brain analogical or digital ?
: >	(or is it none...)
: >
: >I defend the idea that man's brain is analogical. I justify that
: >idea with the following reasoning ( for example ) :
: >
: >	The colors our brain can distinguish are 16.7 million.
: >	Those are color levels.
: >	So i think the human brain does a analogical to digital 
: >	conversion of the analogical ( maybe ) stream of info
: >	coming from our eyes.
: >	What do you think of that ?
: >
: >[skip]
: >
: 
: [skip]
:
: Second, for the sake of argument, let's accept the 16.7M figure.
: That's a _finite_ amount that is represented digitally (see above).
: But, the number of colors in nature is infinite (if I'm allowed to
: represent colors as triplets of R,G,B real numbers). That means the eye
: (and the brain) is digital because it must quantize a continuous spectrum
: into a discrete one. Photocells can discriminate colors that
: appear the same to the human brain.

: To accept your argument would be equivalent to saying that computers
: can compute with real numbers.
: Don't be deceived, no computer can compute the square root of five,
: only an approximation
: represented by the ratio of two finite integers. 

Sorry, but neither of you seems to give a real argument for whether the
brains work digitally or not. So far I haven't found enough arguments
for either one of the possibilities. But I'm convinced that the perception of
colors isn't representative for how the brains work. Things like this may be
just the easiest way of doing it. Or the first way found by evolution.

Greetings,
Miel Bronneberg, embronne@cs.vu.nl
