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Article 2186 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: From neurons to computation: how?
Message-ID: <40747@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 91 13:06:26 GMT
References: <318@tdatirv.UUCP> <60329@netnews.upenn.edu> <320@tdatirv.UUCP>
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In article <320@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <60329@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>|In article <318@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>|>I was viewing neurons from a biological perspective.
>|
>|That makes it even weaker.  If you view neurons merely as fire/not-fire
>|abstractions, the digital analogy seems reasonable.  If you add in a
>|host of bioelectrochemical realities, you have a lot more explaining
>|to do.
>
>I do not believe I am restricting my model to such a simplistic level.
>But I believe that most minor bioelectrical details are irrelevant to
>higher level funtionality.  They seem to me to be biological methods of

And, what makes you believe that you know the difference between "minor" and
"key" biochemical "details"?

as long as you admit that the following are "assumptions" (guesses) then
fine. 

>1. the models developed for sensory processing elements on the brain are
>   aproximately scalable to cover general brain operation.  (probably with
>   minor adjusments for different operating modes).
>
>2. the types of processing capacities shown in digital neural networks, and
>   which have been verified in biological neural systems, are the functional
>   basis for higher level brain operations.
>
>3. those properties of neurons that effect thier 'neural-network' behavior are
>   the one that are relevant to brain funtion. Other properties are just
>   'accidental', due to the evolutionary origin of neural systems.
>
>I am willing to change these assumptions.  But *only* if shown observable
>evidence.  At the present they seem to me to be the 'Occam' assumptions.
>


