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Article 2209 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Scaled up slug brains
Message-ID: <60555@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 91 20:04:13 GMT
References: <40677@dime.cs.umass.edu> <12723@pitt.UUCP> <60372@netnews.upenn.edu> <12740@pitt.UUCP>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
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In-reply-to: geb@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Gordon Banks)

In article <12740@pitt.UUCP>, geb@speedy (Gordon Banks) writes:
>>>If we use phonon pumping in our neurons, it is a good bet that the
>>>worms do too.

>>It's not such a good bet.  In fact, phonon pumping makes it easy to
>>explain a catastrophic change in mental evolutionary history.

>So do the phonon theorists have any particular animal in mind?

Nope.  Not even close.

However, the model should predict a minimal brain size, when the
large N limit fails to describe the actual phase diagram.

>Surely not something like Julian Jaynes where it just started 
>happening in recent times (ancient Greece).

Jaynes proposed something different, although it does use the same
word.  Jaynes wouldn't, for example, deny that you anesthetize dogs
or apes or Achilles before doing an operation.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


