From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.bbn.com!papaya.bbn.com!cbarber Thu Dec 26 23:57:34 EST 1991
Article 2315 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cbarber@bbn.com (Chris Barber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Scaled up slug brains
Message-ID: <4001@litchi.bbn.com>
Date: 20 Dec 91 17:44:06 GMT
References: <352@idtg.UUCP> <40782@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1991Dec18.135620.16540@news.larc.nasa.gov> <357@idtg.UUCP>
Organization: BBN Systems and Technology, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <357@idtg.UUCP> dow@idtg.UUCP (Keith Dow) writes:

>Also you don't need to know the chemistry or physics of the human brain to 
>simulate it.   There are lots of people in computer science classes who 
>understand how a computer works, but think a transistor is a nun that has
>had a sex change operation.

I think your analogy is poor. CS students do not need to know low-level
details to "understand" computers for two reasons: (1) computers were
DESIGNED so that one can understand its workings without reference to
low-level implementation details (2) CS students are TOLD how computers
work - they don't have to discover this by experimentation. The fact is,
we don't have a reference manual for the brain and I don't think that you
will find many neuroscientists who would agree that all of the significant
mechanisms of the brain are understood or have even been discovered. It
is probably true that one does not need to know all of the low-level details
of the brain to simulate it, but you must be able to determine which details
can be left out and which must be considered. With computers, it is easy.
We know they have been engineered so that one does not have to consider the
minute fluctuations within the circuitry  - but we do not know this about the
brain. The moral: I don't think it is safe to ignore all this "low level"
stuff quite yet.


-- 
Christopher Barber
(cbarber@bbn.com)


