From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!geb Mon Dec 16 11:01:51 EST 1991
Article 2116 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!geb
>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: From neurons to computation: how?
Message-ID: <12685@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 91 13:53:11 GMT
References: <59809@netnews.upenn.edu> <310@tdatirv.UUCP> <40541@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Sender: news@cs.pitt.edu
Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 32

In article <40541@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>
>Oh, give it a break. Those working in newtonian physics found no significant
>barriers or discrepencies for a lot longer and got a great deal more
>in results than has been achieved in neurology. You seem incapable of
>understanding the difference between a hypothesis and a fact.
>
Newtonian physics is correct too, to the first approximation.  But
Newtonian physics is much simpler than neurology.
>
>It may be useful, but that don't make it true. Note that  not all
>neurologists subscribe to this theory either.
>
Who are you talking about, Sir John Eccles?  Note that he doesn't
talk the mysticism stuff when he is publishing his results in
peer reviewed literature, only when he write is "philosophical"
books.  And then he is a bit short on evidence and long on feelings.


>You understand neither the engineering principle of KISS nor the scientific
>principle of Occam's Razor. Neither principle requires one to adopt as 
>true the first model that seems plausable.
>
The first model was hardly the neuron theory.  It was the spirit
theory, I think.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


