§9.7.1: Is the Brain a Computer?
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On metaphors for the brain (and mind), see:
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Fritz Kahn's artwork, likening
the brain and nervous system to an electronic communications network.
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On analogies between telephone systems and computers themselves, see:
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Lewis, W.D. (1953). Electronic computers and telephone switching.
Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 41(10):1242–1244.
-
Squires, R. (1970). On one’s mind. Philosophical Quarterly,
20(81):347–356.
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Sternberg, R. J. (1990). Metaphors of Mind: Conceptions of the Nature
of Intelligence. Cambridge University Press, New York.
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Gigerenzer, G. and Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Mind as computer: Birth of a
metaphor. Creativity Research Journal, 9(2–3):131–144.
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Guernsey, L. (2009). Computers track the elusive metaphor. Chronicle of
Higher Education, page A11.
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Angier, N. (2010, 2 February). Abstract thoughts? The body takes them literally. New
York Times, page D2.
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Pasanek, B. (2015). The mind is a metaphor.
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On computationalism, see:
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Piccinini, G. (2009). Computationalism in the philosophy of mind.
Philosophy Compass, 4(3):515–532.
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Rapaport, W.J. (2012). Semiotic systems, computers, and the mind: How
cognition could be computing.
International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems, 2(1):32–71.
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Rescorla, Michael, The Computational Theory of Mind, The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
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On the brain as a computer in general, see:
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Gerard, Ralph W., et al. (1951), Some of
the Problems Concerning Digital Notions in the Central Nervous System,
Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and
Social Systems. Transactions of the Seventh Conference (New York: Macy
Foundation): 11–57.
- Highly recommended! A wonderful, round-table discussion among some of
the major figures in the field — including
McCulloch, Pitts, von Neumann, Wiener, and others — on
whether the brain is a computer and on the analog-digital distinction.
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Ralston 1971,
p. 4.
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Fitch, W.T. (2005). Computation and cognition: Four distinctions and
their implications. In Cutler, A., editor, Twenty-First Century
Psycholinguistics: Four Cornerstones,
pages 381–400. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, NJ.
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A good discussion by a cognitive biologist of
"how the brain computes the mind" (from the Introduction).
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Naur 2007
says that "the nervous system … has no similarity
whatever to a computer" (p. 85).
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Shagrir 2006
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Zenil, H. and Hernández-Quiroz, F. (2007). On the possible computational
power of the human mind.
In Gershenson, C., Aerts, D., and Edmonds, B., editors,
Worldviews, Science and Us: Philosophy and
Complexity, pages 315–337. World Scientific Publishing, Singapore.
- Investigates the computational power of the
brain and whether the brain might be a "hypercomputer".
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Schulman, A.N. (2009). Why minds are not like computers. The New
Atlantis, pages 46–68.
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Hutchins, E. (2010). Cognitive ecology. Topics in Cognitive Science,
2:705–715, esp. p. 707.
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Shagrir, O. (2018). The brain as an input-output model of the world. Minds
& Machines, 28(1):53–75.
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Maley, C.J. (2022),
How (and Why) to Think that the Brain Is Literally a
Computer.
Frontiers in Computer Science, Section: Theoretical Computer
Science
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Polger, Thomas W.; & Shapiro, Lawrence A. (2023),
"The Puzzling Resilience of Multiple Realization",
Minds and Machines 33:321–3435.
- On the brain as a Turing Machine in particular, see:
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It is one thing to argue that brains are (or are not) computers of some
kind. It is quite another to argue that they are Turing Machines, in
particular. The earliest suggestion to that effect is:
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For critical and historical reviews of that classic paper, see:
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Piccinini 2004
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Aizawa 2010
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Piccinini, G. (2020). Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological
Cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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Piccinini, G. (2022, 11 October),
Alan Turing and Neural Computation,
The Brains Blog
- A good short argument for why neural computation might be neither
digital nor analog.
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Piccinini, G. (2023, 2 January),
"Why Neuroscience Refutes the Language of Thought",
The Brains Blog
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More recently, the cognitive neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene and his colleagues have made similar arguments; see:
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Sackur, J., and Dehaene, S. (2009). The cognitive architecture for chaining of two
mental operations. Cognition, 111:187–211.
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Zylberberg, A., Dehaene, S., Roelfsema, P. R., and Sigman, M. (2011). The
human Turing machine: A
neural framework for mental programs. Trends in Cognitive Science,
15(7):293–300.
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See also:
-
Shagrir, O. (2010). Computation San Diego style. Philosophy of
Science, 77(5):862–874.
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Piccinini, G. and Shagrir, O. (2014). Foundations of computational
neuroscience. Current Opinion in Neurobiology,
25:25–30.
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Chirimuuta, M. (2021). Your brain is like a computer: Function, analogy,
simplification. In Calzavarini, F. and Viola, M., editors,
Neural Mechanisms: New Challenges in the
Philosophy of Neuroscience, pages 235*–261.
Springer, Cham, Switzerland.
§9.7.2: Is the Universe a Computer?
-
For a different take on the question of whether the solar system computes
Kepler's laws of motion, in the context of "pancomputationalsim" (the
view that "every deterministic physical system computes
some function"), see:
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Campbell, D.I. and Yang, Y. (2021). Does the solar system compute the
laws of motion? Synthese, 198:3203–3220.
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On cellular automata in general, see:
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"Cellular Automaton" (Wikipedia)
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The relatively informal presentation in
Bernhardt 2016,
Ch. 5.
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The more formal presentation in:
-
Burks, A.W., editor (1970). Essays on
Cellular Automata. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.
- Philosopher and mathematician Arthur Burks was one of the people
involved in the construction of ENIAC and EDVAC.
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On cellular automata that are Turing Machine-equivalent, see these
Wikipedia articles:
-
On Wolfram and his theories, see his
homepage and:
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Wolfram, S. (2002).
Introduction to A New Kind of Science
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Bernhardt 2016,
Chs. 5, 6
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For a critical review, see:
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Aaronson, Scott (2002), "Book Review on A New Kind of Science",
Quantum Information and Computation 2(5):410–423.
-
Aaronson, S. (2011, 9 December). Quantum computing promises new insights, not just
supermachines.
New York Times, page D5.
-
Claims that quantum computing has "overthrown"
views like those of
that "the universe itself is
basically a giant computer … by showing that if [it is, then]
it's a vastly more powerful kind of computer than any yet constructed by
humankind."
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On Lloyd and his theories, see:
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Lloyd, S. (2000). Ultimate physical limits to computation. Nature,
406:1047–1054.
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Investigates "quantitative bounds to the computational
power of an 'ultimate laptop' with a mass of one kilogram
confined to a volume of one litre."
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Lloyd, S. (2002). Computational capacity of the universe. Physical Review
Letters, 88(23):237901–1 — 237901–4.
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Argues that
"All physical systems register and process information.
The laws of physics determine the amount of
information that a physical system can register (number of bits) and the
number of elementary logic
operations that a system can perform (number of ops). The Universe is a
physical system. The amount
of information that the Universe can register and the number of
elementary operations that it can have
performed over its history are calculated. The Universe can have
performed 10^120 ops on 10^90 bits
10^120 bits including gravitational degrees of freedom)."
- Lloyd, S. (2006). Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist
Takes on the Cosmos. Alfred A. Knopf, New York,
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Two reviews of Lloyd's work:
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Schmidhuber, J. (2006, July-August). The computational universe. American Scientist,
94:364ff.
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Powell, C.S. (2006, 2 April). Welcome to the machine. New York Times Book
Review, page 19
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Offers an overview and
summary that is worth reading independently of the book being reviewed.
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Konrad Zuse also argued that the universe is a computer; see:
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Schmidhuber, J. (2002). Zuse's thesis: The universe is a computer
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Copeland, B.J., Shagrir,O., and Sprevak, M. (2018). Zuse's thesis, Gandy's thesis, and Penrose's thesis.
In Cuffaro, M.E. and Fletcher, S.C., editors,
Physical Perspectives on Computation, Computational
Perspectives on Physics, pages 39–59. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK.
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For more on the universe as a computer, see:
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Chaitin 2006
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Copeland, B.J., Sprevak, M., and Shagrir, O. (2017). Is the whole universe a computer? In Copeland, B.J.,
Bowen, J., Sprevak, M., and Wilson, R., editors,
The Turing Guide, pages 445–462. Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
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Piccinini and Anderson 2020
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Related to Lloyd is Bostrom's work on whether we are living in a
computer simulation:
If Lloyd is right, then the universe is a computer,
and we are data structures in its program, brought to life as it were by
its execution.
If Bostrom is right, then we are data structures in
someone else's program.
If theists (computational theists?) are right,
then we are data structures in God's program.
For an argument that simulation theories are not
scientific, see Dunning, B. (2018, 8 May).
Are you living in a simulation?
For more on Bostrom's ideas, see the
Further Readings for
Ch. 19.
§9.8: Conclusion
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For a critique of Piccinini's Definition P3, see:

Copyright © 2023 by
William J. Rapaport
(rapaport@buffalo.edu)
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/OR/A0fr09.html-20231214