Brain Computer Confusion(blog.piekniewski.info)
blog.piekniewski.info
Brain Computer Confusion
https://blog.piekniewski.info/2021/11/17/brain-computer-confusion/
3 comments
Nice article. I'll add one more argument. Most people think the universality of Turing machines (the possibility of emulating one Turing machine with another) means that the universe must be a computer because if we can build computers then the universe itself must be some kind of computer by computational universality. But the problem with this is that nothing says that a non-computable universe is not allowed to have Turing machines nested within it.
A somewhat tortured analogy is inscribing a square inside a circle and then claiming that the circle is actually a square because squares can be inscribed within other squares. The folks that believe in a computational universe don't have a convincing argument for why they assume the universe is a computer other than assuming it as an axiom, which is fine but is not much of an argument for why the universe must be a computer.
Similar argument is true for the brain. Humans can carry out computational actions by emulating Turing machines but that is not a good reason to believe that the brain is also a computer because the same argument applies. Just because a Turing machine can be "nested" within biological brains does not mean that brains are themselves Turing machines.
A somewhat tortured analogy is inscribing a square inside a circle and then claiming that the circle is actually a square because squares can be inscribed within other squares. The folks that believe in a computational universe don't have a convincing argument for why they assume the universe is a computer other than assuming it as an axiom, which is fine but is not much of an argument for why the universe must be a computer.
Similar argument is true for the brain. Humans can carry out computational actions by emulating Turing machines but that is not a good reason to believe that the brain is also a computer because the same argument applies. Just because a Turing machine can be "nested" within biological brains does not mean that brains are themselves Turing machines.