The brain is just a complex biochemical computer

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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I’ve been thinking about this one a lot. I think that our brain is nothing more than a massively paralleled biological computer.

the facts:

The brain is a biological organ. Its primary purpose is to provide for the continuation of the species. It monitors various data streams, records, sorts for importantance, differenciates (sp), etc. In our species, it’s most powerful function seems to me to be the ability to abstract unrelated data, from past, present and imagined future, and combine them into tools.

When I say tools, I consider pretty much everything we do is a tool, to our mind, because it is interacting with the world using a mental image of what is happening around it.

Give it deep consideration for a few moments. You are looking at some tiny dots on a computer screen with your eyes. These dots are arranged in specific patterns and colors to which your brain has been trained and practiced in the recognition of. However, the process of getting to the brain is far more complex than we give it credit for. Light rays stimulating neurons that respond to specific frequencies of light. That is then encoded neurochemically, in the same way that a camera chip encodes the light it senses into 0’s and 1’s. Those neurons network interface with another set of neurons, of a differnent conficuation and construction. It’s passed to the brain after several such network changes I think, someone can surely tell us the process in full. Then our brain imagines what we see, and the data processors set in, and tear into the mountain of data. And the route back out, to my fingers, is even more complex.

Yet we take it all for granted.

Think about this one for a few minutes. I dont remember exactly where, but there was a study done, this is the sum-up. A monkey had a computer chip implant, it interfaced on a neurological level with the monkey’s brain. There was a joystick in the room with the monkey, and he could drive a robot arm in a room behind a window. He’d use the joystick to control the arm, push the red button=fruit. They let him use the joystick to move the arm for a while, but monitored the output of the brain/chip interface thingamabob. Then, they turned off the joystick, and used only the output of the chip to move the arm. After a while, the monkey quit using the joystick and began just using his brain. (popular science I think)

popsci.com/popsci/printerfri … drcrd.html

The monkey’s brain wrote a driver device file for a robot arm, as surely as Windows uses a mouse drive to use your mouse.

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:astonished: The experiment would have gone better if the experimenter had implanted the chip in his own brain. :frowning:

I think it is pretty well accepted that the brain is an organic computer running in parallel mode, somewhat like a quantum computer. This is obvious from the speed of facial recognition. A familiar face or image is recognized in a fraction of a second, before we actually become aware of this recognition. There is no linear process in the brain that can do this. Rather, a parallel pattern recognition seems to be taking place.

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I agre on everything you’ve said except it’s widely acceptedness. I think that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the planetary population never progress mentally beyond the drama of their daily existance.

Where is there a user guide for this computer? I want one. At least the for dummies version… =)

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:laughing: Yea, the darn thing has a mind of its own.

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I want one.

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Down with reductionism! (It doesn’t reconcile the mind/body problem).

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So do I.

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There is no mind-body problem; the idea that consciousness cannot naturally stem from neuronal interactions is simply a failure of intuition (in fact, one of the many such failures).

Reductionism kicks ass, as long as it isn’t taken to an irrational degree. It’s true that all human thought is physics - that’s good reductionism. But it’s false that we should therefore appeal to physics to understand human psychology. Ideally we will be there one day, but currently psychology is such an emergent property - that is, is so complicated to understand in terms of physics - that it is better to look at the higher-level patterns of neuroscience and psychology for such understanding.

Anyway, yay for the brain just being a computer! The fact that this isn’t accepted throughout the philosophical community is a testimony to the failure of philosophy (as currently practiced) as a precise means of thought.

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Explain then, how does consciousness stem from neuronal interactions? How do you explain consciousness at all?

And don’t say “the neurons do some really complicated stuff” because that really says nothing.

Sure, you can believe that the mind is nothing but a complicated machine, but don’t pretend you’re better than us because where philosophy is concerned, what you’re saying boils down to “weird shit happens, man”.

Few modern philosophers would deny the existence of neurons and their significance to peoples minds. Their concern, however lies in finding out what exactly is taking place.

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If you start with an assumption what makes no sense and you can not disprove it, you are still wrong.
Just because you don’t recognize the rocks and trees beside the trail, is that enough proof that you are lost?

Let me start with my assumption:
1 Human beings have free will
2 Physics suggest that the only thing outside of determinism is subatomic or quantum physics

So I say your brain is not a simple machine but a subatomic interface between you ( your experiences, your memory) and the universe.

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Obviously I can’t precisely explain how consciousness stems from neuronal interactions. I am simply asserting that there is no PROBLEM with the idea that neuronal interactions do generate consciousness. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that, just because we can’t come up with a comprehensive explanation currently, that such an explanation is impossible, and therefore we need to appeal to a more purely abstract form of mind, possibly beyond physics. That is patently ridiculous.

Philosophers are hardly the ones working to determine the nature of consciousness. Neurobiologists, and to a lesser degree Psychologists, are the ones doing this. Philosophers assert things that are within their very limited scope of knowledge, ignoring the fact that, unlike math, consciousness is clearly a very complicated phenomenon which will not reveal its secrets to a casual observer equipped with nothing more than some basic logical abilities which every mathematician surpassed before they entered graduate school.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

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I’ve made this point many times, but I’ve taken a lot of drugs. In my drug use I’ve felt that what you’re saying is true. If I can ingest LSD or DXM and it can alter everything I experience, then you’re right.

This author does not advocate or endorse drug use.

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The brain is the computer. The self is the program, a continuing accumulation of interconnected looping subroutines which are triggered by external and internal events generating thought and action.

Just a thought…triggered by the OP.

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Sorry! I posted this in the wrong thread.

You said; ”So really, what I’m getting at here is that, since healthy people always have some kind of moral imperative, whether for or against “virtues,” those with autism never do.”

Or it may simply be that the person(s) you described do not exhibit Kant’s “kingdom of ends” type morality. But that does not mean they don’t have a morality. Morality is not exclusively defined by the Kantian ideal.

You said; ” Since it’s possible that through disruption and damage there can be a person without a moral code,…”

The morality of the autistic person(s) you described is that person’s moral code. They have one - the one you described.

You said; ” There seems to be a real, physical root and ground to morality.”

Do you think it’s possible that biology is effected by morals? Passion

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Philosothink wrote:
I’ve been thinking about this one a lot.
I think that our brain is nothing more than
a massively paralleled biological computer.

How does this brain/computer work?
Who works on this brain/computer?

The man acts:
1)
usually under logic program,
2)
sometimes on intuition (unconsciousnessly).

Therefore our computer-brain works on a dualistic basis.

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This is not the philosophy forum. Its the natural science forum.

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If you think it is merely a computer, then you are missing the properties of the brain that don’t mimic computers, like inter meshing of thoughts, emergent thoughts, certain abnormalities like savant syndrome, and the aspects of qualia associated with emotions, that machines don’t have.

Though there are parallels, there are a lot of differences too. I find it naive to spout similarities without spouting dis-similarities too.

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“…the conclusion of this argument is that running a program cannot create understanding. The wider argument includes the claim that the thought experiment shows more generally that one cannot get semantics (meaning) from syntax (formal symbol manipulation).”

from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

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The Chinese Room is bunk. Check Hofstadter and Dennett’s response in “The Mind’s I”. They point out a number of flaws.
For one thing, the scale is all wrong. A room moving at the speed that a person can consult tables and output characters is absurdly slow for a conversation. Speed it up and shrink it down and it starts to seem more like our intuitive grasp of intelligence.
Also, symbols and words are complex things. It isn’t clear that a table could be designed that converts words in their entirety that would pass the turing test: that might (probably does) require more sophisticated tables, parrallel processing, timing, etc., that the chinese room thought experiment doesn’t capture.

Yeah, so, bunkum.