[Philosophy] What are you, and where?

[Xannari Ferrows]

THIS is gonna blow the minds of many people. I'd advise wearing a helmet and some shinguards while reading.

No, seriously. This is gonna get crazy.

So yesterday evening, I was invited over to a friends' house for some dinner. While I made up a quick pizza [had to bring the flour and the toaster oven], Jared was pulling out some frog legs. Very fresh, I might add. In fact, he grabbed my attention, as well as a salt shaker, and proceeded to pour some salt on all of the frog legs. Briefly after, they began to twitch. Even though they were dead legs, they were able to move around and respond to stimulation.

I actually got very curious about this. I went under the assumption that this was caused by a type of reflexive response, which is also why you would pull your hand away very quickly, and without thought, from salt, lemon juice, or hand sanitizer travelling into the nearest papercut. The same could also be said for involuntary responses.

But anyway, this got me thinking a bit. I got back after a while, and decided to share this thread.

Because, the fresh legs were part of a living thing, which had a brain, a consciousness, and intentions. If you just went up and killed the frog, you can still have it respond to simulation through all kind of methods. But, who's doing the responses? The cells in the corpse? Or the frog itself?

You could argue that the frog no longer has the intention to respond to stimuli, therefore isn't responsible. A reasonable argument, but that begs the question:

What, and where is the frog?

Or for that matter, you. What, and where are you? Keeping the principles all the same, would you continue to do things after you are dead?

Your cells for that matter. If they are the ones responding to stimuli after you are dead, then what about when you're alive? If you could pluck off a single cell from you right now, is it a separate entity? What's keeping from being separate while attached to you? For that matter, what about putting it onto another person? Is it now their cell?

For another matter, imagine this scenario: micro surgery is now a medical standard. Cells are capable of being taken off one by one.

If you had your cells being removed one by one, are you having yourself removed? Or are you simply just relieving your cellular crew of duty? I mean, if you consider your cells to be separate life forms, then what about you? You can locate those cells, but can they locate you? I mean, where are you? You could say you are sitting in your chair reading these words, but aren't those just your skin cells? I'm talking about your sentience. Where is your sense of self-awareness?

You could argue that the various quick interactions within your sensory systems is what gives you the ability to identify your surroundings, but what about thought? Or feelings, for that matter? Where do those come from? What allows ME to be able to think about this subject with intense depth?

If you think that your consciousness comes from the brain, then are you calling yourself just a brain? Is it you? Or is it your brain?

If you think your consciousness comes from the brain, then why do you say "my brain" rather than "me"?

For that matter, if you believe consciousness originates outside the brain, then where is it? Why does it go away after death?

If your brain were to suddenly burst, but your body left intact, would you continue to live?

If my brain and your brain were to suddenly trade places, would I be me, or you?

If I were taken apart cell by cell, then reconstructed, would I still be me?

This is gonna spiral out of control if I keep this up, I'll leave it here. Have fun with trying to reply.

[Awaras]

http://www.brainstuffshow.com/blog/how-twitching-frog-legs-work-a-little-gross-yes-but-fascinating/

[xcorps]

If you think your consciousness comes from the brain, then why do you say "my brain" rather than "me"?

A brain is an organ. Me is a concept.

For that matter, if you believe consciousness originates outside the brain, then where is it? Why does it go away after death?

It does not originate outside the brain, and you do not know if it goes away.

If your brain were to suddenly burst, but your body left intact, would you continue to live?

This is basic biology

If my brain and your brain were to suddenly trade places, would I be me, or you?

This is advanced biology.

If I were taken apart cell by cell, then reconstructed, would I still be me?

This is very advanced biology.

Self is a concept. Kill the parts of the brain that reason, imagine, and access memory then self no longer exists.

[RainDreamer]

Read some philosophical text about mind-body problems and existentialism, it would help set you on a journey to find an answer.

I suggest starting with Rene Descartes, he is the guy who coined "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefore I am", and while his thinking has been challenged by numerous philosophers after his time, some with very compelling arguments, it is a good place to begin, with the proof of the existence of the human mind.

[Xannari Ferrows]

Wow, I just woke up and read this again. I just blew my own mind. Listening to soundscapes is a good way of starting the morning, if I may add.

[HoloYolo]

To answer the main question, I'm an advanced human in the fifth dimension setting up a tesseract to save you unevolved humans. A paradox, yes, but we'll fix it eventually.

[Fel]

Read some philosophical text about mind-body problems and existentialism, it would help set you on a journey to find an answer.

I suggest starting with Rene Descartes, he is the guy who coined "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefore I am", and while his thinking has been challenged by numerous philosophers after his time, some with very compelling arguments, it is a good place to begin, with the proof of the existence of the human mind.

But descartes is so boring! I am my mind, and nothing more? How can you say this when your first proposition is that you have been deceived by your body for your entire life? Can we really say that the essence of self is independent of the body?

What about someone who was blind his whole life, he has never seen the sky, he has never seen the person he fell in love with. Then, he is given an advanced procedure and can now see.

http://www.examiner.com/article/teasing-sight-from-blindness-bionic-eye-approved

Can we sit back and say that nothing about the person has changed? That what he thinks about his past experiences also would not change? That his interaction with the world has no impact on how he processes the world, or rather, his mind? Could his wife be the victim of first degree burns all over her body, and, upon seeing this, he now feels a sensation he never felt towards his wife ever before... repulsion? Could, the spot where he would allow the cool breeze to flow overhim as he imagines a beautiful sky-scape be a deteriorating ramshack. The world around him has changed in ways he never imagined, what he knew and loved is different from what it was before... but is he still the same person, do these changes in perspective represent a change in mind?

And more so... if he were hooked up to a machine that used the power of his brain, and two others, to achieve an end task... have we created a new individual? Can we create a new body, supply it with a hive-mind, and create a unique individual independent of the minds that control it?

http://www.ted.com/talks/miguel_nicolelis_brain_to_brain_communication_has_arrived_how_we_did_it

---- now let's have fun

Are we our body? If the frog loses his leg, has he lost apart of himself... or are his legs an entity in themselves? They respond independent of external control, can we say that reflexive responses indicate the presence of a primitive mind? If your mind is not controlling your body, could it be that your body is actually controlling your mind?

Did you drink mother's milk because you wanted to, or because it was your body that told you to? Did you rise on two feet because you wanted to, or because of an instinctual drive to walk? Did you learn speech because you wanted to talk, or because you were programmed to process and learn languages?

Our body controls our mind, feeding it neurochemicals to get you to eat, to sleep, to mate... what actions are actually a result of you MIND and not a result of your body? Can you really separate them, are there not subtle influences over the years to mold your mind into something the body desires? The body that lacks the capacity to produce these chemicals often seeks to supplement them elsewhere, causing various pains unto the mind until the needs have been met. Depression, Addiction, these are physical ailments that create mental components; do you drink because you want to, or do you drink because the neurochemicals released by the body drive you to do so.

The question that remains is, admitting that the body can hold control over and influence the mind; what would you be like as a mind without a body. Neurochemicals create feelings of fear, of love, of hate, of passion.... would stripping ourselves away from our bodies would yield a sociopath? Does that mean morality is a physical response; a kindness one body passes onto another but not what one mind passes onto another?

Bodies act independent of the mind, they perform actions we wish they did not and do things without our permission. How can we honestly say that WE are in control of our bodies; they may exist in a symbiotic relationship for us; but the question is who benefits more... the mind, or the body.

*** Epilogue

Sheesh, this is crazy.... the assumption always has been that the actions of the mind induced an action in the body; i.e. neurochemicals are a mind-body conduit; the mind wants to feel happy so it has the body produce serotonin. Or that the body and mind remain one and seritonin production is a result of you, as an organism, feeling down.

But what is also true is that many of these chemicals aren't needed for a mind to exist; how far down the rabbit hole can you go? Where does the body start and the mind begin?

Edited April 19, 2015 by Fel

[peadar1987]

This is an incredibly old argument, probably almost as old as philosophy itself. Look up "Ship of Theseus"

[RainDreamer]

But descartes is so boring! I am my mind, and nothing more? How can you say this when your first proposition is that you have been deceived by your body for your entire life? Can we really say that the essence of self is independent of the body?

Yeah, I am not saying he is like, the only one you should look into though. His arguments has its flaws, but I find him a good starting point, as he prove that, at first, we exist. Doesn't matter what that existence is, we are here, conscious of our own existence. Now, whether that existence is separated from our meatsacks or is a part of it, is something we don't know for sure yet. But it is good to have something to start with.

This is an incredibly old argument, probably almost as old as philosophy itself. Look up "Ship of Theseus"

I remember my high school philosophy teacher used to tell me that story. Which reminds me that our body replaces its old cells all the time. We shed dead skin cells, hairs, various form of tissues, etc. Does it matters then, hmm.

[Awaras]

Where does the body start and the mind begin?

This is the same as asking where does computer hardware ends and software begins or where does the candle end and the candle flame begins. The body is physical. The mind is a process, a chemical reaction, an ongoing ordered change in the state of the brain...

[LordFerret]

Read some philosophical text about mind-body problems and existentialism, it would help set you on a journey to find an answer.

I suggest starting with Rene Descartes, he is the guy who coined "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefore I am", and while his thinking has been challenged by numerous philosophers after his time, some with very compelling arguments, it is a good place to begin, with the proof of the existence of the human mind.

I think I think, therefore I might be.

[vger]

There's been some evidence that all consciousness might not be brain-related. People have inherited hobbies, cravings, and even personality attributes from the deceased via organ transplants. One girl who received a heart transplant from a murder victim, allegedly inherited enough information to help the police catch the killer.

[PB666]

THIS is gonna blow the minds of many people. I'd advise wearing a helmet and some shinguards while reading.

No, seriously. This is gonna get crazy.

So yesterday evening, I was invited over to a friends' house for some dinner. While I made up a quick pizza [had to bring the flour and the toaster oven], Jared was pulling out some frog legs. Very fresh, I might add. In fact, he grabbed my attention, as well as a salt shaker, and proceeded to pour some salt on all of the frog legs. Briefly after, they began to twitch. Even though they were dead legs, they were able to move around and respond to stimulation.

I actually got very curious about this. I went under the assumption that this was caused by a type of reflexive response, which is also why you would pull your hand away very quickly, and without thought, from salt, lemon juice, or hand sanitizer travelling into the nearest papercut. The same could also be said for involuntary responses.

But anyway, this got me thinking a bit. I got back after a while, and decided to share this thread.

Because, the fresh legs were part of a living thing, which had a brain, a consciousness, and intentions. If you just went up and killed the frog, you can still have it respond to simulation through all kind of methods. But, who's doing the responses? The cells in the corpse? Or the frog itself?

You could argue that the frog no longer has the intention to respond to stimuli, therefore isn't responsible. A reasonable argument, but that begs the question:

What, and where is the frog?

Or for that matter, you. What, and where are you? Keeping the principles all the same, would you continue to do things after you are dead?

Your cells for that matter. If they are the ones responding to stimuli after you are dead, then what about when you're alive? If you could pluck off a single cell from you right now, is it a separate entity? What's keeping from being separate while attached to you? For that matter, what about putting it onto another person? Is it now their cell?

For another matter, imagine this scenario: micro surgery is now a medical standard. Cells are capable of being taken off one by one.

If you had your cells being removed one by one, are you having yourself removed? Or are you simply just relieving your cellular crew of duty? I mean, if you consider your cells to be separate life forms, then what about you? You can locate those cells, but can they locate you? I mean, where are you? You could say you are sitting in your chair reading these words, but aren't those just your skin cells? I'm talking about your sentience. Where is your sense of self-awareness?

You could argue that the various quick interactions within your sensory systems is what gives you the ability to identify your surroundings, but what about thought? Or feelings, for that matter? Where do those come from? What allows ME to be able to think about this subject with intense depth?

If you think that your consciousness comes from the brain, then are you calling yourself just a brain? Is it you? Or is it your brain?

If you think your consciousness comes from the brain, then why do you say "my brain" rather than "me"?

For that matter, if you believe consciousness originates outside the brain, then where is it? Why does it go away after death?

If your brain were to suddenly burst, but your body left intact, would you continue to live?

If my brain and your brain were to suddenly trade places, would I be me, or you?

If I were taken apart cell by cell, then reconstructed, would I still be me?

This is gonna spiral out of control if I keep this up, I'll leave it here. Have fun with trying to reply.

No its not, these are old questions.

Henrietta Lacks - the first immortal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

Ok, so this is how it works.

Life = ability to control the fate of energy in the environment by containing and controlling chemical reactions, in essense life provides catalyst to direct reactions capable of rebuilding itself. Of course it needs a source of energy (most - organic molecules and dissolved oxygen, some - hv, CO2 and H20, a few = other sources of oxygen or chemical energy)

Reproduction schemes (following the darwinian concept of reproduction - survive and reproduce)

-fission (e.g. bacteria, simple fungi, certain procaryotes, we could also include parthenogenic animals or plants).

-recombinant reproduction - gametes from two individuals fuse, undergo chromosomal recombination, and then either produce new organism or multiple new organisms.

So humans fall into the second category. We are non-parthenogenic, however with cloning this scheme is possible, it is currently banned and the experiment with dolly the sheep shows that the best telomers are derived from germ-line cells, not stem cells.

This means that to survive and reproduce, IOW, to fit the criteria my germ cell line has to survive and be cabable of recombining and this can be done without my brain, although its much more likely to occur with my brain. So Lacks is still with us in her cells, but the reality is that the DNA that is in those cells has evolved away from HeLa prototype, and the prototype itself was cancerous, its not really henrietta anymore, its kind of a zombie cell that only trained scientist can keep going (HeLa cells that are alive today have spent the overwhelming majority of their existence frozen in dimethylsulfoxide solution in liquid nitrogen. If those cells were truely Lacks's cells, they would have reached their natural limit to divide decades ago and died. So for instance the oldest person that has ever lived had better than good ability to conserve cell divisions while at the same time had good ability to facilitate cell division without transformation. Thats about 130 years of age, there are some stem cells that can divide longer under the right conditions, but by and large by that age at 37'C our cells are playing out.

So this issue handled lets move to the last one.

You are treating the human brain like a programmable digital computer. The human brain is a learning machine, it can compute, and there are certain digital qualities to it, but the digital computer and the human brain are very different things. The computer has memory that is near completely erasable and replacable. In the human brain the hardware and software are prettymuch the same thing. And no two human brains are alike. If you took all the memories and higher CNS function of one person and tried to shove it into the brain of someone else, they might see your short-term memories, but by and large the incompatabilities would knock out much of the function and you would have a very confused 2 year old mind that would have to relearn a whole lot (and the older mind cannot adapt as quickly as 2 year old).

Your brain has a function, survive and help you reproduce and do optional stuff on the side. You do the optional stuff like create post here because your biology is tolerant of kin- and social selection activities that improve fitness indirectly. It assumes that all the creative stuff will improve the tribe, the nation or the species allowing humans some overall survival benefit. It gets confusing in the short-term whether this works, but in the long-term success is self-evident.

So that to answer your question, your brains function stems from its ability to help you survive and reproduce, its function is tied to the rest of your corpse and really has no benefit to you or the rest of society if that corpse is no longer alive. The memories are not like the on and off bits in a computer, and if you somehow could detect all the memories in your brain and transform them into another person you would not have accomplished much because most of your emotional and functional state is hardwired into your brain.

[benjee10]

I don't think the frog legs twitching is to do with reflexes at all actually. Sodium is a key part in the transmission of nerve impulses and muscle contraction and salt contains a lot of sodium. The salt likely dissolved into the frog legs and triggered nerve impulses, and likely not co-ordinated ones, hence the twitching rather than a coordinated contraction of a knee or something. It was an involuntary response to a stimulus directly affecting cell level biology.

The concept of consciousness is a very tricky one. It's difficult to define and I won't pretend to be any expert in philosophy by any stretch, but I remember a New Scientist article once that postulated that consciousness was a property of matter, like mass, which arises when information is processed at different levels. Your brain is effectively just an information processor. It takes information from the sensory organs and works out what's going on, effectively. That's what consciousness is. Simply receiving information is not enough for something to be conscious; it is the act of combining that information with other information that causes consciousness to arrive. Imagine you're playing kerbal space program. You're receiving lots of information. Vision, hearing, the touch of the keyboard. On their own these mean nothing. Together they make a conscious experience of playing kerbal. Your brain takes the images you perceive and gives them meaning, it relates them to past experiences, co-ordinates your body to respond in a certain way. As to whether consciousness is a by product of having advanced information processing or is actually a driving force in it no one can really say. That raises questions of free will and philosophical zombies which is a can of worms you don't really want to open up

[Xannari Ferrows]

Your brain is effectively just an information processor. It takes information from the sensory organs and works out what's going on, effectively. That's what consciousness is. Simply receiving information is not enough for something to be conscious; it is the act of combining that information with other information that causes consciousness to arrive.

To be conscious is not to respond to information appropriately, but to ponder that information, and to choose the response that you feel to be right? That is a very good definition. I may have to add that to my personal dictionary.

[RainDreamer]

Well, is that to simply be conscious, or actually also being intelligent? Another animal can also be aware of informations in the environment and responses to them appropriately too, although we don't know if they ponder on information and thinking on a meta level. But what would we call that, if not conscious?

[Brotoro]

I am the software that runs in my brain (but it's not just the brain that determines Me, since there is feedback from the other body systems). My body is the chemical-electro-mechanical system that keeps my brain working...and it's also the system that constructed my brain in the first place from the unique pattern of information stored in my DNA (thanks, Mom and Dad!)...so my body is part of Me. The development into Me was also affected by my environment, of course, so that unique history that made Me would have resulted in a different person if the history had been different...so an identical twin with the exact same DNA would not be Me. You can remove parts of my body (I do it all the time as I shed skin cells) without destroying the part of Me that I care about, as long as the brain is still operating to keep Brotoro OS running. Those removed parts are not Me...they are just stuff that used to be parts of Me. Sure, you could get the removed parts of me to twitch and do other macabre tricks with the correct electrochemical stimulation of the machinery...I don't see why this is surprising at all. But that wouldn't be Me doing anything.

[Xannari Ferrows]

We are all within the BIOS-phere.

[*Aqua*]

To be conscious is not to respond to information appropriately, but to ponder that information, and to choose the response that you feel to be right? That is a very good definition. I may have to add that to my personal dictionary.

Go get someone and tell him to say the word 'red' 20 times as fast as he could. Then immediately ask him: 'At which color do you cross the street?' In most cases the answer will be 'red'. So there are only some people conscious and most are not?

I think a human is nothing more then some sort of biological robot which has a basic program, running on (non-controllable) instincts and (chemical/hormonal triggered) emotions. This basic program is generally called "will", "soul", "me", etc.

[Tommygun]

The opening post description of twitching frog legs immediately made me think of how they inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and some of the questions it asked about the nature of life.

But more importantly though, who in hell puts frog legs on pizza!

[Xannari Ferrows]

The opening post description of twitching frog legs immediately made me think of how they inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and some of the questions it asked about the nature of life.

But more importantly though, who in hell puts frog legs on pizza!

Oh god that sounds gross. Glad I never contemplated such atrocities.

[magnemoe]

The opening post description of twitching frog legs immediately made me think of how they inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and some of the questions it asked about the nature of life.

But more importantly though, who in hell puts frog legs on pizza!

Remember fishing at sea got plenty of fish, one might not receive the hit in the head as it was twisting around then we came back to shore, this has to be an hour after catching it so it should anyway have suffocated. Well cutting off head and tail, removing the intestines and it was still twitching. Never seen anything like it.

Regarding frog legs, an famous 19th century experiment involved triggering frog leg muscles with electricity, this inspired Frankenstein, people did not know its simply the shock trigger muscles, pacemakers works this way, yes after short time the muscles will run out of energy and the cells will die.

- - - Updated - - -

Go get someone and tell him to say the word 'red' 20 times as fast as he could. Then immediately ask him: 'At which color do you cross the street?' In most cases the answer will be 'red'. So there are only some people conscious and most are not?

I think a human is nothing more then some sort of biological robot which has a basic program, running on (non-controllable) instincts and (chemical/hormonal triggered) emotions. This basic program is generally called "will", "soul", "me", etc.

This is simply to confuse someone and it usually work, brains don't work like computers, say you wait for someone in an forest for a long time, you believe you hear and see them pretty often.

The computers problem is translating the image and sound into something it can use, its numbers of false alarms will not increase over time. It will go down if it use an learning algorithm.

The brain is not an computer, yes it will probably be possible to emulate an brain however this require that the model is good enough not only that you have enough cpu power.

Problem is that say you emulate an mouse brain, you will have no idea if the computer really emulate an mouse brain or just is trained to behave like an mouse who this is far simpler.

That is unless you can observe all of the activity in the mouse brain and see if the computer act similar. This again has problems as two brains does not behave the same way.

[-Velocity-]

First of all, the feeling of a constant existence, a constant self, tied to a specific piece of matter is an illusion on multiple fronts. First of all, we are in no way tied to a specific piece of matter. Your brain is constantly rewiring and replacing itself. The brain is like the proverbial "ship of Theseus"- by the time you die, your brain will have probably replaced and rewired almost everything between the time of your birth and the time of your death. Secondly, as the brain is constantly rewiring itself, the idea of a constant self is also an illusion. So you could majorly rewire the way your brain works, even wholly replace your brain with a new one (which would be at least mostly functionally identical) and you would still feel that you were the same person- though you might think a bit differently if the new brain was wired a bit differently.

Anyway, the matter that makes up our brains is utterly irrelevant. Everything about who and what we are is nothing but the information in our heads. When I say "information", I mean all the information we store in memory PLUS the manners and rules by which that information and new information is processed, and the information that describes how our neurons are wired to make us think. In other words, the information that describes our memories plus the information that describes how to create our process of thought and self-awareness. To make a computer analogy, you are all your "save files" in memory PLUS the source code of the program that makes up you.

Because we are information, a functional equivalent of you made on a computer simulation- a simulated brain- would be exactly you. NOT a "copy". Because you are NOT made of matter, you are made of INFORMATION that is described in matter. How exactly matter is made to describe the information that is you is irrelevant- be it a biological brain or a computer software simulation.

(I already hear someone's lame-brained counter-argument: "But what if the simulation were to run faster than your original brain!?!?!!! It would be very different than the original you!" Well of course, then you haven't replicated your original brain. EVERYTHING about you is information, including how fast your brain processes information. The information that describes you includes everything needed to exactly replicate the function of your brain.)

Some people have a hard time conceiving this, so let me give an example. Lets look at another piece of information, say the number 1,638. Like you, it is a piece of information. A VERY TINY piece of information. So here's a question, when I write the number 1,638, am I writing the number 1,638 or just a "copy" of the number 1,638?...

It is idiotic to say that I'm writing just a "copy" of 1,638. The number is just the number, as all information that is exactly the same is exactly the same. Likewise, an exact copy of your brain- regardless of what medium it is realized in- would be you, because you are nothing but information, and thus all instances of that information are exactly you.

So far, we don't have any real use for these ideas outside of the philosophy of the mind. But, we may find a way to replicate human minds in software. Such minds could be vulnerable to prejudice and denied the rights of human beings. The above reasoning would show us that we should treat such software minds with the same respect we treat a biological mind.

We can also have fun applying these concepts to a silly science fiction debate about the Star Trek transporters. The argument goes that, if the transporters destroy the body at one point and then replicate it somewhere else, then every time a person uses a transporter they in fact "die". However, applying the knowledge of the mind as information, we see that you do not die when using the transporter, as the only thing you are is information, and that information does get properly transferred from place to place. The immense byte stream that is "Captain Kirk" does in fact get beamed up or down from the Enterprise.

It's a silly debate, but it could eventually have real world analogs for humans if "mind scan" like technologies come into being. And of course, it would have immediate real world analogs for any machine intelligences we might create in perhaps the not-so-distant future. That they were nothing but information would be immediately obvious to them, however, in a way that isn't immediately obvious to (most) humans.

Edited April 20, 2015 by |Velocity|

[Xannari Ferrows]

Perhaps this ties into our goal of creating artificial life? Maybe it's a different form of reproduction.

If our brains truly are just super high-tech computers, that would make tons of sense.

The brain is very good at doing rough calculations in an instant. We have a real life mode 7. We feel the need to keep evolving. We always come back to our original programming. We work in dimensions. We have limited processing power. We have a limited color palate. We need energy to keep running. We have built in anti-virus software. We are good at recognizing patterns.

Many more factors that play in here, but it'd take an eternity to list them all.

[-Velocity-]

Perhaps this ties into our goal of creating artificial life? Maybe it's a different form of reproduction.

If our brains truly are just super high-tech computers, that would make tons of sense.

The brain is very good at doing rough calculations in an instant. We have a real life mode 7. We feel the need to keep evolving. We always come back to our original programming. We work in dimensions. We have limited processing power. We have a limited color palate. We need energy to keep running. We have built in anti-virus software. We are good at recognizing patterns.

Many more factors that play in here, but it'd take an eternity to list them all.

If the brain consists wholly of physical matter, and the supernatural soul does not exist, then of course the brain is nothing but an extremely powerful computer. What else would or could it be?

In fact, our brains are actually immensely powerful computers, and have the type of computing power only perhaps exceeded by the most powerful supercomputer in the world (at least, last I checked)- a giant, parallel-processing supercomputer in China that consumes like 20 MW (yes, twenty MEGAWATTS). Silicon is still many orders of magnitude behind biology in efficiency and information processing density.

The reason that silicon computers outperform us on things like adding numbers is because we did not evolve such an ability because we did not need such an ability. That said, there are of course many areas where we vastly outperform silicon computers.

Edited April 20, 2015 by |Velocity|