[FOM] The Lucas-Penrose Fallacy

[Steven Ericsson-Zenith]

On Oct 12, 2006, at 11:13 PM, Eray Ozkural wrote:

> However, today's scientists acknowledge
> the brain as just another organ in our body. All physical, and
> all mechanical. This allows us to ask scientific questions, for
> instance by characterizing the computation of a single neuron:
>
> http://neco.mitpress.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/8/1715

All mysticism aside, the assumption that neurons are computational  
elements in this paper and elsewhere has no basis in empirical  
science - it is, at best, an hypothesis. It is an hypothesis that  
goes from what we know about computation, not from what we know about  
the engineering of biology. Just because it looks like it might be  
replaced by cogs and pulleys, does not mean that it can be replaced  
by cogs and pulleys.

The acknowledgment of today's scientists is no basis for eliminating  
broad inquiry.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info