X-Message-Number: 14695
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 09:04:09 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: on how brains work

Hi everyone!

Some comments on Henri Kluytmans' messages.

First of all, our brains do not operate like any computer system yet
in existence. Connections between neurons change, at different rates,
but even change in maturity. Most neurons that are connected are connected
not by one synapse but by many. This alone makes them quite unlike any
existing neural net; among other features, this changeable connectivity
makes the simple use of wires (as in computers) not at all like how
our brains work. In general terms, a lot of what our brains do looks
a bit like that done by computer neural nets, but their structure
differs a lot and therefore they will behave differently in detail.

Second, the hormones going through our brain affect its activity. Our
brain also affects the output of hormones. It seems unlikely that we
can simply say that we work "like computers", even including our
desires, values, aims etc. If nothing else, that claim deserves far
more justification than it has yet received. It's particularly 
important here that feelings play a large part in virtually everything
we do... even the feeling of curiosity is a FEELING, not something 
automatically generated by information alone.

Furthermore, our brains include a great deal of unconscious parallelism.
We aren't aware of this because our CONSCIOUSNESS only remains aware
of issues produced by this parallelism (in combination with our feelings).

With these differences it's not even clear that we work enough like
computers that (even in our information processing, when we do so)
things like Turing's Theorem bear at all on our operation. AT ROOT,
the operation of our brain is not symbolic, among other issues. Use
of symbols is an operation of our brain, but it's founded on non-
symbolic activity.

I am happy to provide references for every point I have made here
about how our brains work. The previous paragraph is my opinion alone,
but it comes from thinking about how our brains really work. I would
not be surprised if others agree with me, especially since I am asking
a question rather than making a statement. 

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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