X-Message-Number: 14990
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 07:39:28 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: give me a proof

Hi everyone!

I've been very busy recently and will become even busier in the future.
HOWEVER, some comments:

1. No one yet has produced a proof that a real-time computer with the
   features of brains would actually be imitatable by a Turing machine.

2. Just like primitive creatures, the basis of our brains' working 
   depends not on math or logic but on the special features of our 
   neurons as "machines". This is not just a statement about hardware,
   but a statement of how our thinking works. The calculations of a
   computer depend not on themselves but on the meaning human beings
   attach to them. Our own thinking depends on those basic processes,
   which generate (sometimes) patterns which look like logic and math.

3. Unfortunately to someone familiar with the physiology of brain cells,
   the models so far used lack essential features of the device which
   is our brain. These include those I have discussed already: the
   ability to grow new neurons and constantly change the connections 
   of existing ones... plus the very simple feature that we must work
   in real time. I am not at all against the USE of such models, so
   long as we do not confuse them with complete versions of how our
   brain or any part of it actually works in detail.

So come on, guys. I have asked a very simple question: has anyone got
a proof that human brains can be imitated (even if only abstractly)
by a Turing machine. And I am emphatically NOT allowing partial imitations
of some part of our brain, but only the whole brain. Everyone who 
believes in the possibility of such imitations seems to assume their
possibility, without any attempt to show it. Everyone who refuses to
believe in their possibility has various features which may (or may
not) make such imitations impossible. Or putting it another way: what
makes you think that ALL POSSIBLE forms of thinking must be imitatable
by a Turing machine?

		Best wishes and long long life to all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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