On the website https://foglets.com/ , a website about computers and computation, in an article Computation Power: Human Brain vs Supercomputer, there is this statement:
"The brain is both hardware and software, whereas there is an inherent different in computers."
Is this assertion true? What references support this assertion?
Compare in contrast for example an article that suggests software is not part of the human brain:
Preprint A human's rate of thought without language
A computer has an exact mathematical abstraction, therefore computers can be simulated on computers. It does not matter if hardware is changing itself. Such can be simulated as well. Self changing hardware is nothing new, think of FPGAs.
Regards,
Joachim
Robert Shour Be cautious with articles like this. Looking at the sources - which there are only 5, all taken from non-scientific websites (including wikipedia) - I'm very skeptical of the scientific rigor of this article.
To be sure, there are marked differences between the brain and computers. The "brain is a computer" analogy thought up during the cognitive revolution of the mid 20th century is just that: an analogy. At the time, psychologists were looking for a new conceptual framework by which to understand the mind, but we shouldn't take the analogy too literally.
Blaine Tomkins,
Thank you for your reply, yes I had noticed one of the references in the article mentioned in the question posted is to wikipedia (on supercomputers). On the other hand, the foglet website appears to be focused on computation.
Your note of caution applies not only to informal articles but peer reviewed ones. Thank you for mentioning an important caveat.
In some sense, the article I found may have set up a straw man --- a hypothesis set up for the purposed of arguing against it. My own view leans towards the human brain as mostly or perhaps all hardware, but it seems to be an open issue. The article I mentioned, Preprint A human's rate of thought without language
would contradict the idea of there being much innate software in a human brain.
Regards
I thought that the comparison between computer and the brain was out of fashion. These two things do not have in common more than birds and airplanes have. The fact that computers can be programmed to play chess does not mean that computes work like brain.
What could a "software" of the brain be? Some have argued that the relationship between software and hardware is the same as the relationship between the human mind and the brain. Things can be interpreted and described in many ways, but such claims are wrong. Mind is an emergent feature of the brain; software is not an emergent feature of hardware: software is imposed on hardware from the outside.
The mind is a biologically based feature; a software system can simulate certain features of this natural phenomenon, but it cannot replicate it in its entirety; to do that, it should first be alive. Machines can solve our problems, but they do not have problems. This is what make conscious living beings radically different from any kind of inanimate machines.
Mario Radovan,
Thank you for your reply. Really the question I posed would be more precise if taken to be, for brains and computers, what analogies work and what analogies don't, and how close or far apart are those analogies. So I think the points in your reply are important ones.
I especially like your succinct comparing a brain's emergent intelligence to software imposed.
Another issue is whether computers can with improved technology be made to operate more like brains.
Avoiding unfashionable questions sometimes is an advantage and sometimes not. I don't know into which category this question falls.
One of the replies in a related question,
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_human_brain_processing_parallelism_be_attributed_to_the_principle_of_dimensional_capacity
referred me to a couple of helpful articles.
Sometimes questions may lead to someone providing something useful. (And sometimes not.)
Best wishes.
Dear Robert Shour,
Yes, with a high level of generalization it can be assumed that the brain is a very advanced, complex biological equivalent of cybernetic / IT hardware and software that manages the entire organism and contacts the environment, e.g. through consciousness endowed with emotional intelligence.
Best regards,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
Robert Shour This hardware vs. software question seems like a variation of the classic mind/body dualism debate. Are the brain and mind distinct things? The dualistic position is that they are. However, this view has long fallen out of favor as our understanding of the nervous system increased. When it comes to the brain the hardware/software dichotomy really makes no sense. Mind generally refers to a collection of processes (or functions, if you prefer) carried out by the brain. However, these processes are not only carried out by the brain, they are of the brain -in the same way currents are both generated by and part of the ocean. It makes no sense to speak of currents apart from the water, and it makes no sense to speak of the mind apart from the brain. We can speak abstractly about the mind (and functions of the mind) without reference to the brain. But, if we wanted to get highly technical, there is no real distinction.
Does it make sense to distinguish hardware from software in the context of computers? I couldn't say. I'd need to learn more about computers. In the context of the brain, however, the distinction is ultimately meaningless. In my opinion, scientists and authors would do well to stop speaking of the mind/brain in terms of software/hardware (*or at least emphasize the comparison is metaphorical).
- Badges
- Science topic